Make Good Decisions

It’s harder to know if you have made good decisions than you think because, as Statham expresses in this podcast, there are multitudes of people out and about in uncontrolled mountain or other wilderness environments, and, most of the time nothing happens. Sometimes that’s because you made good decisions but most of the time it is just luck. Decoding the two is impossible, even when viewed after the event.

If you are interested in decision making and risk mitigation in uncontrolled environments, think mountains, oceans, white water rivers, this is a really good podcast. It is mostly ACMG guides (Association of Canadian Mountain Guides) being interviewed, and, as a Canuck, I can honestly say Canada has some of the worlds most highly trained and intensely skilled mountain guides in the world.

After listening to a few episodes (I’ve only listened to about 5 or 6 out of 67 episodes) I thought a lot about my recent experience paddling to Bass Point. Did I make a good decision having a stronger paddler tow a weaker, slower paddler? I’ll never know for sure because the action I took conclusively averted what I was concerned about (not making it back to the launch site) but did not in any way prove that we wouldn’t have made it back.

One of the guests on the podcast, a Sea Kayak Instructor, said that if the consequence of the decision is minor, don’t worry about it too much. It can be demoralising for adults to be towed by peer group members, but, that consequence is minor compared to having to call Marine Rescue for an extraction in an offshore wind.

One thing all the presenters agree upon is keeping the group together if at all possible. I don’t know what happened to the group of five that followed us in that Saturday, but personally, I have a huge aversion to splitting groups unless absolutely necessary. To often when groups split, the division is anything but orderly and is more commonly the stronger, faster group abandoning the weaker team members. A maxim of mine is never do something that you cannot explain to the rescue team. Many group splits fall into this category.

One of my ski buddies once told me a story of a ski trip that went awry. A party of three (my friend, Delia, and two blokes) drove up to Kootenay Pass for some backcountry ski touring. Delia and the second skier were much faster than the third skier and got to the top of the peak they were going to ski before the third skier. Instead of waiting, Delia and her buddy skied down from the summit leaving the third skier somewhere out in the backcountry in avalanche terrain alone. After skiing to the bottom of the run, Delia and mate put skins on skis and skied back to the top of the run, but the third man was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the day and part of the evening was spent looking for the third man.

What is most bizarre about this story is that my friend D did not see a single thing wrong in her behaviour and, in fact, was vitriolic in her complaints about the third skier and how annoying it was to get home late from a ski day! This is a true story completely devoid of good decisions and most of us easily recognise that. As an aside, after nearly a decade of recreating with my friend, D, we had an irreconcilable split due to differences in risk mitigation strategies. It’s probably fair to say that D, who wobbled her way solo up rock routes, slipped and slid down innumerable snow slopes because she could not self-arrest, skied above other skiers in avalanche terrain or failed to attend to partners skiing avalanche terrain, could never read a map or stay oriented, wandered onto slim bridges over big crevasses eventually became too big a burden to carry mostly because, despite being good company and physically strong, D never understood that out in the Canadian wilderness your risk becomes my risk.