The number of organized groups using climbing as a regular activity has grown enormously in the past ten years. Climbing is offered by organizations as diverse as high school outing clubs, summer camps, huge adventure organizations serving thousands of participants a year, therapeutic rehabilitation programs and adjudicated youth programs. The institutional use of climbing has proliferated because climbing can be a powerful tool. Climbing can help participants to overcome fears, build self esteem, develop a sense of responsibility for self and others, learn to take risks, etc. Climbing is also an enjoyable way to spend some time in a beautiful place and make the most of a day.
The growth of institutional climbing has been matched be an elevation in participant expectations and professional standards. Long gone are the days when anyone with a rope and a little climbing know how could simply head out into the woods and run an acceptable program. Although climbing is not a regulated activity, every institutional climbing program is obligated to meet stringent current industry standards of safety and quality. The use of appropriate techniques and technology is a good first step in quality program delivery, but it must be supported by good teaching skills, excellent management and consistent programming. An institution is operating in a substandard manner if it fails to maintain an atmosphere that is both emotionally safe and personally productive for all of its participants.
Climbing has become commonplace in the media and among certain populations. However, our basic resource, climbable and institutionally accessible rock, is limited. Access in many locations is endangered and must be carefully protected. Artificial walls are a useful training tool, but an inadequate substitute for the educational advantages of the "out there" feel of real rock. Institutional climbing programs must adhere to minimum impact ethics and land use regulations. Moreover, if institutional climbing programs are to continue exploiting our limited rock resources, they have an obligation to actively contribute to the preservation of those resources. Role modeling and teaching conscientious minimum impact use must be a part of every institutional climbing experience.
The purpose of this manual is to help institutions use the tool of climbing effectively.
This manual is:
A) A source of information for those involved in the formation and management of new climbing programs.
B) A spur towards a greater level of standardization within institutional climbing programs. Unnecessarily individualized techniques result in confusion among staff who work for multiple organizations. Inexperienced staff sometimes loose track of the important basic principles amid petty debates over particular knot or belaying preferences. Time saved by reducing staff retraining can be spent gaining essential climbing and rescue experience or preparing staff for the particular needs of different participant populations.
C) A field reference for those working directly with participants.
D) An attempt to debunk some of the myths surrounding techniques. Much of what has worked its way into climbing programs has been drawn from personal or military climbing and is institutionally inadequate, cumbersome, inconsistent or simply dangerous. There are also myths about the liability concerns of climbing programs. Many programs operate in the shadow of unfounded fears, yet give insufficient concern to those areas where they are actually vulnerable.
E) A call to raise the standards within the industry. The basic standards outlined in this work should be achieved and maintained by all institutional climbing programs. Climbing programs can not be managed haphazardly. Climbing instructors should be competent with all of the techniques described in this manual. Climbing instruction is a skill which must be practiced, studied and developed over time. If these standards are unattainable, an institution would be advised to contract out the delivery of climbing experiences to other reputable, professional climbing organizations.
This manual is not--
A) A replacement for experience and maturity of judgment. A safe program requires the leadership of people who have a depth of personal climbing, rescue, and institutional experience. The attention to detail and alertness that comes from personal climbing cannot be learned from a manual. Experience inculcates an ability to recognize and defuse potentially dangerous situations as can arise during a day of climbing or as trends over months of program activity.
B) A complete accounting of every detail of effective climbing program delivery. Climbing programs can help adolescents with their self esteem, executives with their communication skills or terminal patients with their grieving. Success in such particular endeavors requires an integrated methodology of education, teaching and presentation skills.
Climbing, if used without deliberate educational intent, devolves into just one more diversion and another lost opportunity. Without the benefit of a carefully shaped and articulated program that engages the participant on all levels, climbing holds the participant's attention only on the strength of its novelty, or to the degree that the experience is coveted as a status symbol.
C) A substitute for professional legal and land use advice.
D) The last word on any technical matters. In most situations, the techniques offered will be satisfactory, but the safest technique for any given situation must be determined on a case by case basis. Additionally, those who manage or work within a climbing program must keep up with ongoing advances in technology and associated advances in technique and standardization.
For any given technique there are alternate, equally useful methods. For the sake of simplicity, this work offers a minimal of alternatives where alternatives are not required. This is intended to promote consistency and ease of learning within an organization.
