2015 and beyond

After a successful very busy 2014. 2015 is starting to look like its going to be just as eventful. 2014 was an experiment to see if I could run enough IRF courses to be able to form my own training company and make a full time career out of delivering courses. I am pleased to say that my experiment paid off and I am now in starting to officially create a training company. So the really hard work starts now !

The paperwork to form a company based here in Finland is sat right here next to me. Requests for courses are arriving without any official marketing yet. 

The First major project of the season is to become a training provider for rescue 3 Europe. Finland currently does not have any rescue 3 training providers.The opportunity to be able to deliver rescue 3 courses in Finland is greatly needed as Finland has no formal infrastructure for teaching whitewater safety & rescue. With time to come I would also like to be able to offer Ice rescue technician courses here in Finland as each year people needlessly drowning due to accidents on the open Ice. 

April will see the First workshop of the season. Berber rafting in Morocco are going to host a Workshop on the Ahansal  river from 15th -22nd April This course is going to be run on a multiday decent of the river allowing us to really focus on the training needs of the guides. Berber rafting still have a few places available

http://berberraftingadventure.weebly.com/ 

June will hopefully see Finlands first ever rescue 3 Whitewater rescue technician courses run. Finland has a growing community of kayakers who will hopefully benefit from some training making them safer when they head off for there summer adventures. 

August will be when I head off to India. I will be Running a International Rafting Federation Guide training program on a 10 day Zanskar expedition for pureland expeditions .http://www.purelandexpeditions.com/. This will be an opportunity for those with no formal guide training to be trained on a classic 10 day river  expedition.

Once the Pureland guide training program is over I plan to spend some time training the local Zanskar guides we really had a productive workshop last year. Hopefully we can build on last years course and create some worthwhile training for the local guides.

 I have spent the past 2 fall seasons working alongside paddle Nepal. Paddle Nepal are one of the largest rafting companies in Nepal employing over 30 full time guides. Each of the 30 guides Now has an IRF qualification.  March 2016 is the date that has been set to run an IRF instructor workshop in Nepal. By setting the date for March 2016 this will allow us to plan and run hopefully a well attended highly successful workshop run by myself and Jim coffey.