Over the boarder and back to the snow

Finally having been on the road delivering courses since late March I got to spend some time at home in Finland. June 5^th -11^th had been in my diary for months for a 7 day IRF Guide training program combined with a Rescue 3 Europe Whitewater Rescue Technician Professional course based at the ideally located Basecamp Oulanka, on the shores of the beautiful Kitkajoki river, in the land of the Midnight sun.

I arrived home in the south of Finland for few days rest before the 9 hour drive northeast to Basecamp. This gave me time to make some lesson plans and prepare for the workshop. Miia told me to check the weather? I happily fired up my trusted weather website of trust www.yr.no to check the weather. Doh -1 degrees and snow, it was June for crying out loud as I reached for my dry suit & extra thermals.

The course was based just outside the Arctic circle in the village of Juuma. June in Finland is normally the beginning of summer and most of the snow and ice have melted. The rivers are at ideal levels and we are blessed with the Midnight Sun. During the drive north I realized this was not going to be the case. All of the lakes were still frozen & there was plenty of snow around still. The forecast for later in the week  was for highs of +25 degrees and sun. I thought to myself I won't hold my breath?.

The guys at Basecamp Oulanka had given me a really nice room and I unpacked my kit and prepared myself for a scouting  trip the next day.

After a quick breakfast I threw on an extra set of thermals under my drysuit and met Henri, the host for the workshop. We were also joined by some of the course participants as this was going to be the first trip down the river of the season. So not only did I need to re-familiarize myself with the Kitkajoki, we also needed to see if the winter had made any changes to the river. Before all of this could happen we had to brake a trail through the ice on the lake in order for us to get to the river. Easier said than done!

 The commercial section we were to paddle today was called the Wild route, a short section around 5km in distance. The trip begins on the Juuma lake and then make it's way down the beautiful picturesque canyon with the Myllykoski rapid class 2+ and the amazing 900m long Aallokkoski rapid before for a compulsory portage around the Jyrävä waterfall. The trip normally lasts for around 2 hours. One of the unique points about this run is that the trip almost completes a full circle leaving a 15 minute walk back to the base so no return transport needed as its' all done on foot.  

The Wild route is the most technical section of commercial whitewater in Finland. Rafting is not a huge sport in Finland so the rafting community is quite small and closed. With the lack of international experience throughout the years rafting trips are still operated the way they were 20 years ago, this includes equipment and approaches to river running and guide training. Hats off to Basecamp Oulanka for having the sight to see that things need to change. 

The checkout run went well, we even got to see an impressive snow bridge over the Jyrävä waterfall.

This weeks course was going to present me with 6 trainees & 2 trip leader candidates one of which (Nathan) had travelled all the way from Singapore to attend the course. The  course progressed the following way:

Day 1

The ice had slowly been melting so we had a bigger pool to practice our basic paddling techniques & commands. I am a big fan of spending some time on the flat water for the first day of a guide training programme. I feel it gives the students a chance to feel how a raft moves before you take it to the moving water. We also looked at safety talks before we got on the water. I delivered 2 examples of a safety talk. One of which was completed in silence to emphasize that actions speak louder than words. We then took to the Wild route to look at basic guiding and moving water skills. I got to test the skills of the 2 class 3 trip leader candidates (Nathan & Henri) on the Aallokkokoski section and they both did a really good job. The homework for day 1 was to learn the IRF river signals. I noticed them practicing these well into the night. 

Day 2

After watching Henri & Nathan give some really solid safety talks we took to the Wild route. The guides were starting to grow in confidence which was heartening to watch. A visit from the local press in the afternoon gave us the chance to look at swimming skills. Having spent 8 seasons working in Iceland as a guide I thought I was accustomed to cold water but I noticed that the water was freezing cold and I was happy that all of the students were in Ursuit drysuits. I made a mental note to myself to soften up a little and maybe start to use some neoprene gloves in my old age. That thought lasted as soon as I watched someone try to pack a throwbag wearing gloves. The local press were really interested in the course and produced an amazing article. Day 2 homework = safety talk planning.

