Alpine climbing in Boston Basin in the North Cascades National Park: Mount Buckner, 3 days

Since Explore-Share has asked three times, here goes. We had a quite mixed experience with Matt and BCA at Rogers Pass this early March. The day 1 avalanche search and rescue instruction was thorough and one of the best I have taken. The guiding showed the benefit of having local knowledge. These guides did not have it. They were working in significant part from the Rogers Pass guidebook, which provides quite vague and brief descriptions of potential routes. After seeing the strengths and weaknesses of the team on day 1, on day 2 the guides nevertheless took us uphill in a nasty skintrack steeply up through tight trees for 500+ meters and lasting 4+ hours due to the terrain and group speed. Despite lack of local knowledge, understanding the map and in the first 5 minutes it was clear that this would be an epic and excessively difficult climb for the group. They continued up. Then, from an ~8:30 start, by 1:20 there had only been one food/water break taken / called or suggested. While our 2nd group was awaiting the first group to move forward, when I suggested we were overdue to take in some fuel, guide Matt said, “no please wait, we will break out of the trees soon.” (This proved to be >20 minutes away) after I stated the obvious need and that our group were going to take a break, we had taken a quick bite and re-caught the group in front of us, as I’d predicted. Inadequate group energy management by this guide. I saw no or nearly no skin track corners improvement by the guides, including many challenging ones that the guides blew though. Improving them evidently is standard by BC (British Columbia in this case) guides from my 11 previous ski touring days in the area. Nearly zero efforts to improve corners were observed in this case, despite the day 2 quite rugged skintrack steeply up in tight trees and several beginner kick turning skier or soft-booted splitboarders struggling with the line. (Including sliding backwards / downhill from one switchback to the next) Good instruction by the guides on how to make kick turns, but many of the turns were objectively much more challenging than they needed to be given no improvement made. At least one team member was so (unnecessarily had we had better route selection) gripped and depleted from the climb up that he skied well below his ability on the down. Our group had good trips on the 3rd and 4th day with 2nd guide Sam, who picked appropriate routes for the group and was responsive to requests to further shape the route to the abilities of the group. He found us good snow amid mixed conditions and on appropriate terrain. Safety and terrain stuff, no concerns. Food, dinners and breakfasts (2 each) provided at the hut, included a dinner that was far too skinny and which was nowhere near enough. Chicken quantity instruction was “one spoon (table spoon) per person.” The first dinner was borderline too little as well. Quality was otherwise good. I initiated the trip; and approved a second group to join us; then when we showed up, there was a third group of 4 there in the hut, which we hadn’t heard about until that day. Matt never mentioned any adjustment to the hut fee we had paid and on which this group was coasting or possibly paid him. I write based on some experience. I have had several dozen days in the backcountry with guides (and dozens more in New England and other terrain for which they were not needed), across touring weeks in from huts to snow cave living, to heli-served; to heli and cat skiing across multiple countries and so have many guides and days of experience from which to compare. This was the first really uneven or bad experience. No question, bottom of the list of 7 ski touring guides I have skied with.