OllieBray.com

Managing Risk on Youth Expeditions: Leading Edge Expeditions

On Saturday Clive Burgess, Mark Salmon and I ran a youth expedition seminar for Learning Edge Expeditions. The aim of the seminar was to provide future expedition leaders will advice and support on running their own trips.

I was given the task of speaking about 'Managing Risk on Youth Expeditions' and also providing some sources of information on possible ventures, venues and ideas.

I promised that I would post the slides that I used during my morning slot – so here they are:

Managing Risk on Youth Expeditions

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

If you were at the seminar and would like further information and advice please get in touch.

NOTE: The picture above is Chesil Beach on the Saturday afternoon. the waves were wild!

Cascades Youth Expedition a Great Success

I’m slowly recovering form my recent expedition to the Cascade Mountains of the USA and Bowron Lakes of Canada. It was an outstanding expedition and a real privilege to share the four weeks with my colleagues and the young people in our care. I have been volunteering and leading this type of expedition for the last twelve years to venues from the Alps to Alaska and this particular trip has been one of the highlights.

The expedition had three main objectives:

• To trek the Wounderland Trail
• To Climb Mt. Rainier
• To Canoe the Bowron Lakes of Canada

When we started the Wonderland Trail on 18th July the rangers reported that no one had got past the first day. People attempting the Trail were turning back simply because there was too much snow. I have to say that this 'trek' was more a mountaineering adventure. Fortunately we took ice axes which were needed. We completed the Trail in 7 gruelling days. To give you a flavour, day one was 15 hours before we eventually reached camp. By the time we finished we were still the only group to have completed the trail. I think the total ascent was something close to 27000' (with the descents similar).

Word got round the National Park that a bunch of Brit youngsters had done the Trail. The rangers were even more amazed when following the Trail we immediately embarked on an ascent of Mt Rainier and six of the group got to the summit following two days of being holed up at high camp due to the conditions.

Rainier is a tough mountain, it is heavily crevassed and is a training ground for American Everest teams. We were the first and one of the only teams to make it to the summit while we were on the mountain. Many other teams didn’t get out of their tents or turned back due to high winds (they have obviously never experienced a Scottish winter!). Mark Salmon and I successfully guided six of our young people to the top all of whom displayed incredible technical competence on the mountain.

The third objective was in British Columbia, Canada to canoe the wilderness Bowron Lake Circuit. This natural rectangle is over 100 km long and we completed the circuit in five days.

More information about the expedition can be found on the Expedition Website (which I will get round to up-dating soon.)

Cycling, Glentress, Young People, Mountain Biking and East Lothian Bike to Work?

One of my favourite places to drink coffee at the moment is the Hub Cafe at Glentress – it’s a lively family orientated mountain biking café near Peebles. Where nobody cares what they look like, in fact, most people are covered in mud! It sells great (simple food), amazing filter coffee and award winning Banoffee pie.

I was down at Glentress at the weekend – trying my best to get fit for my summer expedition to the Cascade Mountains. If you have not been to Glentress before I would definitely recommend it, they have routes for all ages and abilities and you can hire a bike if you don’t have one of your own. One new feature since the last time I want down is the establishment of a new Blue decent route – it’s fantastic and would be great for beginners to develop their confidence.

The other great thing about my trip down at the weekend was the amount of young people out cycling. Notably several pupils from Peebles High School – wearing their school Mountain Bike Shirts. It’s not often that you get pupils out of school time to wear, in essence, school uniform. These young people were obviously proud to be part of the team and had fostered a real sense of community.

North Berwick High School have recently started a Mountain Bike Club and also bought some Mountain Bikes for the pupils that don’t have them. I have been thinking about trying to do a similar thing at Musselburgh for a few months now – the problem is we don’t have the storage space to keep the bikes? And I’m not sure how we will ever get around this problem in a PPP school?

The other thing I was thinking about is wouldn’t it be great to develop somewhere for Mountain Biking for young people in East Lothian? Wouldn’t it also be great if East Lothian participated in the Bike to Work Scheme, like many other councils (such as Edinburgh) and other East Lothian employees do. Even if council employees didn’t cycle to work all the time having access to bikes would mean that people would still get out at the weekend, improve their fitness and reduce their stress levels.

Cascade Mountain Scottish Training Weekend

I spent the weekend in the Cairngorms training with the expedition team for the summer trip to the Cascade Mountains. Over the weekend we covered some basic snow and ice techniques including walking on snow, use of crampons, winter equipment and how to use an ice axe. We managed to get ourselves onto some quite steep ground in Corrie Cas and we also took the opportunity to make use of the high winds. As training weekends go – the Cairngorms provided excellent conditions.

On the Sunday we had a more restful day looking at rope work and some of the basics of crevasse rescue in the very controlled environment of the Avimore Bridge Inn Car park.

For me it was really refreshing to be back out on the hill and teaching again in an environment that I find very natural and enjoyable. I was also great to get to know the group of young people that I have given up four weeks of my summer holidays to spend time with this summer. I think we will have a great trip and I am very much looking forward to the next training weekend where we will be covering open canoe, trekking and camp craft skills.

For more information on this summers expeditions visit: http://cascades2008.wordpress.com/

Below are some photos from the weekend.

Cascades 2008 Expedition Website

I’ve been using Wordpress.com to put together a website for next summers Youth Expedition to the Cascade Mountains, USA and Bowron Lakes, Canada.

I hope that the site will develop in time to provide more informatio0n about the expedition, its objectives and its members.

If your interested you can fide the site at: http://cascades2008.wordpress.com/

Cascades Expedition in Google Earth

I spent a bit of the weekend working on some of the logistics for next summers expedition to the Cascade Mountains. We made the decision a few weeks ago to add an open canoeing section to the trip. Although we will be mainly be based in the Mt. Rainier National Park, for the canoeing we have decided to head to the Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit in British Columbia, Canada .

I first paddled the Bowron Lakes in 1996 and this was my first real taste of a wilderness expedition. I was thinking back to the logistics of organising the 1996 trip – everything was done with fax machine or letter back then and it took months to book canoes or to get up-to-date maps delivered. When you made a telephone call across the Atlantic you had to be prepared for high phone charges and you were likely to be cut off halfway through your conversation. Today, I could have organised the whole trip from my laptop and then followed everything up on Skype.

One of the thinks that I found were some really good Google Earth plugins for Mt. Rainier. One of the objectives for next summers trip is to trek the Wonderland Trail and another objective is to climb Rainier using the Camp Schurman Route. If you download this Google Earth file the Wonderland Trail is shown in Red and the Camp Schurman Route is shown in Blue.

I also found this really good Google Earth USGS overlay for Mt Rainier. Again you can download that here. In the picture below both the routes and USGS layer are on. These resources will provide a useful tool to brief the team later in the year.

Getting Google earth files for the Bowron Lakes was more problematic, however this Google Map My Map of the area shows the lakes involved in this fantastic 6 day canoe journey. If you haven’t messed around with the new terrain feature on Google Maps it is really worth looking at to help teach physical geography.

View Larger Map

Finally, my trawling of the Internet led me to this You Tube Google earth fly through of the Bowron Lakes.

Now all I have to do is wait for next July!

Cascades Expedition Selection

Selection for next summers Cascades Expedition took place at the beginning of the month in Dorset. We have a great group of young people in the team. Here are some photographs from their selection weekend: