Delivering Adventure

What does it take to deliver adventure to ourselves? What are some of the key skills that great adventures possess? Angela Hawse joins Jordy and Chris to explore these questions and much more. Angela is an AMGA / IFMGA Mountain Guide who has travelled and guided extensively. Some of her many accomplishments include guiding trips in the Himalaya, Karakoram, the Caucasus, Andes, Alaska, Norway, and Antarctica. In this episode, Angela talks about her recent adventures and what it took to achieve them.

Key Takeaways

Navigation: To experience adventure, we have to be able to find our way both literally and figuratively. 

Prepare: Being prepared can mean spending more time practicing, developing skills, planning, and researching.

Adaptable: To become adaptable we need to be flexible, we need to be open to changing our expectations, we have to be creative and solution oriented. 

Adventure is for everyone: Adventure is something that anyone can experience. We can tell you that with the right instruction, coaching, encouragement, and mindset, anyone can push their limits and achieve adventure that they believe are beyond their abilities.

Guest Links & Resources

Angela’s Instagram @alpinist007

IRIS: https://irisalpine.com/about/guides/

Partner Podcast

The Avalanche Hour: https://www.theavalanchehour.com

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How do you create adventure? We continue to explore this question with snowmobile guide, avalanche educator, entrepreneur, and adventure innovator Curtis Pawliuk. In part 2, Curtis talks about creating North America’s first snowmobile assisted ski area, Crystal Ridge. He also touches on how he started his snowmobile instructional services company Frozen Pirate as well as his involvement in creating a snowmobile guide association. Curtis is based in Valemount, British Columbia.

Key Takeaways

Be Collaborative: Being willing to work with all groups and being respectful of all stakeholders is a far more sustainable approach than going it alone.

Be Creative: Every adventure experience has evolved into what it is now, over time. Creating adventure can require us to think outside the box and to try new things and ways of doing them.

Be Structured: This involves creating a plan, and therefore you will need a process to develop that plan. Using the snowmobile guiding association as an example they have a plan, and are enacting that plan in an organized way

Presentation Skills: Creating anything requires that you be good at influencing people in a positive way.

Guest Links & Resources

Valemount Mountain Biking: https://ridevalemount.com/mountain-biking/

VARDA: https://ridevalemount.com/

Frozen Pirate: https://linktr.ee/frozenpirate

Instagram: @frozenpirate

Chris’s Book: Power to Influence: how to get the best out of yourself and others – available at Amazon Here

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In this episode, Curtis Pawliuk joins Chris and Jordy to talk about how he has helped to create adventure through the development of a mountain bike park in Valemount, BC. Curtis Pawliuk is the Executive Director of the Valemount and Area Recreation Development Association (VARDA). Curtis shares some of the challenges and successes that VARDA has had developing the Valemount trail system. He also touches on its impacts on the local economy and what other communities could learn.

Key Takeaways

Think big: It’s okay to dream, in fact we need to. This helps us to keep ourselves and others motivated to keep going.

Creating adventure facilities takes resources: It takes time, money, support, and energy. Curtis mentioned the STP Committees– the same ten people that are always working on driving an organization forward. You need to find the people who can spend time to build whatever you are creating.

Build what people want: If you want to be successful at creating adventure, you have to build experiences that people want. This can be different than the experiences that you might want to deliver.

Guest Links & Resources

Valemount Mountain Biking: https://ridevalemount.com/mountain-biking/

VARDA: https://ridevalemount.com/

Frozen Pirate: https://linktr.ee/frozenpirate

Instagram: @frozenpirate

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What are some of the key strategies to managing risk while we are leading adventure and delivering it to ourselves? Grant Statham is back to continue this discussion with Jordy and Chris. Grant taps into his experience as a well respected thought leader on mountain risk and understanding. Grant is an ACMG / IFMGA mountain Guide, Parks Canada Visitor Safety Specialist, avalanche forecaster and a risk consultant.

Key Takeaways

List of options: A good decision is one where we pick the best option. Identifying all of the options beforehand, is a crucial step to making good decisions.

Understanding intuition: If you get a feeling that you should increase the risk, you need to be able to justify your decision to do so, with hard facts.

Avoiding overconfidence: Beware the expert opinion; often wrong, but rarely in doubt. We often think that we know more than we do, but we rarely want to admit this.

We can reduce our risk with knowledge: The more information we have, the easier it is to pick the best option.

Build yourself a buffer: Building in a bigger margin of error can protect us from mistakes, or simply misjudging a situation.

Slow down: Slowing down gives us more time to process the information coming at us.

Guest Links & Resources

Instagram: @stathamgrant

Ted talk on Risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGZu5Lzgv1A

Thinking in Risk: https://thepowdercloud.com/learn/avalanche-education/thinking-in-risk/

Avalanche Canada Ice Climbing Avalanche Atlas: https://www.avalanche.ca/resources/ice-climbing/atlas

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Risk is an essential part of any adventure experience, but what is risk and what does it mean to manage it? In this episode, ACMG / IFMGA Mountain guide Grant Statham joins Chris and Jordy to explore the topic of managing risk. Grant currently works for Parks Canada as a visitor safety specialist doing mountain. Rescue and avalanche forecasting. He also works as a risk consultant, and as a mountain guide.

Key Takeaways

A risk is a chance: When we take risks, we have a chance of losing something, but we also have a chance of gaining something. The uncertainty of not knowing which will happen is the risk.

Not taking a risk, comes with risk: It is impossible to live a life without risk. Not taking risks comes with a danger of missing out.

You can’t have adventure without taking risks: Challenge, adversity and risk taking are essential components of any adventure experience.

Have a process that helps guide you in your risk taking: This can be a decision-making tool, framework, philosophy or a list. The process that we use to make decisions will increase your chances of having a positive outcome.

Reserve your decision until you have as much information as possible: Waiting until you have to make a decision keeps your options open. This means that if new information becomes available, you haven’t committed yourself to a course of action that may be hard to reverse.

Guest Links & Resources

Instagram: @stathamgrant

Ted talk on Risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGZu5Lzgv1A

Thinking in Risk: https://thepowdercloud.com/learn/avalanche-education/thinking-in-risk/

Avalanche Canada Ice Climbing Avalanche Atlas: https://www.avalanche.ca/resources/ice-climbing/atlas

Gordon Graham: Video

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In this episode, we continue speaking with Peter Weiland on how we can help people to embrace adversity. Peter reveals some of his biggest challenges owning a bike tour company, some of the pressures of raising kids in a mountain resort town, his philosophy to coaching kids to play soccer, and the secrets to how to help people to push their limits.

Peter is a former semi-pro adventure racer, former owner of Rocky Mountain Cycle Tours and currently manages a youth soccer program. Peter is also a ski instructor at Whistler Blackcomb.

Key Takeaways

The value of having a sense of humor: Having a sense of humor can really help us to power through difficult moments.

Getting people through adversity can involve setting small milestones: Nothing builds confidence like success and sometimes people need small successes. This applies to finishing long journeys and learning new skills.

Kids and not pushing them:. Everyone has a limit, for kids that limit is lower. Just because someone can do something doesn’t mean they will enjoy it. Just because they can finish something doesn’t mean they will want to do it again

Just Recognizing the value of adversity and communicating it: Sometimes, just letting people know that what they are doing is hard - while reminding them that it will be worth it - can be enough to help them to keep going.

Guest Link

You can find Rocky Mountain Cycle Tours here: https://rockymountaincycle.com/

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Peter Weiland shares his perspective on why we need adversity and what takes to overcome it. Peter is a former semi-pro adventure racer, former owner of Rocky Mountain Cycle Tours and currently manages a youth soccer program. Using stories from some of his most epic moments, Peter reveals what it takes to power through adversity both for ourselves and how to help others.

Key Takeaways

You don’t have to go far to test yourself: Adventure can be close to home.

Starting people off with a little bit of adversity is better than too much: When exposing people to challenge, danger, and discomfort, start slowly and build up, instead of diving straight into the deep end. This is especially important when people have lower risk tolerance and resiliency.

It is often easier to increase adversity than it is to dial it down: It is easier to go faster, harder, farther, and to increase the complexity than it is slow things down.

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What is a guide? What does it take to be a great guide? In this episode we explore these questions with master guide and guide educator Bruce Wilson. Bruce is a sea kayak guide a guide trainer, avalanche educator, hiking guide, University Instructor, leadership and vision quest coach, and owner of Warrior Wolf Guide Services.

Key Takeaways

What is a guide: A guide is anyone who offers advice, guidance, role modelling, inspiration, help, instruction, or direction to someone. This means that we are all guides at one time or another.

To be a great guide you need to adopt the right mindset: This includes always striving to be your best, working to become better, and being empathetic to others.

Manage your ego so you can be confident: Having humility and being open to learning from your mistakes are i portent traits of great guides. Great guides are also confident. Great guides believe in themselves under pressure and duress.

Evolution: Becoming a guide is the quintessential evolution of a human being. We don’t become great guides overnight, and others may not trust us until we have proven ourselves to them.

Guest Links

You can contact Bruce through Wolf Warrior Guide Services

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How can you control your fear? What can you do to help other people to control their fear? These are the questions that psychologist, author, and adventurer Geoff Powter answers in this episode. In addition to psychology, Geoff draws upon his experience as the former editor of the Polar Circus Magazine and the Canadian Alpine Journalist, as well as being a respected mountaineer and adventurer.

Key Takeaways:

Basiks Model of managing fear: The six steps are belief, action, support, intention, knowledge and skills.

Calming down: It is impossible to be mentally calm and physically anxious at the same time or physically calm and mentally anxious at the same time. It is easier to control our physical side than our mental side. This is where the value of breathing comes in to help to relax us in times of high stress.

About them: What we think will be good for someone else, might not be good for them.

Guest Links

You can find more about Geoff Powter’s books Inner Ranges and Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness: Here

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Top CSIA Level 4 ski instructor trainer Tracey Fraser shares how we can improve people’s performance. Being better at anything makes those tasks more enjoyable. Not only that, improving skill is an essential risk management tool. The better we are at anything, the less likely we are to make mistakes. Tracey is one of Canada’s most highly certified ski instructors and technical skiers.

Key Takeaways

Take a student specific / centered approach: Everyone is different and will need a different approach. A coach needs to be ready to use different approach that is based on how their student learns best.

Pace the delivery of information: People can get frustrated if we give them too many things to work on or to think about at one time.

Get buy in to change behavior patterns: You can’t change someone’s performance if they don’t see a problem with what they are doing.

Avoiding Frustration: People need to be given something new, work through that challenge, feel that they are accomplishing something, spend some time in that zone.

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