Syracuse.com - Experienced outdoors guide specializes in making others feel comfortable and safe in the woods

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Outdoor guides in this state are licensed through the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Activities include camping, fishing, hunting, hiking, boats and canoes, guiding for white water rafting or canoeing and rock and ice climbing.

Peter Chen/The Post-StandardCraig Tryon

By Melissa Siegel

Contributing writer

In the early 1990s, Craig Tryon took a couple in their 50s on a canoeing trip in Lows Lake/Bogs River in the Adirondack Mountains.

Tryon, a state-licensed, outdoors guide, took the two to the same spot for three consecutive years. The following year, he took a different group to that same location. Once there, he discovered the first couple canoeing in the lake, this time without a guide.

“That’s really rewarding to have them be able to get the knowledge, and feel comfortable in the woods with all the things that are there,” the Marietta resident said.

It’s experiences like these that make guiding worthwhile for Tryon, who has been a guide since 1985 and is also a past president and current treasurer of the New York State Outdoors Guides Association. He’s done that in addition to a full-time job in the state office of Parks, Recreation, and Historical Preservation, where he worked for 38 years before retiring.

Guides are licensed to help clients enjoy and stay safe during their outdoor trips or activities. Tryon has owned and operated his own guiding business — Adirondack Wilderness Experiences Guide Service — since 1986. He can be reached by emailing [email protected] .

Outdoor guides in this state are licensed through the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Activities include camping, fishing, hunting, hiking, boats and canoes, guiding for white water rafting or canoeing and rock and ice climbing.

“I’m certified in all these, with the exception of the white water stuff and rock and ice climbing,” he said.

Tryon, 63, grew up hunting and fishing with his father and grandfather. He decided in seventh grade that he wanted to be a forest ranger after reading a book about Cache Lake.

But after getting his associate’s degree in Recreation Land Management from SUNY Cobleskill he took a job as a park manager in Saratoga. After that, he worked as a park foreman for Old Erie Canal State Park and eventually became Central Region Supervisor of Park Operations. He retired in 2006.

Apart from guiding, Tryon was also one of the founding members of the Friends of the Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery, and served as its first president for several years. He is no longer involved with the group.

Today, Tyron continues to be associated with the state Guides Association, which has about 140 members out of the estimated 3,000 licensed guides throughout the state. He attends five sports shows a year telling others about what it takes to be a guide and also teaches courses in water safety, CPR, First Aid, and wilderness first aid.

Tryon said during the summer he does about three or four guiding trips, and during the spring he usually does two or three. In the winter, he gets fewer requests to guide. When he goes out, it’s usually on a snowshoe outing.

“A lot of people like to cross-country ski,” he said. “Cross-country skiing is much faster, you’re going through the area much quicker, and you’re not really able to slow down and look around and see what’s around you. Where if you’re snowshoeing, you can take that time, and you can look and see what’s around you.”

Tryon also brings his love of nature to a new generation as the assistant scout master of Boy Scout Troop 52 in Elbridge. Two of his grandsons are in the troop. He said he loves the fact that youngsters are so full of wonder and preconceptions about the outdoors.

“It’s just rewarding to know, especially the young kids, that they’re just starting out, they’re so full of wonder of what it’s like, and they don’t really know what to expect,” Tryon said. He particularly likes it when they get outdoors on a trip and they say, “Wow, he was right.”

This often happens on his traditional guiding trips as well. Tryon remembers one time a he took a father and son from New York City to climb a mountain near Long Pond in the Adirondacks.

On the way down, they decided to bushwhack, avoiding the trail completely. The young man did not believe they would end up right back where they started. Using a map and compass, they did.

Tryon also enjoys catering to the older clients. He sees them as an example that people do not have to stop being active once they hit their 50s or 60s.

“As I get later in life, I can do the same things that I did when I was 40,” he said. “You just do them a little slower.”

Want to be an outdoors guide?

To become a certified, licensed “outdoors guide” by the state Department of Environmental Conservation there are classes one must take, in addition to passing a written exam. Required classes include basic water safety, First Aid and CPR. There’s also a physical form that must be signed by a physician. To help prepare for the guides exam, the New York Guides Association offers a course, “Guide and Outdoor Leader Education.” For more on the course and what takes to be an outdoors guide in a wide assortment of outdoor activities, see the Guides Association Web site .

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog