Increasing Situational Awareness with Jerome David

How can we improve our situational awareness so that we don’t miss important information? Situational awareness is the ability to perceive, understand, and effectively respond to one’s situation. This includes being able to recognize the hazards around us, the state of ourselves and the people we are with, changing conditions, and the overall direction that the situation we are in is likely to go.

When it comes to delivering adventure, a lack of situational awareness can impact our judgment in ways that can either boost or degrade our decision making and our ability to react to the situations that we are in.

In this episode of Delivering Adventure, ACMG Ski Guide Jerome David joins us to explore how we can boost our situational awareness. Jerome shares some examples from his career as a Heli ski guide and bike park patroller as well as some practical strategies we can all use.

Jerome currently works at Whistler Heli skiing as the lead guide and guide manager. He has also worked as a ski and bike patroller and trail builder.

Key Takeaways

To improve our situational awareness we can:

Take Time to Refocus (When Needed): Living in the moment by concentrating on the task at hand can reduce distraction and complacency. It can also help us to switch from system 2 thinking where slower reasoned thinking can consume our bandwidth at the expense of being able to process information and react faster with our system 1 thinking.

Boosting Bandwidth: People are like computers, they only have so much processing power at anyone time. To boost our ability to process everything around us, we may need to slow things down.

Be aware of Transitions: When we switch activities or change the intensity of tasks, we need to make sure that we refocus. Failing to do so can cause our minds to become focused on what we were just doing, instead of paying attention to what we are doing in that moment.

An example of a transitions to be aware of include going from low risk to high-risk situations or vice versa.

Reduce External Distractions: This can include storing phones, giving people less instruction in complex situations or waiting for other people to pass you on a trail or climb so that you can stay focused.

Plan Ahead: This can include making lists so that you don’t miss anything. Briefing people on what to expect, what they should look for or be aware of can also help to switch people on.

Guest Bio

Jerome David has been working on Snow and Dirt in Whistler since 1998. On the road to becoming an ACMG ski guide, he worked 11 years with Whistler Blackcomb Patrol. He has been ski guiding for the past 7 years. In the summers, Jerome has previously had a long career working as Whistler Mountain Bike Park patrol. The last years he has been building and maintaining Mountain Bike trails. Currently, he works for AlpX and oversees the summer program there. In the Winter Jerome is lead guide and guide manager at Whistler Heli-Skiing.

Guest Links

Thinking Fast and Slow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Whistler Heli Skiing: https://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/explore-the-resort/activities-and-events/whistler-heli-skiing/whistler-heli-skiing.aspx

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What does it take to build and operate a successful adventure company? In this episode, Chris Winter joins Chris and Jordy to discuss how he has built Big Mountain Adventures, from the ground up. Chris shares some of his successes and challenges and the mindset that goes into running a successful adventure company.

Chris Winter grew up bike touring in Europe with his parents, who ran a road cycling tour company. After a career as a professional skier competing and participating in ski films, Chris followed his parents' footsteps and founded Big Mountain Adventures. Launched in 2002, Whistler based Big Mountain Adventures has grown to employ 25 guides running mountain bike trips and courses in 14 countries.

In addition to owning and operating Big Mountain Adventures, Chris Winter teaches steep skiing clinics for Extremely Canadian at Whistler Blackcomb. He has also founded the not for profit Zero Ceiling that hosts disadvantaged youth on the slopes of Whistler Blackcomb.

Guest Bio

Chris Winter is a former ski racer. Level IV CSIA ski instructor, level III high-performance ski coach, celebrated technical skier, sponsored big mountain skier featured in magazines and films. Currently teaching steep skiing clinics at Whistler Blackcomb for Extremely Canadian.

Chris is the Owner and Founder of Big Mountain Adventures. Chris founded Big Mountain Adventures in 2002. During this time, he has built his tour company into the leader in guided mountain bike travel featuring award-winning adventures in 14 countries. Check out their new eMTB trips!

Chris is also the owner of the Bralorne Adventure Lodge. Ready for a boutique mountain experience? Step out the door to spectacular wilderness & endless adventures…then recharge at our backyard spa.