Day 3

Off to Russia we go. The logistics on the Kitkajoki are not easy, every few days the guides need to transport the rafts 20km down the river to the nearest road on the border with Russia. I took the opportunity to give the guides as much stick time as possible so I made them R2 5 rafts down the river  and this enabled them a full day of stick time. We focused on eddy hopping, ferry gliding & river running strategies. The day started with ghosing the rafts down the Jyrävä waterfall. We stopped for lunch at a small fireplace in the Oulanka national park. The weather was now sunny and +18, the weather had changed at last.

Day 4

The morning session started with the candidates each giving a section of the pre-trip safety demonstration. The candidates had the choice to do this in Finnish or English. I had roped my partner Miia & her mother to be live rafting customers for the students to practice and this turned out quite well. During today I wanted to assess both Henri & Nathan for their class 3 trip leader awards. I set 2 challenging scenarios on the river which both included run away flipped rafts and various amounts of devious carnage. Both Nathan & Henri demonstrated strong trip leader capabilities when dealing with the scenarios, hats off to the guys.

Day 5

Today was the first day of the Rescue 3 component of the workshop.  My biggest selling product this year has been the combined IRF & Rescue 3 workshops and this was to be my 5^th one since March. I like to keep both of the aspects separate. This way I can concentrate solely on the core: raft guiding skills on the IRF section of the workshop. I can then incorporate the remaining IRF rescue elements into the WRT component, including swimming, flipping, throw bagging, rope work. Both the IRF & Rescue 3 elements complement each other really well. Next year I am already planning advanced workshops combining WRT advanced with class 4 trip leader &  safety craft.

We spent the day working through the Rescue 3 philosophy, incorporating it into swimming & throw bag sessions and then into more complex situations including rescue harness release & tethered swimmer rescues.

Day 6

Today we looked at shallow water skills along with foot & body entrapments. After lunch we all spent some time on a simulated strainer exercise before finishing the day with a mechanical advantage class where we also completed the IRF rope work test.

Day 7

I was starting to feel it I have been running course nonstop since March, today I felt as tired as the students looked. Straight onto the water we spent the time looking at 2 point tethered rafts and tensioned diagonals along with line crossing techniques. The weather turned poor in the afternoon so we finished up the course by looking at the theory side of the WRT programme before the IRF written paper & final debriefs.

During the debriefs I wanted to focus on making the students realize that practice practice practice is the recipe for being able to move forward and gain more experience.I look forward to visiting Basecamp Oulanka next year to see the progression of the guides.

In the meantime congratulations to Henri, Nathan, Jessica, Maiju, Tiia, Janne, Markus, Miia, Kaisa & Ilkka, it was a pleasure to work with you.

Many thanks to Miia Komi & Basecamp Oulanka! 

Next week my travels will take me from the Arctic to the jungle in Thailand where I will get the opportunity to work some more with enthusiastic raft guides.

Happy paddling,

Mark

In to the Uknown (again) 1st IRF workshop in the Ukraine

As the demand for International rafting federation courses is growing year on year, I am noticing that I am able to travel to new exciting destinations to run IRF courses. This year alone my travels have taken me to Morocco, Nepal, France, UK and now to the Ukraine for their first ever IRF workshop with Kiev Kayaks. 

After a period of email communication with Anton Federenko of Kiev Kayaks my bags were packed and I was heading out to the Ukraine not knowing what to expect.

Anton kindly picked me up from the airport and took me to his river base in the middle of the Ukraine. We arrived late in the evening and to be honest I was dead beat tired having spent the whole day travelling. So a quick set of hellos, then off to bed.

The morning of day 1 kicked off with the typical course introductions. Having now delivered a few workshops I now have a set pattern of how I like to run my workshops.