The importance of good management to the safety and quality of a climbing program can not be over emphasized. Most avoidable accidents within climbing programs can be attributed to negligent program management.
Management maintains the standards of the program through hiring, training and evaluating employees, ensuring that new procedures are not introduced without due consideration, modifying program activities to suit changing participant populations, etc.. Good program management can prevent some of the more common accidents that result from instructors undertaking activities that they are not capable of, working with groups that are too large for the number of instructors on hand, underestimating environmental hazards, participation of individuals who should have been screened out because of poor health, etc.. Good program management also ensures that the site being used is not damaged, that public relations are well maintained and that access to the rock is preserved.
A climbing program has three critical resources: climbing sites, employees and a program plan. Gear is an important resource, but its care, inventory and management are relatively simple. Other aspects of a successful climbing program include advertising, bookkeeping, and various business concerns. Fortunately, most institutional climbing programs operate under the auspices of a larger organization and are not primarily concerned with the more mundane necessities of running a business. Yet all climbing programs must answer to business realities. Familiarity with the business realities helps your program to get what it needs and to negotiate sacrifices without compromising safety or quality.
In addition to the long challenge of program management we face the daily problematic of site management. Each climbing site should have a single person in charge who coordinates the day's activities. This person should have the final word on all judgment calls. He or she bears the responsibility for anything that happens during the day.
The particular rocks that you use, along with budget, staff and participant needs, will determine the type of program that you can implement.
LOCATION
Rarely are the public's favorite rock sites well suited for institutional use. Bystanders can be distracting for participants of all ages. Additionally, an institutional program can make itself unpopular by monopolizing routes, descent paths and open areas. It is difficult to deliver a good program if your primary resource, the rock, is unavailable because private climbers were there first. Such setbacks might not be a big problem if you organization is a causal summer camp, but they can be disastrous if you selling expensive one day team building experiences to corporate clients. If you operate in an area that is rich with rock, a highly skilled staff will be able to avoid crowds and improvise a good day of climbing at less frequented rock site. Unfortunately, most programs lack this flexibility. Either the staff lack the skill or there are there is a paucity of acceptable sites. Ideally a climbing program should operate in an area that is rarely visited by other climbers or programs. Self sufficiency and rescue readiness enable a program to take advantage of more remote sites. A remote area is good, but not if it is so remote that the limitations of your program's rescue expertise and readiness would preclude a reasonably quick and gentle evacuation. Limited options and access may force you to resort to common public sites--as many programs do. Simply scheduling all of your programmed activity for weekdays can minimize conflicts.
Most institutional programming requires rocks that are easy to climb, yet imposing enough to make the experience an adventure. It is nice to have harder options available for more athletic participants, but it is essential that the majority of the participants be able to achieve some success on your rocks. Personal climbing experience is the only reliable tool for assessing sites for participant usability.
Institutional use of common public sites can be a source of enormous friction. Institutional climbing programs do not have privileged access to climbing sites unless they own those sights or have a special agreement with the land owners. While there are no official rules of etiquette governing the use of climbing sites, I have witnessed many clear abuses: instructors who run out early to sites and set up ropes to keep others off of "their" climbs; instructors who bring large groups into a crowded area without preventing their participants from disturbing other climbers or their equipment; instructors who allow participants to degrade the environment through litter, erosion and offensive noise; etc.. Institutions should be setting the standard for responsible climbing behavior, not becoming the bane of other climbers.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
As onerous as this sounds, assessing environmental impact is fundamental to running a responsible climbing program. Areas have been closed to climbing because of overuse and misuse. To get started, research and respect the regulations and practices of any area.
Cliffs often provide a habitat for species of plants and animals that may be rare or unique to the region. Such ecosystems are fragile. They have evolved in isolation from large animals and they are easily destroyed by the insensitive visitations of clawing, trampling climbers.
The rules and regulations of land use vary significantly. You have to do some local research. Areas may be closed temporarily for such things as peregrine falcon nesting or flora rejuvenation. Institutions must respect these closures, even if they seriously disrupt program schedules. Violating closures or other restrictions (such as group size) can result in the guilty group being permanently barred from using the site, all institutional groups being barred, or the area being closed to climbing entirely. There is a trend to protect resources from overuse through legislation that restricts professional operations. Such legislation does not necessarily distinguish between non-profit and for profit organizations.
