Mountain Safety: Where humanity and decision making meet
By Doug Latimer
ACC Winter Guide Doug Latimer shares a quick mental trick we can all apply to help ensure the group’s safety when heading out into the wilderness.
In the Mountain Safety column of the last few Gazettes, I’ve been ranting about risk and hazard, with a focus on the inherent tendency towards shortsightedness we humans possess. Well, it’s one thing to identify a problem, but always much more difficult to identify solutions. Of course, the answer involves data gathering, checklists, training, and a whole list of hard skills, but this is not the essence of the solution. The essence of the solution is our humanity.
Recreation is part of our humanity
Leading trips, we break things down into logical quantifiable specialties such as navigation, rope skills, and first aid. But what we tend to forget is that recreational wilderness travel is not exactly a logical activity in the first place. We put ourselves into some degree of danger every time we go out.
As I write this article, I'm sitting under a tarp in the rain, watching a seal swim in the ocean. Yesterday a humpback whale surfaced less than 30 metres from our kayak. My spouse and I are spending a week paddling and camping along the west coast of British Columbia. Summer kayak trips have been a staple in our lives for 14 years. We did not set out to go kayaking so we could take more courses and buy additional equipment; we wanted to see whales. This vacation is not logical, but also there is no place we would rather be. We need this just as much as time with family and friends.
As a child, our son was infatuated with orcas. At the age of six we paddled him as close as we could to Robson Bight, where there is an excellent opportunity to find wild whales. Paddling out on multi-day tours in kayaks offered us means to our desire. Our family has been on the ocean looking for whales every summer since. I climb and ski for the same sense of joy and wonder. In short, it is part of our humanity.
Coming home safely
So, our humanity gets us out the door, but how does it help us get home safely? How does it relate to making good decisions and having a well-structured emergency response plan? Let me connect the dots.
When we decided to take our young son out on the ocean for days at a time, one thing dominated my thoughts: our son is always going to come home safely. I fully recognize that it is impossible to make anything completely safe, but we decided that the risk must be comparable to that of, say, a drive to his grandfather's home in good weather.
When making decisions that could threaten the safety of someone under your care (professionally or recreationally), where do you draw the line? I have seen guides make decisions to proceed with guests that they have confided to me later, they would never do with their kids.
Over the years I have struggled to find the tools that would ensure reasonable and practical decisions and I have come to a simple solution that takes my humanity and applies it against our flaws in decision making and managing risk in any dangerous environment. I think of my six-year-old, whale-loving son. Assuming he had the strength and basic skills to participate in the activity that I’m undertaking, would I bring him along? If the answer is no, then no one is going. This has become my personal shortcut to defining acceptable levels of risk for me and people in my care.
This is not an argument that a child’s life is more precious than an adult’s. As a child I lost my mother, which was a devastating loss. Children need their parents as much as parents need their children; no one can be sacrificed for the sake of adventure; everyone needs to come home. When I am in the field making a decision that affects the safety of my group, I use this shortcut. And if I’m not completely comfortable with the risk, then it is time to find a safer option. If I lack the skills and/or experience to make the decision, it is time to back off until those skills are acquired.
Hard skills are tools to keep us safe and to help make the adventure happen. But our decision making must be rooted in our humanity. Everyone is coming home.