I was very impressed with Rick Marchant.
I don’t know how you find him on the web. I think he’s so busy with demand thru word-of-mouth that he doesn’t bother much public organizational stuff. I have his mobile number from last time. If I found that had changed, I’d get the correct spelling of his wife’s name (also a guide) from an obvious web search on Rick, and look up her number in the Chamonix phone book.
Back when I was just getting into backcountry skiing in France after lots of years in USA, I didn’t know how to deal with the glaciers, so I joined with a club group of four that hired Rick. Not surprisingly there was an irrationally wide diversity of competence and speed in our group—and I was impressed with how Rick handled that. Also how well he knew critical little wrinkles of skiing around Chamonix that aren’t in any guidebook. And though he’s two levels beyond any skiing competence I will ever attain, he definitely really enjoys the inter-personal aspects of guiding.
Since then I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with backcountry skiing in Europe, and I hire a guide only once every two or three years for very special situations . . .
A few years later, an American buddy joined me for a week, and we just weren’t getting good weather, and we saw a day where it might break or might not, and I didn’t feel safe trying to take him up on the glaciers in a questionable situation like that. So I called Rick, and at first he refused to guide us, and then I assured him that my friend was very experienced from USA backcountry and understood the weather problems, and finally Rick agreed.
The weather never did break that day, just kept snowing, and we didn’t “accomplish” anything. But I was very impressed with how Rick handled the decision-making, and made the navigation and white-out skiing into a fun game.
My friend thought it was a great day for him. He’s mentioned it again several times when we’ve done ski trips together since then. And he just bought his airline ticket to come back to ski with me in France in April.
btw - Which part of the Sierras did you ski mostly: around Tahoe, or around Mammoth + Bishop?
Ken