Before considering how a particular site might be used, a decision must be made as to whether that site can support your program's impact. You have to make some rough calculations of how many people will be using the site per year. If your organization is bent upon expansion, you should make impact calculations that take into account your maximum size projections. Different environments have different tolerances. Contact someone who knows your area and find out as much as you can.
Following strict environmental ethics can minimize impact, but never eliminate it. A program has to be realistic about how well it can teach such an ethic. If a program normally runs twenty day multi-element programs with adults then it will be possible for the instructors to lay solid foundations for minimum impact ethics. Educated, cooperative adult participants can be trusted in delicate areas. However, if you have youth and your program is short, an increase in environmental damage per person is inevitable. Damage is caused by straying off of trails, leaving garbage or food scraps, trampling delicate growth, and even careless defecation.
SUITABILITY
The type of program you are capable of running will be a factor in determining the suitability of a rock for your program.
A rock site that has an abundance of natural anchors (large, healthy trees or rock thread throughs) is simplest for institutional use. An area that lacks natural anchors may be relatively easy for an experienced climber to set up with a small collection of stoppers and camming units, however, chock craft is not something that should be learned by your instructors as they set up climbs for their participants. As the institutional climbing industry has grown, the pool of instructors who are experienced lead climbers, competent with the use of chocks, has diminished. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that an increasing number of individuals learn to climb on sport routes or artificial walls. A program that has skilled instructors one year may find itself with inexperienced staff the next. A program can make a lot of trouble for itself by implementing the use of a sight requiring placed protection if the staff skill level degenerates in the following seasons. Such problems are likely to arise when unusually skilled, creative instructors are given the freedom to develop activities and sites. What is easily managed by highly skilled staff might be beyond the abilities of their successors. Consider the long term viability of all development. A programmatic inertia attends any activity once it is set into motion.
It is, of course, usually possible to place easy to use bolt anchors. But bolts may violate local ethics or regulations, meet with resistance and hurt public relations. Bolt placement remains a hotly debated subject within the climbing community. In addition, if you make a site too easy to use, you may find other programs gravitate to it and additional access conflicts arise.
It is possible to teach inexperienced instructors to set up particular climbs in a prescribed fashion with chocks, thus enabling use of a site that lacks natural anchors. Following this course requires expanded training and consistent supervision.
A rock site with perfect climbs and great anchors may be unusable because of a dangerous approach along exposed slabs or narrow ledges. Such an approach may be negotiated with safety-lines, but setting and removing safety-lines and managing the travel on safety-lines involves additional work and complicates site management. It may be the case that despite the security of safety lines, the increased demands of labor and competence prohibit use of a site. The approach to the climbs is often more of an issue than the climbs themselves.
Seasonal vagaries will effect site selection as well. A piece of rock that looks good in the fall may be wet, slippery and unusable for most of the spring and summer.
There are two ways in which single pitch, top-roped sites are used. One method locates the belayer at the bottom of the climb and the other at the top. The techniques for the institutional use of each method will be discussed in the second section, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Some rock sites may be amenable to either option, and some only to one or the other. A program with the resources of skill and time to safely manage a bottom belayed site may not have the capacity to manage a top belayed site.
Hiring, training and evaluating staff are central to the creation and maintenance of a good climbing program.
Much of what is required of your personnel will depend on the nature of your program. Any program can benefit from the leadership of an individual who possesses both a high level of technical climbing skill and significant institutional experience. Although it is to your advantage to have these skills combined in a single person, a pair of individuals with complementary abilities may be able to run a good program. Whoever heads up the climbing program needs to be able to run complex rescues, teach all of the skills within this book as well as many more, and maintain a consistent leadership presence over several years. The staff working under this individual should meet some basic standards of skill, maturity, education, training and experience.
MEDICAL TRAINING
A Wilderness First Responder emergency medical certification is a good foundation and is becoming the industry standard. There are shorter first aid courses, but they do not adequately cover many situations where good first aid could make the difference between the deterioration and stabilization of an injury.