First off I needed to asses a few key points

• Our communication skills. I do not speak Ukrainian & I know that my fast Northern English accent can be hard to understand sometimes. I was happy in the end as 80% of the group had really good English. I was also lucky to have a interpreter Andri, who was also a kayaker.   

• The groups prior experience. This became quite interesting as the group was pretty big, we had 12 participants in total. The ability of the group ranged from a medalist at the 2015 Adddas sickline Kayak championships right the way through to a handful of local guides with no formal training. 

I decided to strip everything back to the raw basics. I had arranged the workshop over 5 days as this allowed me to really concentrate on getting the basics right before we could move onto more advanced options. We got dressed and made our way to the river. After a quick discussion about PPE (personal protective equipment) we started on safety talks. I was aware that I had a few trip leader candidates. I asked for a volunteer to step forward. Lurii stepped forward and presented a really good safety talk that only needed a few minor tweaks.

After Lurii´s talk we discussed what constitutes a good safety talk  and these were the outcomes.

Set the scene: In order for the talk to be effective the customers must be positioned in such a way that the guide giving the talk is the sole focus of their attention. 

Actions speak louder than words: I explained to the guides that in various other rafting destinations around the world not all of your customers will speak the same language as the guide giving the safety talk. We also discussed the fact that people remember actions more than words. A simple exercise of giving a safety talk without talking was shown & appreciated in the fact that all of the relevant information was given in half the time of a normal vocal talk.   

Give correct demonstrations: Show your customers exactly what you want them to do. If you show the customers the wrong technique they will practice the wrong technique. A classic example of this was explaining to the customers that if they fall out of the raft to adapt the whitewater swimming position.. Where infact we want the customers to participate in their own rescue and swim back to the raft aggressive style.  

The Flow of the safety talk: We discussed the correct sequence in which we should introduce the various subjects within a safety talk. We noticed that most guides give the paddle commands at the start of a safety talk. We discussed the fact that once you have completed the safety talk if you sit the customers in their paddling position in the raft and introduce the commands just before you get on the water the customers are more likely to retain the information given to them. Having the customers sit and practice the commands on the dry land also allows the guide to rectify any issues and give some good coaching points This can also work as a warm up too.

We moved on to the river where I got to see some pretty good guiding skills. We had a nice 200m section of class 3 where we could easily run laps which was great. I did notice that the guides had been running the same lines for years so I spiced things up and got them too run some new lines. Been situated on the bank I could asses more guides a lot quicker. I would have plenty of time to be in a raft with them during the week. I was also useless in the raft as I was struggling with the Ukrainian paddle commands.

Most of the candidates had come from a racing background. Primarily racing the former soviet design inflatable catarafts.

The main issue here was that the candidates were trying to guide the rafts in racing mode which meant a lot of things were rushed. We spent the afternoon slowing things down. We really focused on the guide controlling and steering the raft and using the customers as the "engine". Instilling the discipline into the crews to only paddle when the guide tells you was interesting to watch. We also looked at the totally new commands of "Get down" "Hold on" and backwards paddling. After a few hours of hard work we were making good progress.

Later in the day we looked at personal whitewater swimming skills.I needed to instill the thinking process into why where & how we swim instead of just jumping in. After a afternoon a trying some new techniques and strategies we  ended day 1 with a swimming Olympics, which I also used as the personal swimming assessment as per the IRF guidelines.

We rounded off day 1 with a introductory rope work session. We practiced the following knots

• Bowline
• Round turn & 2 half hitches
• Clove hitch 
• Figure of 8 Bite 
• Water knot 
• Alpine Butterfly 
• Overhand bend 
• Double fishermans 
• Friction Hitch
• No knot

Day 2 kicked off with a quick revision of the knots we learnt on the previous evening. We also discussed river signals before heading to the water to work on our rafting skills. I wanted to now get the guides working as a team on the river using some basic river running principles. I found the CLAP model worked well for this workshop.

