Adventure tour guide lifestyle: what you need to know

I’m an adventure guide for a women’s travel company, so I’m leading the worldwide walking, backpack, surfing, Rappelling, snorkeling swimming and cultural trips. I dived the Inca Trail in Peru with the snorkel in the Caribbean Sea and watched the sunrise through Petra in Jordan – all of money.

When I tell people what I am doing for work, they usually think I have a dream.

But while my friend sits in his apartment between the tours looking for my concert looking at my next house, he looks at me in front of the couch and says, orum I don’t know how he sleeps at night .. I am about to guide an international tour in Belize for three weeks, but I don’t even know where to live next week.

And this is the nature of this lifestyle. My life is like a role coaster-long, hard climbing, then exciting, heart races drops. In the meantime, the lives of other people tend to be more like a horseman-while waiting for the next rotation, it is predictable enough to enjoy an ice cream cone, at least tend to be fixed or at least smooth.

But I tell people that I haven’t always chosen this lifestyle; This lifestyle chose me.

It all started when I saw a brochure in my university’s dining room: “Login with a backpack in Florida Trail – $ 65.”

I never started with a backpack in my life, but that little hand adopted me with excitement. When I saw that the guides on this trip were other students – I knew that I was about to step into the Roller Coaster – because they practically earn money to enjoy it outdoors. “How can I get your job?” I asked.

And my journey started here-working as an adventure guide in my university, working part-time, winning my license in the field of psychology and communication. Wilderess Medicine was certified, through Miami traffic, 12 sea skiing and 12 passenger vehicles connected to the back of how to use 12 passenger vehicles, and when a part of the course was closed due to forest fires, I learned how to create a completely new backpack. At the age of 19, I first traveled abroad, I received payment to guide the Landmannalaugar Trail, a 35 -mile walk through Iceland’s backcountry.

But after graduation, I thought it was time for “growth”.

And I tried it, I really did it.

At the age of 22, after taking Appalachian Trail to have fun, I enrolled in a graduate program for mental health consultancy at an award-Boston College that I gave myself. But when I saw how long I should go in student loans, something inside me screamed, NO! Get us out of here!

I enrolled in the classes on Monday; Until Friday, I was packing all my belongings in my car and going to rural Pennsylvania for the season, I was living in a cabin in the lake while teaching primary school students outdoor education. Without any cell service in the valley, I had a real quality time with my colleagues and friends walking around the lake at sunset, writing fires, writing fires in the valley.

In 2020, I tried it again, and I found a job in a behavioral health unit at a children’s hospital in New Orleans. If I stayed in the long run, they would pay for my education. However, after spent hours under the fluorescent lights, after watching the health system prioritizing money through real care, the screams in my head continued.

I bought a 25 -year -old TV dining table and a folding chair, sat on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans city center and sold my poem. I also paid my rent with work background and stand-in concerts in New Orleans’s Hollywood Film Stage Unit. This stage of my life was full of art, nights and unpredictability.

However, the roles do not have a free fall forever, and I finally realized that it was not sustainable.

My brother, a safe finance career, excellent marriage, golden retriever and five bedrooms in suburbs. “You need to get money for your highest skill level,” he said, after realizing that the poem on the street wouldn’t work.

I had more than 10,000 hours of backpack experience, so I applied to be a guide again.

After working free with a few open -air training programs, I was hired as a regular guide with all women’s adventure travel company. As a contracted guide, I take 12 journey in the USA and international travels annually. The company is completely far away, so everything is almost managed – before each trip, I get detailed technical routes from past tours, logistics electronic paintings and adventure reports. Then I jump on a plane and prepare to give women the best experience of their lives.

My job is partially logistics, partly hype-woman, partly photographer, partially driver, partially chef, partially shoulder traction, partly yoga instructor and partly wild nature. I take everything from maping and arranging equipment to trail roads, making everyone support and feel safe on the journey.

The tours last between four and 10 days and the working days are long-type 12 to 14 hours, sometimes up to 16. Too much gear loading, van driving, trace guidance, problem solving, storytelling and emotional field holding. Like the tables waiting, most of my income comes from the clues – so I never know how far I will get away until the journey is over. Another climb to Roller Coaster.

