This program is registered with the Private Career Training Institutions Agency of British Columbia. We train qualified staff to help meet the growing demand for walking, hiking, angling and horse riding adventures throughout Canada. The program teaches those interested in a guiding career how to become professional stewards of the environmental and cultural resources with which they work; it also trains them to become competent in looking after guests taking part in holiday experiences staged in the South Chilcotin Mountains. Those who go through the program leave with skills they can apply in wilderness jurisdictions anywhere.
The program fosters beneficial practices in wilderness tourism best illustrated by the formal protocol agreement that was established between the Government of British Columbia and a number of wilderness tourism operations in the province. Concretely this means we help regulatory agencies carry out their responsibilities more efficiently by teaching our guide trainees how to fill out the wildlife sighting forms that were development jointly by us, with scientists and government representatives. As a result, we are able to share with them 16 years of collected data containing sighting locations, sex and age ratios, all of which are important when making wildlife management decisions.
It stems from this that we have become involved in local land use planning decisions on these public lands, because we know what is happening in the back country. After all these years of recording wildlife sightings, a substantial body of intelligence has already been gathered to feed the decision-making process, so that the long-term stability of natural populations is ensured.
By requiring that all our adventures be guided, we are aware of the impact our guests have on population movements. Our guide training programs emphasize this, and we commit to a very low level of use over a large area. When you have horse riders moving slowly through a valley, you are not displacing the wildlife the way motorized transportation would. The guides learn this; they also learn bear avoidance; and, we always pack out everything we take in. Our overall footprint is minimal. The written procedures we adopt are our commitment to regulatory agencies in terms of maintaining the lowest level of human habituation possible when it comes to wild animals.
Similarly with angling activities and the angling guide training program, we submit creel reports (fish catches) as part of our angling guide management plan. The creel report says how much we take and where we take it from. Guides learn about the particulars of different lakes, streams, ponds and rivers; how they vary seasonally; how they vary in terms of technical skills needed by the guests who are going to fish them; and, where the most appropriate place to fish is. As a result of our training, guides become able to start training their guests from the ground up if they are novice fishermen; or if you they are avid fishermen, they are able to provide them the best high-end challenge.
In the mountain meadows, our wilderness guides learn to identify when a range mix is ready for horse grazing and what the carrying capacity of that range will be. Horses are not staked consecutive nights in the same area. Guides learn how to avoid putting salt blocks by a creek or a source of water. These are all details that are important for the health of the range. Those are all fundamental aspects of our guide training program.
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
