GUIDED VS. UNGUIDED ATV TOURS NEAR VAIL: WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOUR GROUP?

“Guided tours are always way better than unguided. Our guides are super professional. We have a 6,000-acre ranch, and all of our guides have memorized every inch of those trails. They know it like the back of their hand. So they know when those tricky spots are coming; they know when we need to adjust speeds, all that stuff. With unguided rentals, you are on your own. It is not uncommon to come around a corner going way too fast, not realizing there’s a little dip there, and next thing you know, that machine has flipped over, and you are paying for that machine, unfortunately. Also, with the trails, we hand out maps and other materials, but people still tend to get lost. If you go onto the Bureau of Land Management public land just off our property, people get lost there quite a bit, which really detracts from the quality of the product. I think having a guide is way more fun. They can talk about a bunch of things you’re unaware of: flora, fauna, history, geology, topography, all these things that make our guides great and our property great. Getting a guide with you just adds to that experience instead of being by yourself and on your own.”

“Honestly, the guided tours are great for any group. What’s amazing about our property is that the trails are all interconnected, and we have no set routes. So our trails can dictate our speeds. If we have groups that want to go slow, our guides can go slow. If we have groups that want to go fast, our guides can do so, and we can choose appropriate trails. If we have people who really want to stop and find animals, the guides can go through the woods nice and slow and see if we can find some elk and deer. And if we have groups that want to take in scenic views, we can go all the way to the top of our property for a panoramic view of the entire Vail Valley. It’s really customizable with those guided tours. For anything you’re looking for, I highly recommend that guided tour. It’s really about what you’re looking to get out of it. You can talk to our reservation team and your guide when you check in, and we can customize the tour to get exactly what you’re looking to get out of it. We can make that happen within the two-hour tour.”

“It’s everything. If you go on public trails, they’re generally just an out-and-back. You go one direction for as long as you want to go, you turn around, and you see the same thing on the way back, just from a different angle. Whereas our trails, 6,000 acres, are all interconnected. Every day our guides do three trips, but those three trips are completely different from each other based on what our guests are looking to get out of them, where we want to go, and what we want to do. We can completely customize everything. Also, there’s no one else out there. You might go on a public trail, and all the locals and other companies are out there, and you don’t know who’s coming around that corner. Our staff all have radios, and we are in communication constantly. You don’t hear it because you’re in your own machine, but our guides are saying, ‘Hey, I’m over here, where are you at?’ ‘I’m over here. Cool, I’m thinking about going that way.’ ‘Awesome, I’m not going to go that way; we’ll hit it later.’ That way we don’t take away from the other group’s experience, and you can pretty much be out there by yourselves, hitting all the trails, knowing it’s pretty much all yours that entire time.”

“I’d say there are two things. One, most of the time when people hear the word ATV, they think of a quad, that little machine with the handlebars. Ours are still all-terrain vehicles, but they are four-seaters with a steering wheel. Sometimes people ask for the quads, and that’s not quite what we have. We do the side-by-side machines, which I think are a bit more fun. You can actually go faster in a safer way because you have a roll bar. Quads tend to tip over, which is why we don’t offer that product. The other big one is that we’re going to get dusty. It depends on the day. If we get a little bit of rain, there could be a little bit of mud flinging up. On drier days, we get a bit of dust that gets spun up from the tires. But we address this in our safety talks. When we’re doing our safety intro for the trails and the machines, we talk about our spacing. On days we find it a little dustier, we talk about spacing out more so you don’t have a dust cloud in your face the entire time. On days where it’s not as bad, we can get a little closer. These are adjusted daily. We do provide the helmet with goggles and a bandana to help mitigate that dust, and we also have ponchos and rain jackets if the weather calls for those. But a big thing is that it’s part of the experience: getting out there, getting dusty, being on the ranch, being out in the mountains. Just expect to get a little bit dirty. That’s kind of a badge of honor when you get off the tour.”

“Honestly, not really. With most guests that come back, the only criticism I have ever heard is ‘I wish it was a little bit longer.’ Having the guide with them to explain things, I mean, one of our biggest comments is how awesome our guides are. It’s usually the first thing out of their mouth when I ask, ‘Hey, how was the tour?’ They say, ‘So-and-so was amazing.’ They’re not even talking about the trails or the machines. They’re saying, ‘That guide was awesome. They took care of us so well. We came into this expecting to do that, and this is what we wanted to do, and that guide made it happen.’ I’ve never had someone say they wanted to go unguided because you get lost, don’t know where you are, and don’t really know if it’s safe to go around that corner at your speed. I’ve never had someone wanting to do an unguided after they did a guided tour.”

“There are two things I have heard. One is not realizing they might get as dusty as they did. It’s inherently part of the tour. It’s that badge of honor. We come back with a little bit of dirt on our faces, but that’s to be expected. We talk about it in our safety talks, and we mitigate dust with our spacing and gear. Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, I wasn’t quite expecting to get this dirty,’ but they have a smile on their face as they explain it to me, and they take a quick selfie before they clean the dirt off for that badge-of-honor photo. The other thing I have heard in the past is not realizing they’ll have other groups with them. Unless you book a private tour, these are group activities, so other guests will be in machines with you. But what’s really great about Sage is we only have so many machines per guide. You’re not going to be in a line with 10 or 12 or 15 machines crawling at a little pace. We keep ours nice and small. If you book one machine, I’m pretty certain you’re going to have other groups with you, but we’re not going to have a whole giant conga line going down the trails. We like to keep it nice and small so everyone gets what they’re expecting out of the tour.”

“My first question would be, ‘Have you done this before? Do you own your own machines? Are you familiar with the terrain out here?’ Probably not. ‘Do you like getting lost?’ Probably not. Other things like, ‘What are you looking to get out of the tour? Do you want to go fast? Do you want to go slow? Do you want to see animals? Do you want to learn about the property’s history out here in Colorado? Do you want to learn about the flora and the fauna and the topography?’ These are all the things our guides can provide for you. We can customize our tours by selecting our trail. We know the places where animals tend to hang out. Guaranteed they are wild animals, but we have a good shot at seeing them. We can customize anything you want to do out there, and our guides can make it happen. Versus an unguided, we kind of hand you the keys and say, ‘All right, see you later.’ So I would always push for guided. It’s just a way better experience all around.”