When I do not have a guide, I am usually among short-term housing installations-staying with your friends and family, home care or travel. Technically, while working part -time, the guidance takes a large part of my year both physically and mentally. Depending on how the trips are planned, I can be on the road or abroad for several weeks at a time. I had a permanent apartment, but after a one -year guide, I noticed that I would spend only six weeks in the last six months.

Women who participate in our tours are often some kind of life intersections-after the new work, milestone birthday or only longing connection and adventure-and all inspiring. They come from anywhere and emerge with open hearts and the desire to challenge them. The real magic is when I watched these women conquer the fear of height in a climb, laughing around a camp fire uncontrollably, or crying on a mountain’s happy tears. About this connection – nature, with each other and ourselves.

My first year, 27 years old, I moved towards some of the most incredible landscapes of America-Rim-to-rim in the Great Canyon, Angel’s Zion, half a dome in Yosemite.

The second year, 28 years old, I went abroad-Julian Alps in Slovenia leads Trekking, leading the Inca Trail discoveries, guiding in Jordan, and standing in awe before Petra, one of the seven wonders of the world.

I will never forget to pull down the Soča River in Slovenia. We had finished a shell of a new 30 -mile hut, we spent the morning shovels in Sunrise on Lake Bohinj, and at a boutique hotel, one of the best breakfasts of my life was spoiled. The river was blue in crystal clarity-Banff, you see in Canada, but warm and inviting. As we passed Rapids, our local guide went ahead and said, “Look, Slovenia loves you, Katie”.

I followed his gaze to see a giant limestone heart nested in the distant mountains.

But for every exciting landing, there are long, stomach stolen climbing.

Like food poisoning in Peru and spending just one day to heal before leaving my next group, forcing myself to look strong and professional.

Or, equally horrifying: any family meeting.

“Aren’t you a little old for this lifestyle?”

“You’re almost 30 – you need to understand your life so far.”

“You will never find a husband who does this. Men want someone stable. Every time you throw a jet in another country, they will think you are cheating on them.”

“Now how do you invest your time, it will determine your future.”

Sometimes these comments reach me. Sometimes I find myself crying alone in my car, I see that a giant rock on the finger of another girl from high school, a newborn baby or a wedding that seems to have come out of a Disney movie. I question whether they are right.

I’m still single – although I have quite romantic flirts in some remarkable places – and yes, one day I would like to get married and have children. My biological clock is passing, right? Didn’t all the good ones go so far?

Sometimes I wonder if this lifestyle has returned me. 401 (K) and I have health insurance, but I do not have a permanent address or career path that fits a LinkedInin box properly. Although my job allows me to discover the world, it does not always offer a structure that people associate with stability. Usually late at night, when I sleep in a borrowed bed or if I pack my suitcase 10 times – there are moments when I ask if I have built a future or that I have been dragged over the present time.

But then, after helping him conquer half a dome cables, I see the pure joy on a woman’s face. I watch the sunset from the top of one of the best mountains of America-I can’t cheer up when you get money-but I’m sorry for cheerful people.

Because they never know the excitement of my journey.

I regretted it when I was younger. One day I was afraid to ask me to choose differently. But the more I travel, the more I noticed something: Regret is not about the choices you make, but about the choices you make.

Because you want to know where to sleep, you’re alone and single, or how much money you’ll earn this month is more difficult to know? Living a full life Whatever happens.

So what I do this – I chase everything, I discover and open it Suppose Until that rope reaches the end. That’s what makes me advance.

This and blind trust, optimism, and even a slight illusion that everything will work. If I take advantage of the present moment, I believe that the future will look at itself.

Because sometimes, the most terrible choices lead to the most memorable driving.

I know my body. One day, I know you will get tired after discovering the world, rafting of the rivers, conquering the mountains, jumping on flights, sleeping in the hostels, carrying a 50 -pound backpack and treating 100 bubbles on the feet of other people.

And Roller will come out of Coaster.

But now? I release my hands, I throw them into the air, I scream on the top of my lungs –

Katie Klos is an adventure guide and writer who leads trips around the world for the company Explorer Chick. With more than 10,000 hours of backpack experience, it is located in a double main branch in the field of hikers and psychology and communication through an Appalachian Trail. He writes passionate about wild places about travel, identity, freedom, culture and equipment.

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