Pika:

Guide services at least won't try to feed people utterly uninformed nonsense while merely posing as experts like your shameless friend Jimshaw.

You seem predisposed to find a great deal of incompetence out there, I guess relative to only yourself, whether the techniques in question involve something absurdly simple or more complex.

In this case, at least, your viewpoint has no objective basis.

I recall only two or three incidents involving US guide services in recent years. A few, I'm sure, I haven't heard about. The bad one on Rainier, I dimly remember, had nothing to do with guides' judgment.

Given that mountaineering is somewhat hazardous, guides have a remarkably good safety record in North America. Their ability to afford insurance offers some additional confirmation.

Into Thin Air" is an interesting book, but it certainly doesn't describe a typical guiding situation and is almost irrelevant.

Canadian guides, on average, get more formal training than American guides, but their emphasis on en-mass heli-skiing possibly gives them a worse record due to winter avalanche incidents.

Using guide services can indeed be hazardous apart from the hazards of mountaineering. The hazard is clearly that some client may suffer from a falsely inflated sense of his or her own abilities, and actual achievements.