• Communication (Have clear communications systems always.)
• Line of sight (Always have line of sight with the raft in front and behind you.)
• Avoidance (Avoid any necessary risk by taking the safest lines and having clear communication.)
• Positioning (Clearly position yourself so that you are combining the 3 elements above.)   

After lunch we got stuck into some throwbag work. We looked at various designs of throwbags along with the construction of a throwbag. I introduced the group the the cleanline principle and then we were good to go.

  We took the time to look at various belay options along with introducing thrower positioning.

Once the group was happy with the basics we moved on to some more advanced throwbag rescues such a "drop bagging" & double swimmer throws.

The next section to be looked at was throwing a coiled rope. We looked at the benefits of

• Small coils vs big coils 
• Butterfly coils 
• The TRU technique

I found it challenging to explain to the group that there was not one set way to re-throw a rope that in fact there were many different ways which also work for a variety of different people. The group also agreed with me when I mentioned that throw bagging should be practiced lots.

The IRF throwbag test ended the afternoon session which all of the team passed confidently.

Our evening session continued with stepping up our rope work skills. We started off by looking at the following subjects:

• PRE (personal rescue equipment) based on the 4,3,2,1 principle
• Anchor tying and the forces associated with this
• Progress capture using pulleys & prussik loops

I had now manged to teach all of the foundation skills needed to build a mechanical advantage system which would follow on the morning of day 3. 

Day 3 arrived and is affectionately know as "Wobbly Wednesday". All of the candidates were a little tired after 2 testing days on the river. I decided to keep the team on the land for the morning so that we could spend the morning looking at pinned boats and mechanical advantage systems. 

The Big 4 for unpinning a raft were practiced

• Strong arm pull 
• Rope pull
• Vector pull 
• MA system

I then introduced the group to building mechanical advantage systems with basic river equipment. We all built the following systems. 

• Internal simple 2:1, 3:1, 5:1
• Internal Compound 9.1 
• External 3:1 , 4:1

The group also found the T method for calculating MA quite useful. We ended the session with the standard IRF ropework test. 

The afternoon session of day 3 was spent exploring true rescues, mainly live bait rescues. A short session explaining to the group the mechanics of the chest harness function on their PFD´s led us perfectly into the practical side of their use. First we practiced releasing the harness under a load and then we practiced live bait rescues.

The morning of day 4 was spent looking at entrapment's. We practiced a selection of systems used to quickly rescue an entrapped customer. We all agreed that the best method was the down & dirty technique of getting hands on as quickly as possible. We also strongly agreed that river rescue is a teams sport and should be practiced

as a team. 

In my eyes most  group now had all of the skills needed to tackle a trip leader scenario assessment. We spent the remainder of the workshop working through the trip leader scenarios for the trip leader candidates to pass the required level needed. We got a few funny looks from some of the other local rafting  companies practicing all of this unneeded strange foreign voodoo magic but we did not mind.

 The trip leader scenarios were completed with ease and it was heart warming to watch the guys putting some new ways of thinking and skills to use. 

The Morning of day 5 started with flip drills before tacking the IRF written paper before final debriefs and goodbyes. 

The Ukraine now has its first IRF certified guides and trip leaders. It was a privilege to work with these guys. Good Luck !

Mark

Raising the bar in the Himalayas

As many of us witnessed the disaster caused by the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, my thoughts turned to how I could personally help towards the long term rebuilding process. 
I have had the honor of travelling to Nepal for kayaking and rafting based trips since 1998. Since 2013 I have also run a series if IRF guide training programs and workshops for Nepali raft guides and kayakers.

Marshyangdi was an excellent venue. 

Nepal has the largest representation of IRF qualified guides on the current IRF guide register.

A large portion of Nepali raft guides now work overseas during the monsoon season in Nepal. I have personally worked with Nepali raft guides in countries as far away as Iceland. Nepali guides have a worldwide reputation for been hardworking professional guides. 

