kevowheeler, did you end up doing this? How did it work out?
I just returned from leading my first multi-day trip for paying customers in the Swell area. Now keep in mind I've lead dozens of trail runs for clubs, the U4WDA, customers and freinds, but this was different. This was strangers in strange rigs, showing up to a strange to them location for 3 days. We had attendees from as far as Georgia, Kentucky, several from Colorado and even a couple from Canada. All in all it went very smoothly, our planning prepared us for what I'll consider a well executed event. I had a ton of help and our attendees were top notch. I had the event sponsor assisting with our permit and they had the insurance covered. I had 4 members from our sponsoring club assist in the trip, mid-gunning, tail-gunning, cooking a meal, camp host, communications, as well as a 5-10 minute tech inspection on each rig as they arrived, without them it wouldn't have happened, simple as that. Figure that was 1 assistant for every 5 paid customers. I can tell you this, I personally probably spent 40 hours in the planning, and this with having done trail runs there in the past both personally and leading several different smaller informal groups. Obviously we couple repeat this event with much less planning, but much of that time was communicating with the attendees, what to expect, where to meet, etc. In the end I built a quick webpage with all the pertinent info, map, GPS coords and a FAQ of the common queries attendees had been spending.
Would I do it again, sure... would I attempt to do it as you've outlines under your conditions. No, too easy to have disappointed customers and burned out helpers.
