I've been running a series of ski tours for my local mountaineering club called the "Simply Suffering Summits and Traverses Series." The title is meant to imply that the tours are longer than the normal tours offered on our club schedule, and will involve either a ski ascent of a local peak(s) or a traverse (or both). So far, I've run six of these tours. All, with the exception of one, have been full. However, full is limited to six people including myself. With that number in mind, the concept of the trip being full becomes less significant, especially as at least half of the tours have featured the same group of people. Each of the six tours has gone to a destination that, to my knowledge, has not been on our club schedule in at least the past ten years, and possibly never. In other words, they are new tours to new destinations.
This coming weekend, there is a ski tour to Old Glory on the schedule. Old Glory is the highest peak in the Rossland Range, has a well-beaten summer trail to the summit, and is on the club schedule at least twice per year, once in spring as a ski tour, and once in summer as a hike. In many years, there will be multiple trips scheduled up Old Glory during the calendar year.
Within three hours of the announcement of the Old Glory tour, the trip coordinator had 14 people interested! That number is more than the unique number of individuals I have had on all six of my Summits and Traverses Series Tours combined.
Trip difficulty could explain some of the stark difference in interest in the two tours. A reasonably fit party can ski to the summit of Old Glory in 3 hours and ski back to the vehicles in 1 to 1.5 hours, making the tour truly a half day option. Using my last tour, a ski ascent of Mount Lasca, as an example, we took five hours to reach the summit and two hours to exit, and were out for 8 hours total.
Similarly, some of the difference may be explained by "reputation". It's hard to know what people think about you or say about you, unless you actively engage in some kind of covert CIA type spying, but it does seem possible, if what I occasionally hear circulating is true, that I have a reputation for hard tours, early starts, long days, and fast travel. Or, it could be the meeting time that puts people off. The average meeting time for most club trips is somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m., while I routinely meet between 6 and 7 a.m. A prospect that may be daunting for some, but which I believe improves safety margins.
But, I have to wonder if some, or even most, of the difference in interest comes down to novelty. People seem to prefer what they know. Day after day, week after week, month after month, well, you get the picture, people will do the same trip over and over and over and, well, you get the picture again. I've known some people to go up and down the same peak a dozen times, yet never even consider setting foot on the adjacent peak, despite the ascent being no more technically or physically difficult and lying a mere 200 to 500 metres away.
I don't understand it myself. Personally, I'll endure all kinds of bad bush, long logging road approaches, tedious driving, ghastly trail-breaking and heinous descents, if, at the end of the day, I go somewhere new to me.
Henry David Thoreau said it best: "There is an incessant influx of novelty in the world and yet we tolerate incredible dullness."
On a 7.300 foot outlier of Cody Peak. A terrible thrash to get here, followed by a ghastly descent, but we were someplace new.
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