In addition to operating adventure-based businesses, Chris has also created and developed Zero Ceiling. This is an innovative and respected registered non-profit that hosts disadvantaged youth to the slopes of Whistler Blackcomb. From local First Nations to street youth to youth from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, participants benefit from a day of snowboard lessons, or if chosen participate in a year-long program that teaches them to become employees at Whistler Blackcomb and give them life-long life skills.

Guest Links

Big Mountain Adventures: https://www.ridebig.com

Bralorne Adventure Lodge: https://www.bralorneadventurelodge.com

Zero Ceiling: https://zeroceiling.org

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What does it take to work through adversity? What happens when that adversity is coming from an injury that has transformed our life? These are two of the questions that Jill Wheatley helps us to explore thanks to her extensive personal experience.

Jill shares how she handled her recovery from a traumatic brain injury she suffered from a freak accident while on a teaching assignment in Europe. Being near death, having lost 70 percent of her eyesight, she details how she coped with months of recovery, much of it in a foreign country and alone.

Jill tells us how goal setting and keeping perspective helped her to recover and go on to do ultra marathons in Nepal and climb seven of the fourteen 8000m plus peaks. While her sight is still limited, she has not stopped adventuring and pushing her limits.

In this episode of Delivering Adventure, we hear what it took for her to succeed, what the rest of us can take away to apply to our lives, and how she is handling another recent climbing accident which has badly damaged her ankle.

Key Takeaways

How can we work through adversity due to injury:

Keep perspective: Whatever situation you are in, it won’t last forever, even though in the moment it might start to feel like it. This is really important to remember when we are dealing with an injury that has negatively impacted our ability to enjoy life to the point where we start to wonder if we will ever get back to the way things were.

Set goals: Setting goals can help to give us something to work towards. In Jill’s case, she set the goal of climbing all of the 8000m peaks on the planet as a motivator. It’s fair to say that the rest of us can get away with setting more moderate goals and still reap the same benefits.

Get out in nature: Getting out in nature gets us moving, can take our focus off pain, and is fantastic for our mental health.

Don’t be a hermit: Connecting with others is really important. If you know someone who is recovering from an injury, reaching out to them to let them know that they aren’t alone can be very beneficial to their well being.

Enlist a team: Take full advantage of resources such as different health practitioners, strategies, and tools. Each health practitioner can help to address different problems and each has a different approach. Different people in the healing process can help to give you a clearer overall understanding of what is going on.

When people are recovering from injury, they can suffer from status quo bias where they tend to prefer to keep doing the same thing. This mean sticking with only physiotherapy when also going to see a chiropractor or even an acupuncturist could provide for a quicker and a more well-rounded recovery strategy.

Listening to the experiences of how others have recovered from the same situation can also be very beneficial.

Guest Bio

Following a traumatic brain injury that resulted in life threatening complications and 70% vision loss which required 26 months spent between 7 different health care facilities in 3 countries, Canadian Jill Wheatley was dropped at Denver International Airport with no direction. The only sign she could see pointed to mountains. Despite such compromised eyesight, Jill chose to spend one year alone with Mother Nature in an attempt to find light on life’s trail. Her search led through 13 different massifs and upon running in the Annapurnas in Nepal, she knew that she wanted to spend more time among Himalayan giants. Essentially she has gone from being bedridden, to a wheelchair, then on to walking, navigating hospital parking lots to hiking, trail running, mountain running and skiing before climbing 5, 6, and then seven 8000 m peaks and spending the past 5 years based in Nepal.

In a story made for movies, Jill’s trail has recently connected to another type of climb...

How should a leader communicate to people when they are under stress? One of the hardest situations that a leader can find themselves in, is managing a group that isn’t doing what the leader wants. It could be kids who forgot what their instructor told them, teenagers who are ignoring their teacher on purpose, or adults who misunderstood what their guide said. Regardless of the reason, these situations can be frustrating for leaders and can pose safety risks to everyone in dangerous situations.

In this episode, CSGA Ski Guide Erin Tierney shares a stressful situation from her guiding career where the communication style she chose to use led to conflict with the group she was leading. Using this story, Chris and Jordy then share some strategies and discuss leadership communication styles that leaders can use to avoid conflict.

