Outdoor leadership class to be offered

The expeditions led by Lewis and Clark and Shackleton had it. The Donner Party didn’t.

Skilled outdoor leadership can mean the difference between fun and mutiny, understanding and lawsuits, life and death.

Paul Green, Eastern Washington University recreation professor, wrote the handbook on the subject, and he’s planning to share his insights in a two-day class this summer.

“I’ve been teaching this class for 20 years during the fall quarter,” said Green, who published “The Outdoor Leadership Handbook in 1982 and has been refining and updating the material ever since.

“People I met skiing at Mount Spokane last winter said I should do it during summer when church group leaders, scout leaders and the like could enroll,” he said. “I got enthused because those types of groups are involved in many of the tragic case studies I present in class.”

Green’s Outdoor Leadership class teaches techniques for planning and leading outdoor adventure activities. High on the list of topics are risk management and the legal aspect of leading groups on trips ranging from overnighters to expeditions.

Trip planning involves selecting staff and equipment to avoid trouble and maximize enjoyment.

“You have to be up front with an outdoor trip,” he said. “Are the participants going to get in the boat and sit or will they be expected to paddle for their lives? The leader has to make this clear in advance.”

The majority of group travel issues, ranging from minor dissatisfaction to tragic deaths, could be prevented with better trip planning, he said.

Decision making is the second major theme in the course.

“A girl is arguing with her girlfriend on a wilderness raft trip — maybe you don’t have to intervene,” he said.

“But what about two boys on a group trip aggressively jousting and poking each other with sticks on the bank of a raging river days from the nearest medical care? I had a situation like that and I was the only one who said knock it off, that’s dangerous, especially because we’re in remote area where relatively minor injuries can become life-threatening. The boys’ parents were bummed when I stopped them.”

Green was leading a group of EWU students down the Spokane River on May 10 when the concrete roof collapsed into the 2-million-gallon “digester” tank at the Spokane’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, spilling thousands of gallons of sewage directly into the river.

“We came around the bend and the stench hit us in the face and when we saw what was happening our first response was to assure the safety of our group,” he said. “We called the rafts together and surveyed the situation.”

When people on the scene indicated that one worker might have been blown into the river, Green’s group had to make another decision. “We analyzed the situation and went into search and rescue mode,” he said. “That was a group decision.”

Leaders have to supervise and have a plan, he emphasized.

“If you want to go fishing while at a river camp, you need to put somebody else in charge while you’re gone.

“If your group is camping in snow caves, you have to mark or map out the caves so that if you wake up in a storm that’s dumped two feet of snow, you know where people are in case somebody is in trouble.”

Being a leader is not for the squeamish, Green said, and his PowerPoint presentation shows enough accident scenes and bodies to prove it.

“Knowing first aid is important, but really, the most important thing is planning and prevention,” he said.

A case in point involved a church youth group that embarked on a field trip to Eagle Falls off U.S. Highway 2 specifically to go cliff-jumping into the water.

“Turns out one of the boys can’t even swim,” Green said. “But the leader turns the kids loose before he’s ready to supervise and with all the peer pressure, the boy jumps in.”

Even this wouldn’t have been a fatal mistake if the leader had simply been standing on guard with a throw-bag rescue rope that’s standard equipment on river trips.

“Instead, the leader was on shore taking off his pants.”

Liability waivers are an important consideration for group leaders and the sponsoring organizations as well as the participants who sign them, Green said.

“A well-written waiver in Washington protects a leader from everything but gross negligence,” he said. “But there’s a lot to consider, like the age of the participants and the ratio of clients to staff. Some programs want to be nice and not turn anybody down, so they end up taking too many kids for the staff, and that leaves them susceptible.”

Proper equipment is a hedge against accidents, he said.

For example, hard-soled sandals are versatile, he said, but they pose the danger of foot entrapment — wedging a foot between rocks in a stream, which can lead to drowning as the current prevents the victim from getting up.

“Wetfoot booties are a much safer way to go,” Green said. “If you find yourself dumped in the river while wearing sandals, keep your feet up off the river bottom.”

All this information is hard to pack into a two-day session, Green said. “But we try to drive it all home by doing a half-day outing with different scenarios to drive it all home.”