This Two-Year Drainage Guarantee Is the Only Written Warranty We Make

Acceptance of these terms

Booking a guided hike, requesting trail-building work, or submitting the inquiry form on this site means you accept the terms below. If you only browse the site and never send an inquiry, the payment, deposit, and liability language further down doesn't apply to you yet. It applies from the moment a trip or contract is confirmed.

Inquiry-only, no binding price

Every price basis listed next to a service on this site, whether it's quoted per person, per linear foot, per step, per day, or as a flat rate per group, is a starting point for a quote, not a bound price. Nothing on this site is a checkout. There is no cart, no online payment, and no automatic booking. A guide, or Jasper Cole himself on larger jobs, confirms the actual price, date, and crew size by phone or email before anything is scheduled.

Guided trip booking terms

A guided trip is confirmed once we've talked through group size, hiking experience, and distance comfort, the same four questions the Trip Fit Checker asks on the tool page, and agreed on a date by phone or email. A deposit holds the date on any trip of a full day or longer; the amount is set when we confirm the trip, since it scales with group size and whether the route requires a second guide.

Weather that makes a route unsafe, not just uncomfortable, gets the trip rescheduled at no charge. That call is made by whoever is leading it, using the same judgment they'd use standing at the trailhead. A group larger than eight on the Summit Trek needs a second guide booked in advance; we won't put one guide on a group that size at the trailhead and figure it out from there.

Cancellation terms

Cancel a guided trip more than fourteen days out and any deposit comes back in full. Cancel inside fourteen days and the deposit is forfeit, because a guide has already turned down other bookings for that date and the schedule doesn't refill on short notice. A trip we cancel, for weather or for a guide's illness, is rescheduled or refunded in full, your choice.

A same-day inquiry that never turns into a confirmed date and deposit isn't covered by this section at all; there's nothing to cancel. The Map & Compass Clinic and other half-day courses follow the same fourteen-day line as a full guided trip, since the same booked-slot logic applies to a small group as a large one.

Trail-building contract terms

A trail-building or maintenance contract is scoped on site, in most cases with Jasper Cole or the crew foreman walking the ground with you before a linear-foot or per-day rate is quoted. We only take contracting work inside the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshire foothills of Western Massachusetts. A landowner outside that area gets a referral if we have one, not a quote, because drive time eats the same crew hours as the work itself.

Work is billed as agreed in the written quote: by the linear foot on a tread and drainage rebuild, by the day for a stone-step and cribbing crew, or by the mile for a blazing and signage package. A quote is good for thirty days from the date it's given; ground conditions and material cost past that point can change the number.

Two-year drainage guarantee

If the drainage on a tread we rebuilt fails within two years of the completion date on the invoice, we come back and fix it. No charge, no argument, no re-quote. That covers new erosion, standing water, or a washed section directly downhill of our regrade.

It does not cover damage from a storm event the county or state has declared a disaster, or from a section of trail our crew did not touch. Two years is measured from the date on the completion invoice, not the date you first called about the job. This guarantee applies to the tread and drainage rebuild and to stone step and cribbing work; it does not apply to a blazing and signage package, since paint and signage aren't drainage.

Liability and assumption of risk

Hiking on the terrain this company guides carries real risk: loose rock, exposed ridge sections, stream crossings, weather that turns fast in the Berkshire foothills. Booking a guided trip means you accept that risk for yourself and for anyone under eighteen in your group that you bring along. A guide's judgment, built from personally maintaining or last servicing the mile of trail you're walking, is what stands between you and a bad outcome, not a guarantee that nobody gets hurt.

If a guide judges a route unsafe partway through a trip, whether from weather, footing, or a member of the group struggling, the guide can shorten or reroute the trip on the spot, and that decision is final for the day. Jasper Trail Guides is not liable for injury, loss, or delay arising from terrain conditions, weather, or a participant's own physical limits once a trip has been fairly and accurately described in advance.

Use of this site

The trail logbook system, the mark at the top of this page, and the photographs across this site belong to Jasper Trail Guides. Linking to any page here is fine. Copying the site's text or photographs onto another business's site, or using them to advertise a competing guiding or trail-contracting service, is not permitted.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that can't be settled by a phone call goes to a court in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, since that's where the company is based and where most of the work happens.

Changes to these terms

We update these terms as the guarantee, cancellation policy, or the services themselves change. The date at the top of this page is the date they last changed, and the version posted here is the one that governs any booking made after that date.

Contact

Questions about a quote, a booking, or the guarantee go to the same office.

+1 (898) 555-4791 · office@jaspertrailguides.com

Related reading: the privacy policy, the cookie policy, and the contact page for a new inquiry.