I was on a backcountry hut trip in British Columbia last winter, and at the end of an incredible, powder-filled week, my group of friends and I realized what most of us had forgotten: cash. Specifically, enough money to tip our two hard-working ski guides, as well as the cook, who’d been making us delicious meals morning and night, and the hut caretaker, who’d been pre-heating the sauna and shoveling the path to the outhouse.
It was a major oversight on our part. In the end, we cobbled together what cash we had and the rest of us chipped in via PayPal, a clunky fix.
In America, we know that when we go into a restaurant, it’s expected that, assuming the service is decent, you will leave your waiter a 15 to 20 percent tip on the bill. But when you go on, say, a guided backcountry ski trip or a whitewater rafting trip with a commercial outfitter or an afternoon of guided fly-fishing, the assumptions of gratuity are less clear. Are you always supposed to tip in those cases, and if so, how much?