Wilderness risk management
Safety
Geology is why you booked the week. Safety is what we are built on — Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)–founded and EMT-directed wilderness risk management for industry geology field trips, not soft “alignment” to a British organizing spec.
- Medical floor: Wilderness First Responder (WFR) minimum on trips; EMT is the lowest national standard and license
- Staff: Safety and group management first — not a second job on an office geologist
- Track record: 15 years · 211 industry geology field trips and counting
Medical training
Medical Training
Geology Field School is EMT-founded and EMT-directed.
Wilderness First Responder (WFR), Wilderness Advanced First Aid (WAFA), and Wilderness First Aid (WFA) are not medical standards. They are private course certificates, and anyone who finishes the 8–30 hour course gets the paper. There are some great WFR training programs out there, and we use WFRs on the ground on our trips all the time — but we do not pretend it is the safety program. It is the minimum level of medical training required to manage a group on one of our trips, and we would never send a first-year certified WFR into the field.
When I started at Nautilus in 2014 the expectation for field staff was Wilderness Advanced First Aid (about a 36-hour course). In 2015 all U.S.-based staff were Wilderness First Responder certified (70–80 hour course). When I left Nautilus in 2019 the first thing I did was get certified as an EMT. Emergency Medical Technician is the lowest level of medical training tied to a national standard and a license.
Field operations
Staff with Purpose
Our field staff are safety and group management first. They are not an office-staff geologist with safety as a second job, and they are not a graduate student with a radio and a title. Our field staff may know the rocks, but they know that is not their assignment. Dynamic risk assessment, group management, and emergency response are the role — and it gets their full attention.
Equipment
Specific gear
Every piece of equipment taken on a trip is specified for a reason — from the polymer composition of the throw lines to the architecture of the shell on our Petzl rock helmets. Equipment is meticulously researched and chosen to be fit for purpose, almost to an obsessive level. We use different colored safety vests for different times of year and climates. We use redundant modes of communication in the field, specific radio bands for convoys, and so many other esoteric items that only show up when someone has the dedicated job of mitigating field-trip problems before they start.
Ask your “training provider” what model helmet they use and why. If their answer doesn’t start with a pause or “uhhh….” I’ll give you a quarter.
Corporate systems
HSE Bridge
Oil and gas companies speak Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) fluently — but almost always these corporate systems are built for an industrial environment or office building, not an outcrop, a storm cell, or a long walk to pavement. We have spent more than ten years putting wilderness risk management inside corporate HSE language via proprietary bridging systems and risk assessments.
Marketing vs work
They’ve got (soft) Standards…
You may hear some other training providers say they’re “aligned” to BS:8848 regarding their safety standards or plans or guidance.
BS:8848 is a “British specification for organizing visits, fieldwork, and expeditions outside the United Kingdom.”
To have the real-deal Claim of Conformity you have to shell out $312 American dollars for the 48-page PDF and then sign the self-declaration of voluntary compliance. And even then you have a British organizing spec for trips that leave the UK — paperwork and basic mitigations written for school groups, gap years, charity challenges, and adventure travel.
Alignment is free. Alignment is a vibe. Alignment is marketing words when you don’t have any expertise in field risk management.
Side by side
They sell vs We run
They sell
Catalog language
- Alignment to a British organizing spec
- An unspecified “first responder”
- Unspecified field kit
- A document review from years ago
We run
Field work
- EMT-founded. EMT-directed.
- WFR minimum on the ground.
- Kit specified for this work.
- Field staff whose first job is safety.
Institutional experience
This is the work
We have specifically been in outdoor experience-based education for 15 years — 211 industry geology field trips run, and counting. That is institutional experience an alliance, training program, or catalog cannot hire by the week. Wilderness risk management is our work. Geology is why you booked the week. Safety is what we’re built on.
