Our partners impact where we go

As you learned on your AIARE 1, a team’s ability to communicate and work together should impact where you go in the backcountry just as much as conditions do. The people you choose to travel with, make observations with, and decide with have a direct effect on your safety. This statement seems simple enough, but how they impact your safety is not always obvious.

Take a trip that seemed safe and resulted in a successful outcome. It might be hard to notice that because your partner wasn’t very engaged in the planning process, or speaking up once you were in the backcountry, the outcome could have turned out quite differently. If something does go wrong, their rescue abilities and skills might make their impact more obvious, but how their choice not to speak up because they didn’t believe in the validity of their observations might still go unrecognized as impacting the group’s safety.

This concept is in contrast to other activities like rock climbing where the belayer (person holding the rope) is in obvious visual control of the safety of the person climbing on the wall. If the person on the wall falls while climbing, they belayer catches them and they hang there safely on the rope. If the belayer does a poor job and the climber hits the ground they could get hurt or worse. To even an average observer this is fairly obvious as they are connected via a literal life line. Winter backcountry partnerships are equally as important as this climber-belayer example, but the dependence on a partner’s solid observation, communication, and decision making skills are rarely as obvious and frequently untested.

Take the lead in ensuring a good team

The prompts at the planning step of Assemble Your Group help you to put together a team that is on the same page and agree to the Backcountry Rules of Engagement. Do you have compatible goals? Are your skills and abilities matched? Is risk acceptance matched? Will everyone agree to the rules of engagement? Discuss goals, gear, experience, fitness, and abilities BEFORE planning the trip. It’s all about putting together a group (versus accepting what comes your way) in order to reduce uneasy or uncomfortable group dynamics.

As a more experienced backcountry traveler, your friends will follow your lead if you make space to check in on these topics. Say something if it's apparent that there are different goals for different group members. Fix it before you head out rather than relying on things to work themselves out. Momentum is harder to change than simply starting on the right track.

Quality over Quantity: Choose your partners wisely

We’d all love to have dozens of top-notching partners for the backcountry but for most of us that isn’t likely to be a reality. Work hard towards finding good partners and nurture those relationships once you find them. Seek out people who you communicate well with, trust, have similar risk tolerances, similar goals, and consistently have a vested interest in the tasks associated with a day of planning and travel in the backcountry. Remember partnerships aren’t so much a place as they are a relationship that needs to be nurtured and take work on both peoples part. If you don’t get along with a person, feel like you aren’t being listened to, or their risk tolerance isn’t inline with theirs, speak up. Communicating your needs and expectations is the first step in being on the same page. If you can’t find a resolution, consider how important it is to go in the backcountry with that person - perhaps there are other activities you can do with that partner.

The other part of being a good backcountry partner is role modeling the behavior you want out of your partners. Good Followership = Good Leadership. Be an active listener so that your observations and opinions enhance the discussion and bring up less considered ideas instead of simply contributing another voice. Engage your partners and solicit their opinions at every step of the trip; from the planning stages to decision making in the field.

Make it your goal to help everyone contribute their ideas by actively soliciting everyone’s input. Take an active role in building consensus by ensuring all voices are heard and considered. Help solve problems by checking that plans match the hazard and uncertainty assessed by the group. Challenge the group’s assumptions. Make space for others to challenge assumptions and voice vetoes. Become an active facilitator that ensures the group has a plan for each hazard discussed. Similarly share the task of observations, be part of the process and help make sure everyone gets involved not just those deemed “more experienced”.

Match the trip to your partners

Similar to matching appropriate terrain to the avalanche hazard and the current conditions, we need to make sure our terrain selection is in-line with our partners skills and abilities. Tours can be too complex, too long, too steep, or otherwise outside of their ability for any number of reasons. As a result your “team’s ability” needs to be factored into your planning. If you push it too far, you risk their safety and certainly the experience of the group. This can be easy to forget when the snowpack conditions are lining up for a tick list trip you’ve aspired to, but put yourself in your partner’s shoes for a second and think what it feels like to get pulled into a trip that is over-your-head for any number of reasons. Remember that for most people once you no longer feel comfortable, it's harder to stay engaged and aware of what is going on around you, it likely stops being fun, and in the end it is probably not a good idea.

Partner considerations for trip planning

Is the trip within their abilities or fitness level?

Is the trip within our ability to communicate or work together?

Are the conditions or terrain too complex for them?

Does this match with their risk tolerance and comfort level?

Take new partners for a test drive

At some point you will likely go into the backcountry with someone you’ve never been out with before or possibly never even met. Even for folks who’ve been on countless backcountry adventures, meeting new “great backcountry patterns” requires getting out with people you don’t know, or at least haven’t previously been out with on a trip. It's an obvious part of life, but it's important to recognize that there will be significant uncertainty with a new partner until you see how well you work together and communicate. This means you should generally start with smaller, less remote objectives and remove as much other uncertainty from aspects of the day like terrain, snowpack, and conditions. This means planning your first outing in more modest terrain, on a trip you are both very familiar with, or with more stable avalanche conditions.