I wanted to arrange an IRF instructor workshop and create some new Nepali IRF instructors to ensure that the IRF standards are kept for years to come. I approached the IRF to see if there was anyway they could help with the funding of the course. The IRF kindly decided to waive the administration fees for the Nepali candidates on the course making it easier on the pockets of the guides who wanted to attend the course. 

From my previous experience of operating IRF workshops in Nepal I knew to expect big attendance numbers. I needed to recruit an IRF assessor to help me operate the course. I also needed a Nepali raft company to help me organize the logistics and hosting the trip. Paddle Nepal kindly provided us with bus and the equipment for the course free of charge which was great. 

I also recruited Canadian river legend Jim Coffey from Esprit rafting to be my co instructor on the course. I remember I was really impressed with Jim's series of river rescue videos called rescue for river runners. Jim kindly agreed to help with the project which was great. 

Jim explaining the finer points of the safety talk.

Over the following months I noticed that the course was attracting interest from around the globe. We now had bookings confirmed by guides coming from Ecuador, USA, Australia,UK & India  The course was taking shape fast. 

I had taken the time to select an appropriate river the workshop. I needed a testing class 4-5 river that would keep us on our toes for the duration of the workshop. I decided to re use the Marshyangdhi river which flows from the Annapurna region of Nepal, situated in the Lamjung area between Kathmandu & Pokhara. I have used the Marshyangdhi for previous courses and found it to be a truly testing piece of water. The top section compromises of around 18km of continuous class 4 & 4+ rapids. The lower section of the river below the dam has a 15km section of slightly easier class 3 & 4 rapids for those on the course who were looking for their class 3 skills to be developed.  

Any 5 day rafting based course is going to be physically demanding. So I decided that the group would need a good base for the duration of the workshop. Again I selected the Mango Tree eco resort on the banks of the Marshyangdhi to be our base for the week. The Mango Tree provided us with 2 really good meals per day and some comfortable tents to rest our heads at night. 

Going to the river, Mango Tree resort behind us. 

The week prior to travelling to Nepal I had been running an IRF workshop in Morocco. This was my first workshop of the season which meant I was primed and ready for the Nepal course. 

After arriving in Nepal I met up with Jim. We both spent a day kayaking the Marshyangdhi as a check out run to identify some potential teaching & trip leader scenario sites. Both myself and Jim both agreed that the Marshyangdhi was going to be the ideal choice of river for the workshop. 

The evening before the workshop started we held a pre workshop meeting. This was a chance for us to meet the students for the week and collect all of the relevant paper work: logbooks, first aid certs etc. 

The rest of the workshop looked like this:

Day 1 0600
Bus departure to the river  was at 0600 hrs. We jumped straight into course by holding  2 brief sessions on knot tying and river signals. This was the ideal wake call for the group. 
Once we arrived at the river and inflated the rafts we had a PPE (personal protective equipment) check along with a PRE (Personal rescue equipment check).
As we were 2 instructors on the course this gave us the opportunity to be able to assess 2 safety talks at a time. This is where we identified a few key points.

Safety talk key learning points (as previously discussed in other blog posts:)

• Actions speak louder than words. 
• Avoid using complicated English (keep it simple).
• Arrange your customers into a place where you are the sole focus with no distractions. 
• Summarize your safety talk into 3 key learning points at the end of the talk. 
• Your safety talk continues during the trip, you should be constantly recapping your talk as you approach the rapids. 

We took to the water for a 3 hour paddle down the continuous class 4 & 4+ section of the upper Marshyangdhi. This gave myself & Jim the chance to observe and assess the raft guiding and customer communication skills of the guides as they guided their boats down the river. 

Day 2 0600

We decided that early morning starts were the order of the day. This gave us chance to take advantage of the cooler mornings. For our instructor candidates I gave an example of instructor standard theory session on safety kayaking tactics. This session had 2 main aims. 