Imagine the fairly common situation of a participant breaking their ankle in a minor slip while walking around on the rugged terrain at the base of the rock climbs. (Falling to the ground from a roped climb is EXTREMELY rare and except in truly bizarre circumstances, the result of gross program or participant negligence.) If your instructors do not know how to immobilize the injured ankle or transport the participant safely, the simple break might be turned into a permanently disability--a serious injury for which you may be liable. If, on the other hand, your instructors offer appropriate care, and exercise their best judgment, the injury is an understandable risk and the participant will not have legal recourse against you. Every participant should understand and accept the possibility of such accidents before participating in your activities. However, if you have not held your instructors to the basic certification requirements, and incompetent care is provided which causes a worsening of the participant's injury, to the point of permanent disability, you and your organization may (and should) be held liable if competent care would normally have prevented permanent disability.
EXPERIENCE
Experience is important, but difficult to evaluate. Resumes can be deceptive. An individual may have actually climbed all over the world but their partner or a paid guide might have done all of the technical work. Someone may honestly be leading 5.12s, but if they have done nothing but sport climbing, someone who leads 5.8s on their own gear may be more competent as an instructor. Leading naturally protected multi-pitch routes requires a level of judgment, initiative and problem solving that is not required of the sport or gym climber. Someone who has taken a course from an institution such as the National Outdoor Leadership School may have done a little climbing, but the NOLS alumni may prove inferior as an instructor to someone who has taken it upon themselves to study, learn and practice the mechanics of a comparable high risk activity such as caving. Courses for basic rock climbing skills are fine, but such a course can not teach the initiative, drive and self-trust required to open books, practice techniques and pester other climbers for information and guidance. Initiative and independent learning is essential to good climbing.
Mike Fischesser during his tenure as the director of the North Carolina Outward Bound School, would give prospective instructors a piece of rope during an interview and ask them to tie various knots. It Is easy to learn how to tie a knot, but hard to acquire the grace of someone who has tied the knot thousands of times.
Many programs are forced to hire instructors with minimal experience. When this is the case, expectations for gaining experience, training and performance must all be clearly defined. Institute a graduated system of positions which define the limit of individual responsibilities. New or inexperienced instructors can be called interns, assistants, or anything else so long as their responsibilities are limited in a clear and consistent manner.
TRAINING
In house training serves to familiarize staff with program philosophy, develop working relationships, standardize techniques and update staff on policy changes. Trainings can be used to try out new techniques or for staff to exercise new leadership roles.
An initial invitational training can serve as an introduction to your program as well as a further opportunity to screen out undesirables. It is an excellent time to challenge staff with complex and time pressured rescue scenarios. It is also a good time to let senior staff teach. Giving people responsibility is a key to effective training. There is no substitute for the personal motivation and professionalism that follows when a person is given responsibilities that stretch them a little bit.
One simple measure to ensure the consistency and safety of your program is to require senior instructors to be responsible for the training of the assistants with which they work. Of course, for this to happen enough time must be provided for this training to occur. Climbing sites may have to be over staffed. It is money well spent. To guarantee that the time is used well, the senior instructors should be held accountable for having conducted such training.
Instructors must learn to manage a rock site. Do not be afraid of insulting your instructors by reminding them of simple site management principles. I am familiar with a top belayed site where, within the course of a month, two participants climbed to the top of a fifty foot vertical face in harnesses that were not doubled back. If either participant had taken a hard fall, they could have come out of their harness and been killed or seriously injured. In each case, the assistant instructor at the bottom of the rock was perfectly capable of conducting a simple harness check. The problem lay in the assistant's insufficient awareness of their own supervisory limitations. In both cases, the assistant at the bottom was the least experienced staff person at the site. In one case the assistant became distracted with the efforts of one emotional participant and failed to give another participant a complete harness check. In the other, the assistant was trying to coordinate lunch preparation while doing harness checks. The ability to access and accept one's own limitations is a better indication of instructional maturity than is the mastery of complex techniques.
Several steps could have been taken to prevent the near misses described above. The site managers each blindly assumed the competence of the assistant at the bottom. As will happen, the assistant wanted to perform well and demonstrate their ability to keep everything going. The site manager could have been doing a verbal double check to confirm that each harness had been checked before the participant started climbing. This would have reinforced the importance of the task for both the participants and the assistant. Additionally, the senior instructor could have shut down one of the climbs so that the whole situation could have been monitored more effectively. Electing to do less, so that a site can be safely managed, is not a natural decision for active, enthusiastic instructors. Conservative, pro-active dampening should be emphasized frequently in trainings and demonstrated by senior staff at the rock sites.