Key Takeaways

Lead with a soft touch: When we lead this way, we rely on gentle persuasion and selling to start. This can involve including people in decision making, subtlety guiding them towards choices you want them to make and generally being flexible and showing some tolerance for mistakes.

Try to follow with a firm edge, instead of leading with one: If a soft touch doesn’t work, or there isn’t time to be polite, we may need to resort to a more autocratic, telling style.

Explain why we want people to do certain things: When people understand why they are doing things a certain way, there is less chance of there being a misunderstanding or conflict.

Taking ownership of the initial instructions: We need to remember that we can’t always just blame the receiver of the message if they don’t understand. We need to be aware of the fact that if people don’t understand or do what we want, we may not have communicated things as well as we could.

People tend to remember the last thing they hear more than anything else: If we want people to focus on certain instructions, especially ones that relate to directions and safety, we need to position them last.

Investigate why people did what they did: Avoid jumping to conclusions by taking time to investigate why people made the decisions they made.

Guest Links

Whistler Heli-Skiing: https://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/explore-the-resort/activities-and-events/whistler-heli-skiing/whistler-heli-skiing.aspx

Canadian Ski Guide Association: https://canskiguide.com/

The Avalanche Hour Podcast with Erin Tierney: https://soundcloud.com/user-23585762/tah-erin-tierney-csga-10

Guest Bio

Erin is a certified CSGA ski guide and the current President of the Canadian Ski Guide Association. In addition, to guiding in the Heli-ski industry since 1999, Erin is also a guide trainer and examiner with the Canadian Ski Guide Institute. Erin currently works as the General manager of Whistler Heli-skiing.

Erin has worked extensively with teams of guests and guides in a number of roles, which makes her a perfect person to give us some insights on being a leader!

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How can we ever know when we should turn back or keep going? On paper, the safest decision to make is often to turn around or choose the route that takes on less risk. However, in reality, delivering adventure isn’t always about picking the safest choice. At the core of every adventure is an element of risk taking. Being able to decide when to go for it, and when not to, is a defining trait of professional adventure guides and instructors.

Helping us to identify when it’s okay to keep going is Mike Adolph. Mike is an ACMG / IFMGA Mountain Guide and the current technical director of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. There are a number of factors that can hold us back from continuing onwards towards an objective including self doubt, fear, and uncertainty.

We discuss some key strategies with Mike that we can use that can help us to determine if we should abort a plan or whether we are well positioned to keep going.

Key Takeaways:

How can we know when we should push forward and keep going with a plan when we may feel like doing the opposite? A few of the strategies that can help to guide our decision making include:

Set goals around experiences: Instead of hard destinations or milestones, make it about the experience. When it comes to delivering adventure, we can box ourselves in by setting our expectations around achieving certain objectives.

Identifying data points that support the decision to continue: This includes the amount of time taken to accomplish a task, competency level of skills, the interest level of group, the weather, the conditions, the amount of risk and the amount risk tolerance within the group.

Remove pressure from the leader: Talk to the group for their feedback to ensure you are not the one driving the group or holding them back.

If uncertainty is rising, ask yourself why: This uncertainty could include self doubt, the ability level of yourself or the group to handle the situation, the interest level of everyone involved, the conditions, and the actual route or path you want to take.

Don’t make a decision until you have to: This allows us the opportunity to collect as much information as possible before making a commitment.

Guest Bio

Mike Adolph is an ACMG / IFMGA Mountain Guide and the current technical director of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. In addition to guiding custom outdoor adventures for small groups, Mike also works as a guide trainer and examiner for the ACMG’s Training and Assessment Program.

Mike started in the outdoor industry in 1994 after his family, in a joint venture, opened the Sheiling Mountain Lodge and the Center for Outdoor Education in Nordegg, Alberta. He completed his final ACMG exam and received his IFMGA International Federation of Mountain Guides Association Mountain Guide designation in 2009. He always admired his instructors and examiners, even if they were a bit harsh at times, which lead to him getting involved with the instructor/examiner team in 2012. When the job posting for the interim ACMG technical director came up in 2018, he thought, why not?