1. The students got to see the required standard needed for instructor candidates who needed to give their own presentation later in the week.

2. The IRF is the only body to give structured safety kayak teaching. The session was a spring board into a discussion on the role of a professional safety kayaker on a commercial rafting trip. The key learning points were.

• Safety kayakers who can also guide a raft and have rafting abilities are a big bonus on a commercial trip.
• Safety kayakers need to be thinking 2 or 3 steps ahead of the raft guides on the trip. 
• Forward thinking safety kayakers are able to put themselves in the right place at the right time in order to play a key role in a rescue if needed.

We took to the water and stepped up the tempo by looking further into the rafting capabilities of the students. We did this by observing the students making challenging maneuvers on class 4 rapids. These maneuvers included forward and reverse ferry glides along with some challenging breakouts. Each of the candidates came off the water tired and tested. We spent the evening looking into some of the rope work components needed for the following days rope work test 

Day 3 
Today was called wobbly Wednesday. The intense sun and heat was taking its toll on all involved with the course. We both agreed that today was going to be a park and swim day. We parked the bus at a convenient roadside rapid and spent the day finishing off the guide assessments. It was a pleasure to spend the day swimming in the river to escape the heat. All of the students were today put through their paces and tested on the following skills:

• A challenging swim
• Throw bag test making 2 throws with a packed and unpacked throwbag 
• IRF flip drill 
• Ropework test. The students had 5 minutes to construct a functioning  mechanical advantage system using their own equipment. 

During the day we also looked at the use of the integrated chest harness on our rescue PFD´s by practicing some live bait rescues. 

Days 4 & 5 

The next 2 days were spent running trip leader scenarios. We had started to notice that all of the students were starting to gel as a team of guides which was going to make the trip leader scenarios not only a test but a true learning experience. If you ask any guide who has already completed a trip leader scenario they will always comment that the scenarios are a true test of experience, judgment & skill and most of all the scenarios are fun. 

The first set of scenarios for the class 3 candidates were set on the lower section of the river. Both the trip leader and instructor candidates soon learnt the benefit of having well trained and focused safety kayakers assisting them on their scenarios. Between us Jim & myself were setting some challenging realistic scenarios. 

The second set of scenarios were help back on the challenging top section of the river for the class 4-5 trip leader and instructor candidates. We witnessed some true professionals at work here. The scenarios attracted lots of attention from the locals to the point where I had to tell one of the Nepali students to inform the locals that we were training and the man stuck in the river under the flipped raft was only pretending. Although we did see a concerned family cut a piece of bamboo to use as a reaching pole for one of our guides who was pretending to be a casualty of the scenario.  

Day 6 

Each of the scenarios was passed with flying colors along with all of the instructor candidates presentations. We put on the water on the morning of day 6 with one class 4-5 TL scenario to run. During this scenario we dealt with an unconscious victim. The scenario brought up the topic of carrying AED devices on a river trip. Hopefully in time to come we will start to see more and more AEDs been carried on commercial rafting trips. 

Ian acting as the unconscious victim during the scenario. 

The last section of the workshop was to spend the rest of the day testing the safety kayak skills for those who wanted to be assessed for the safety craft awards. We dealt with multiple & panicked swimmers along with unconscious swimmers. We also looked at way to control a raft from a kayak. 

As the course closed to an end each student received a detailed feedback session. The students all agreed that the workshop was a demanding but rewarding workshop with high standards in a fun safe learning environment. New friendships were made and the rafting world is now better off having some more IRF qualified instructors, trip leaders and guides from all corners of the world.   

Many thanks to Jim Coffey from Esprit and Paddle Nepal for helping to organize the course! 

Congratulations Nim, Josh, Grim, Ian, Chris, Daniel, Franco, Bharat, Dinesh, Bidur, Maila, Suraj, Arjun, Diraj and Manju! 

Happy paddling, Mark