Other responsibilities of the rock site manager include creating and orchestrating a definite plan for how the day is to be run and taking the time to inform all the involved instructors. The site manger is responsible for organizing activities efficiently so that all the participants are given as much opportunity to climb as possible. The site manager must understand and accept their responsibility for the ultimate quality and safety of the experience.
It can be useful to visit the sites you will be using during training sessions. Conduct a standard climbing program and have the senior staff play the roles of your most difficult participants, simulating the most common and dangerous mistakes that have been observed in previous years.
Staff also benefit from a review of past incidents and accidents. Decide why they happened and how they could have been better handled. Encourage the person who was most directly responsible for each incident to lead the discussion.
The tone in which you conduct your trainings will be the tone in which your instructors conduct their climbing programs.
A well considered plan is the backbone of a safe climbing program. Employees may not always agree with particular policy decisions, but they are more likely to work with the system if it is guided by a program plan that conveys a consistent position and perspective. A written set of goals and principles is an integral part of the safety structure.
For example, in military or paramilitary climbing, a higher level of risk may be accepted than can be tolerated institutional programming. The military may set aside some precautions for the sake of speed. If you employ ex-military personnel, and their hasty methods result in the death of a participant, the program will be held accountable if it failed to clearly explain and insist upon its particular priorities. (Military personnel often make excellent employees.)
The program plan must be sustainable through fluctuations of competency among staff. The program plan should not include activities beyond the abilities of average staff. As mentioned above, there will be years when skilled staff are capable of managing more elaborate activities than can be authorized within the program plan. Special activities of greater complexity can be sanctioned on an individual basis. It is difficult to prohibit unskilled staff from leading activities which are described in the program plan. Additionally, when sanctioning special events, don't assume that staff can safely run such activities as high lines or multi-pitch climbs just because they are excited about them. Work with the instructors and review their plans--including emergency procedures.
BASIC OPERATING PROCEDURES
You will need to establish basic operational procedures: principles to which your staff can defer when there are doubts as to what action must be taken.
Given that safety is a common primary principle, "the most conservative call rules" is a useful operational procedure. For example, if there is a thunderstorm brewing and one instructor states their discomfort with the situation and wants to begin an evacuation, while the other feels comfortable waiting it out, the more conservative call holds sway, regardless of seniority.
Another sound operational procedure prohibits instructors (or other participants) from forcing, coercing, pressuring or tricking participants into doing anything. Regardless of how beneficial an instructor thinks a particular activity might be for a participant, the choice must be made by the participant. Emotional safety is as important as physical safety. Moreover, for the participant to meaningfully accept the risk of the activity, they must voluntarily choose to participate in the activity.
If the participant is not in a position to accept the risks, you accept the risks and liability for all injuries, including those which were not the product of any negligence.
Deference to the conservative call and non-coersion are just a start in establishing basic operating procedures. Further operational procedures specific to climbing will be suggested in the section on techniques. Additional procedures must be created to guide the use of your particular sites, for working with your particular populations, for the limitations of your particular staff pool and in accordance with your particular educational objectives.
STANDARDIZATION
Despite obvious benefits, standardization is often rejected on the grounds that it suppresses the creativity among instructors needed for good teaching and the innovative resolution of problematic situations. The fallacy of this objection lies in its failure to distinguish between the proscription of non-prescribed action and the prescription of principles that can be easily met, but which do not limit independent action. If an employee is told that all anchors must fulfill the principle of redundancy, that employee is not restricted in their freedom to coordinate and frame the day's activities. Neither is the instructor prohibited from improvising any assist or rescue that might be called for. Any instructor who insists that they must be allowed to tie one type of knot rather than another, when the choice of knots has no bearing on the participant experience, fails to grasp the real challenges of their instructional task. Creativity can be profitably exercised in the instructor's efforts to orchestrate a good experience, not to try out a novel anchor or an unusual activity.