The mountains have taught him to be open to all possibilities, have several options and go with the flow. I feel lucky to have this as a career and am extremely grateful to my loving and understanding wife Jennifer and our two boys Lucas and Tyler.

Guest Links

ACMG Technical Manuals: https://www.acmg.ca/03public/resources/publications.aspx

Association of Mountain Guides: www.acmg.ca

David Thomson Via Ferratas: www.viaferratacanada.com

Mike Adolph Email:

Have you ever pushed forward with something even when it became clear that you should probably change your plan or abort? If so, you may have succumbed to plan continuation bias. When this happens, we can become predisposed to continue towards completing our original plan, even when conditions change, or new information becomes known that indicates that continuing on is not advisable.

Mike Adolph joins us to discuss some of the strategies that we can use to recognize and manage plan continuation bias. Mike Adolph is an ACMG / IFMGA Mountain Guide and is the current Technical Director of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides.

Mike dips into his extensive guiding and instructing experience to share some great examples and advice.

Key Takeaways

What is plan continuation bias: It is when a person ignores the fact that conditions or the situation has changed in a way that should cause them to rethink their initial plan, but the person decides to push on towards their objective anyway.

Reasons for plan continuation bias: There are often a number of human factors at play including pressure to keep going from others, a need or desire to make money if you are getting paid to keep going, and a belief that we are more likely to experience a positive outcome. We may also end up ignoring or downplaying information that indicates that we should change course.

Set key decisions points beforehand: For example, we will decide if we continue once we reach the ridge, or after lunch, or once we have worked on this skill.

Removing pressures beforehand: Examples of this can include communicating expectations, decision points and the overall plan beforehand.

Guest Bio

Mike Adolph is an ACMG / IFMGA Mountain Guide and the current technical director of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. In addition to guiding custom outdoor adventures for small groups, Mike also works as a guide trainer and examiner for the ACMG’s Training and Assessment Program.

Mike started in the outdoor industry in 1994 after his family, in a joint venture, opened the Sheiling Mountain Lodge and the Center for Outdoor Education in Nordegg, Alberta. He completed his final ACMG exam and received his IFMGA International Federation of Mountain Guides Association Mountain Guide designation in 2009. He always admired his instructors and examiners, even if they were a bit harsh at times, which lead to him getting involved with the instructor/examiner team in 2012. When the job posting for the interim ACMG technical director came up in 2018, he thought, why not?

The mountains have taught him to be open to all possibilities, have several options and go with the flow. I feel lucky to have this as a career and am extremely grateful to my loving and understanding wife Jennifer and our two boys Lucas and Tyler.

Guest Links

ACMG Technical Manuals: https://www.acmg.ca/03public/resources/publications.aspx

Association of Mountain Guides: www.acmg.ca

David Thomson Via Ferratas: www.viaferratacanada.com

Mike Adolph Email: msadolph@gmail.com

Mike Adolph Instagram: @ mikeatcoe

Avalanche Hour with Mike Adolph: https://soundcloud.com/user-23585762/avalanche-hour-podcast-mike-adolph-acmg-10

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Managing Misadventure with Moose Mutlow

Can misadventure be turned into a positive experience? In this episode we are joined by Moose Mutlow who helps us to better understand what misadventure is, and how we can find value in it.

Moose has nearly forty years of experience as a guide, outdoor educator, and in Search and Rescue. He has worked around the world from the Kalahari Desert to the Florida Everglades, to Yosemite where he now lives. He is the author of two books and has extensive experience in family liaison and incident command.

Key Takeaways

Defining Misadventure: Misadventure is something that doesn’t go well but you can end up with a good story to tell afterwards.

Misadventure has a range: They can go from being funny stories of bad decisions to catastrophic disasters. It goes without saying that we are trying to avoid the latter as they can be very traumatic.

Story telling component: Both adventures and misadventures are defined by the stories that we can tell about them afterwards. Containable misadventures often have much more engaging stories to tell than adventures that go perfectly well.

Course correction: Being able to take a step back and look at the situation is often what stops things becoming an epic misadventure.

