Planning a tour

Risk on any trip is a matter of assessing the probability of a situation and understanding it in the context of any possible consequences. It starts with you and those who may be joining you on the trip. It’s easy to overestimate your own skills and underestimate the challenges of a planned tour. While it’s important to recognise the existence of any risk, it’s just as important to know that there are ways to handle it. In general, there are four ways you can approach risk.

AVOID RISK

This is the conservative approach. Not always right for everyone, but easiest and most effective. If we avoid risk, we remove the problem. Everything’s fine. Your threshold for what constitutes “unacceptable” must be low and your willingness to add miles to the route must be high if you must absolutely always avoid every risks, but at least you’re safe. The choice to avoid risk might perhaps be taken when you’re well into the tour. It can be difficult to adopt a new plan or change the goal and purpose of the trip while you’re well on your way. But avoiding risk doesn’t necessarily mean hiding under the covers at home; it can be achieved by changing the plan, changing the time, taking a new route or turning around in time. You can at least minimize the risk considerably, for example, if you postpone a summit tour for a few days when there’s a high risk of avalanche reported.

TRANSFER THE RISK

This is largely about transferring the risk to a guide, or possibly sharing it with others in your party. Find someone better than you and learn from them. Hire an experienced mountain guide or join DNT. In this way, you avoid getting in over your head – your “transfer” some of the risk assessment to someone with better expertise. Don’t misunderstand this: this isn’t to delegate responsibility. That’s not something we can do. If friluftslive can be described as “attentive travel in nature at your own risk,” the onus is on you to be attentive to your own capacity. A professional guide will very rarely take greater risks than necessary. Quite the contrary.

REDUCE THE RISK

In the world of professional guiding, the Armed Forces and in extreme sports, people often talk about “professional intuition”. This is experience-based learning that’s accumulated over some time, in a very good and systematic way, combined with knowledge. Experience, knowledge and education in combination mean we’re better able to handle and reduce risk. This is because one can more easily recognise situations, risks and the measures to take. Most importantly, you’re far better at “feeling” when something needs to be done. More, we’re better at avoiding such situations from occurring in the first place. This is “professional intuition”. Experience alone isn’t sufficient in itself. The risks themselves, and the potential consequences, must be reduced through things such as training, good preparation and the right equipment. In this way, they’re manageable should they arise. Planning, training and trial and error in a controlled environment are, therefore, essential. During the planning, you can consider the choice of route and make sure that the length and degree of difficulty are in line with your own (and the group’s) physical capacity and skill. If you’re unsure about this, you should at least have a plan B: somewhere to turn around, to spend the night in a cabin, a way to make it to some kind of civilisation. It’s also about planning food, equipment, and so on. Bring the necessary safety equipment and first aid equipment. Be sure to bring a map and compass, even if there may be mobile coverage.

ACCEPT THE RISK

In some cases, one can simply choose to accept the risk. This isn’t necessarily problematic if there’s little at stake and very little probability of it happening. But always weigh the consequences. If the consequence is fatal, then one must always weigh it heavily and assess whether it’s worth accepting, despite the low risk and probability. This is how we arrive at a requisite level of knowledge and identify possible risk elements. Necessary preparations serve to reduce risk and allow you to deal with any situation that should arise as it arises. This requires a higher degree of insight, reflection, knowledge and experience – but serves its purpose. There will always be some risk associated with a long ski tour on the plateau, for example, or skinning up to a high peak. But there are many things you can do to prepare yourself for these risks, and thus good choices to make in response should something happen. Experience, knowledge and education will, of course, also be decisive here if you are to make a realistic assessment of the risk you might accept and the consequences your choices may have.

10. Leave no trace

Take your rubbish home. Leave nature natural. Don’t ruin it. Don’t go crazy with a chainsaw or a powered vehicle in vulnerable places. Leave the wildlife alone. Only burn what can burn completely. Car tyres and other toxic waste – deliver these where they should be delivered. Dress appropriately for the terrain and conditions. Feel free to take some logs instead of creating a logging field in the forest. And show consideration for others hiking nearby. We have a responsibility; we must take it seriously. There’s no point in saying much more than that about this. This is something everyone should know, understand, and respect.

11. Evaluate and learn for next time

Whether the trip went well, not so well, or something unforeseen occurred, evaluate it – discuss WHY. Find out if something could have been done differently; discuss HOW. This is a good way to learn, to become aware of the choices you had, the choices you made, and to continuously map out how things can be made better. Learning doesn’t accumulate without action; it requires us to be aware of our actions – the how, the why, the good, the bad.

And to close, and most importantly: have fun. That’s the point! God tur!