What have you observed and learned about how professional adventure educators lead and instruct educational backcountry expedition?
By David Aguasca
There are many things that characterize the way professional adventure educators lead and instruct educational backcountry expeditions. These include preparedness, awareness of self, group, and environment, and the integration of learning opportunities
Professional adventure educators put a lot of thought into the many aspects of planning a trip. Without proper preparation, embarking on an expedition would put the group that is being led under unnecessary risk. The first considerations include who the trip is for, what the purpose of the trip is, where it will go, what the activities will be, when the trip will happen, and what will be done in the case of an emergency (contingency plans). When our instructors planned our route, they knew that our group was relatively fit, but didn’t want to risk expecting unreasonable daily mileage. Therefore, 20 miles over the course of 4 days was a good start. It allowed the instructors to gauge where the group was, physically, but more importantly, it didn’t hamper educational opportunities by cutting into time or exhausting the group into a stupor.
Preparedness also means being efficient enough in personal care such that there is time left over to help or attend to others. Having an efficient packing system, an organized cooking area and methodology, and looking comfortable in adverse conditions are all essential. Not only does this role model good behavior, but also it allows the leaders to check on the group while still taking care of themselves; after all, if the leaders are not well-fed and warm, how are they expected to make decisions based on good judgment? Our leaders were always finished eating and cleaned up before the rest of the cook groups, a mark of organization.
As mentioned above, leaders must be aware of their own needs, the needs of their group, and the effect of the environment on the former two. Our leaders, upon seeing the weather report, chose to keep the original route, keeping us in the forested valley below the mountain during the rainy first day, and taking us up onto the ridgeline on the next day, when the forecast predicted sunny skies. When that morning came and the sky was clear, we went ahead with that plan.
Choosing the appropriate times to teach, or creating these opportunities is also an important ability to have. This is dependent on knowledge and also awareness of group and environment. A good example of this is the “nature nugget”; the leaders, with prior natural history knowledge, were able to identify certain edible plants during our hikes and showed us how to identify and eat them.
As adventure educators teaching adventure educators, our leaders had some special challenges. Any leniency in our education will in turn be magnified to all those students we touch. Our cook group had an interesting learning experience during our last night, relating clean-up after dinner and bear activity. I awoke first, to find that our cook site had been dismantled; pots and lids all over the place, and our fry-pan missing. We spoke with one of our leaders, expressing concern that a bear had been our camp. He inquired as to whether we had cleaned our pan properly (brownies were cooked in it previously) and we replied that we had. Our leader mischievously told us that he had staged the “bear encounter” and that our fry-pan had not been satisfactorily cleaned. Teaching methods such as these can be particularly effective. The initial emotional response is hard to forget, as the consequence of a mistake is experienced in full, if only for a little while.