Taking a pause can help us to slow things down so that we can articulate the decision-making process effectively, instead of just getting caught reacting to situations. This can often lead to worse outcomes.

Reasons for misadventure: People underestimate the challenge and overestimate their ability and fail to plan and prepare ahead.

Keep people in the Challenge Zone: You have your best gains when you operate just outside your comfort zone. Taking people right the edge of the extreme is counterproductive and is rarely that beneficial. Instead, we should be trying to put people in what I call the challenge zone which is where we feel excitement, but we aren’t so overwhelmed that we develop tunnel vision and are gripped with stress.

Managing Misadventure: Realize when people are stressed, own mistakes that are made and draw attention to lessons learned along the way and try to keep it fun. Careful use of humour can be a useful tool on this last point.

Guest Bio

Moose Mutlow has nearly 4 decades of traditional and alternative education experience around the globe. He has course directed 58-day Outward Bound instructor trainings in Appalachia, been a deputy headmaster in the Kalahari Desert, managed a beach concession on the Mediterranean, slogged through Australian rain forests with middle school students, has more than 2000 days of field instruction in a wilderness setting, spent four months as the Interim Head for an elite ski academy, and returned to Outward Bound to instruct a canoe program for Veterans on the Gulf of Mexico.

Since 2002 Moose has been a member and senior trainer of Yosemite Search and Rescue, working as a technician and within Incident Command, at one of the busiest SAR operations in the world.

Moose currently works for NatureBridge in Yosemite National Park as the Senior Projects Director for planning, design and construction of the National Environmental Science Center.

Moose has written two books, Searching: Finding Purpose, Laughter & Distraction Through Search & Rescue and When Accidents Happen: Managing Crisis Communication as a Family Liaison Officer.

Guest Links

Moose Mutlow: www.moosemutlow.com

Searching: Finding Purpose, Laughter & Distraction Through Search & Rescue:

In this episode, Ken Bélanger shares a funny Heli skiing story that highlights the challenges of trying to talk people out of doing something that will probably not meet their needs in the long run. We look at some of the lessons learned from Ken’s story and offer some strategies to manage these types of situations.

Ken Bélanger is an ACMG Ski and Hiking Guide and the owner of Elevation Guides. Ken’s story highlights the difficulties that leaders can face when they are trying to balance giving people what they want versus what they really need but may not realize it.

Key takeaways

How can we sell someone into do something they need, when they don’t think they want it? Here are four options:

Try Persuasion: Strategies include reasoning with them, offering to do something better, tell them that what they won’t enjoy whatever it is they want to do. Avoid telling people they can’t do it, this can just sound like a challenge to some people.

Use Force: When the level of risk is high, you may have to force them to do something they may not think they want to do. Strategies include a hard no, cresting and sighting rules, and having to attain a skills-based objective or proficiency level before doing something harder.

Let them Suffer: If there is a low risk of serious consequences, it is possible to give people a taste of how hard of uncomfortable a situation will be if they don’t do what you are suggesting. This only works if it is safe and there is an escape route.

Hope that it works out: When there is a low risk, they refuse to change course or listen to you, the damage can be contained or there are no other options, you may have to just hope things work out!

Guest Links

Elevation Guides: www.elevationguides.ca

Ken Bélanger on Instagram: @elevationguides

Guest Bio

Ken Bélanger is an ACMG Ski, Hiking, and Via Ferrata Guide, CAA Professional Member, CANSI Level 1 Nordic Ski & Telemark instructor, CSIA level 1, and Advanced Wilderness Adventure Medic.

Although Ken grew up in Calgary not far from the mountains with his single father and two brothers, they didn’t have the financial means to explore them. It wasn’t until his late teens when he could self-fund trips that he finally discovered skiing and hiking.

He was immediately hooked. It was a steep learning curve to overcome his fear of heights and water, but within a few years he was instructing and guiding water-sports, climbing, cycling, and nordic and telemark skiing.

Ken considers himself extremely fortunate to have learned under some fantastic guides and instructors along the way.

Now operating Elevation Guides with nearly 30 years of guiding experience in 23 countries, he couldn’t imagine a better career. Ken resides in Canmore, Alberta at the doorstep of beautiful Banff National.

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