California Challenge Course Network – Conference

Nate started the conference out with a state of the industry report, which was pretty much a run down from what was talked about in the ACCT conference. ACCT was the focus at the conference and only John from Four Winds even mentioned PRCA throughout the 2 days. Basic points Nate brought through were:

Self regulation in the industry to avoid forced regulation Standards still evolving It is important to start an industry hours portfolio detailing

o Facilitation hourso Training receivedo Training deliveredo Building - make sure to include pictures

Work will be dictated by a number of layers of control of increasing complexityo Your personal choiceo Course guidelineso Course policieso Industry best practiceo Industry standardso Fed/State laws and regulations

Craig – Rescue Process on their course

Went through their rescue procedure. Each station has a backpack set up with a 3-1 system for lowering a rescue and that is taken up into the course with the staff. They have moved away from the cut-away.

If there is a non medical problem on the course the first step will be to attempt emotional/verbal assistance. This is basically asking questions to see what the problem is.

Step two is to try and tech them another skill or way to way to attempt the problem

Step three Reach out and give some direct assistance either with a hand or rope.

Step four is to assess the situation for the best way to now perform a rescue if the other option are not successful

Training

Discussed how the various camps and sites conduct their training and saw a pretty good cross section.

John from Four Winds says that they have a 13 day training program per year. They do not pay their staff during this time and it is broken into 2-4 day chunks. There are 4 levels of training evaluation:

1. Trainer 2. Self 3. Peer 4. Client

Craig from Westminster Woods have most of their staff conduct level I or II ACCT training and are expected to have 40hrs training initially. They then conduct a day where they are shadowed by a facilitator, followed by an apprenticeship day and then a sign-off day. Each successive day sees them required to take more responsibility for the group and at the end of each day they sit down and debrief with the facilitator.

Mt Hermon is a little more fluid with their training and tend to train depending on the stations the staff are likely to be working ,although the canopy tour side of things is much more rigid when it comes to training.

Camp Augusta

Teach specific skill relavent to the stations they are likely to be working out. Sounds a bit like they feel they do not have the time to do a proper staff training over a number of days. Mentioned they have a had a number of near misses over the years. Mmmmm wonder if there is a corelation their with lack of specific training and potential accidents?

Marketing

Not as much out of this one as many of the camps were not actively marketing. They say they are full or happy where they are and this comes from word of mouth. John from Four Winds is a “salesman” and so he is constantly marketing and much is done on the personal level through organizations and committees. He also conducts a little gorilla marketing, which at times feels a little over the top.

Positive Psychology

This one was facilitation based and looked into the stages of emotion that someone might go through on a course. The idea is to have them in the “Flow” which is basically equivalent to the zone.

Based on Mr. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee) is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity; people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Just went into this in more detail.

Tree Climbing

Did a quick tree climbing session where we used a Blakes Hitch and prussik to ascend and descend a tree. Cool knot and nice and simple, especially when there is not a lot of equipment available.

That was basically the conference, minus the bar and Karaoke. Good chance there will be another next year and if we want to take part again it would likely be good to run an equipment and element inspection workshop for them.