Standardization helps to ensure that all staff know at least one correct method for accomplishing a given task. I have worked with several instructors, for example, who had a vague knowledge of several belay escapes, but who could perform none of them with the confidence and full working knowledge required for their use in unusual or stressful situations. A thorough knowledge of a single method is more useful than a superficial knowledge of many.
The areas of freedom and limitation that instructors work within must be clearly defined. A small competent staff can be permitted to choose climbing sites anchor arrangements at their own discretion. With a large, mixed staff, it is necessary to clearly identify a specific number of appropriate climbs, rappel sites and the set up and use of those sites.
Instructors employ techniques that are unfamiliar to other staff. The danger in this is that less experienced staff may assume that those techniques are preferable or expected and attempt to imitate them without full comprehension. I once observed an instructor "belaying" a climber with a rope simply passed through a carabiner on their harness. When I asked him what he was doing, he explained that he had seen other instructors belaying that way. What he had observed was other instructors belaying with a munter hitch on a parabiner. Being young, inexperienced and unable (or reluctant) to adequately identify his own weaknesses, he had attempted to imitate the technique without having any idea of what he was doing or asking someone to show him. When individuals are hired for work that they are not particularly experienced with, as often happens in this field, they may have doubts about their own competency. These doubts can interfere with judgment and the honest reporting of incidents and near misses.
Its essential that you as program manager know what is really going on in the climbing program. Employees must trust that you are on their side and eager to help them learn. It must be clear that you are not out to feed your own ego by catching other's mistakes. Intelligent, reasonable instructors make ludicrous mistakes. Mistakes of the same type are made in any office: mis-transfering calls or breaking the copying machine. Your trainings must acknowledge the inevitability of mistakes, while emphasizing the need for the meticulous and conservative attitude necessary to catch and correct mistakes before they lead to serious injury.
PARTICIPANT POPULATION
Different populations have different needs. A program that regularly does a three day program with college groups as part of freshman orientation programs, will come to expect certain behaviors and capacities for responsibility from its participants. That program will have to change it's approach if it lands a contract to work with a group of seventh graders, whose attention span is usually much shorter. The program plan must include guidelines for working with each of the populations that the organization will serve. The program plan must allow for adaptation. Instructors should not be put in the position of having to choose between following their best judgment and following program policy.
TEACHING
It is clear that participants benefit more from climbing under their own power than they would from being hoisted up a route. The climbing experience is similarly enriched when participants understand and operate their own safety systems. Being entrusted with the responsibility of belaying other participants increases the level of investment and accomplishment. Adults are more likely to vocalize the value of this aspect of the experience, but young people are just as likely to benefit from having been entrusted with such a responsibility. Of course, there are times when it just won't work to have participants belay each other. You may lack time or qualified staff. Regardless of limitations, there is always something that can be done to involve the participants in actively assuming responsibility for their own safety. Teach participants how to tie their own knots, to spot each other, to monitor each other, etc..
The more participants are taught about what they are doing, why they are doing it and how to do it themselves, the more they are able to assess the associated risks. If a participant has no comprehension of the risks involved or of what actions were expected of them, it would follow that they would be unable to accept any responsibility for the risks of the activity. The informed participant assumes much of the risk and liability for potential injury in high risk activities. Teach skills thoroughly and make sure the participants understand the actual risks involved.
It is obvious that each participant should understand the injury that might be sustained if they unclipped from an anchor and fell without a belay. Participants should also understand the danger inherent in any activity in a remote location: even with adequate medical care, many injuries which would be trivial in the urban setting can be serious in the back country. Teach (do not lecture, threaten or assume) the high degree of personal care and responsibility required to function safely in the back country.
Integral to any instructional program is the necessity of an increasing progression of skills taught, practiced and utilized. The participants should be required to demonstrate their understanding and proficiency at each step in the progression before being allowed to participate in subsequent activities where safety depends on those skills. Instructors should be prohibited from skipping steps in the teaching progression in order to "get to the good stuff" and maximize the thrills of a day's activities.
A potentially dangerous situations arises when one participant does not, for whatever reason, keep up with the group. If this lag is the result of a disability rather than an attitude problem, instructors may be tempted to bend the standards and bring the slow participant along. If the instructors have the resources of time and experience to provide additional supervision, things might work out, but this is rarely the case. Because of the risks involved, it is most compassionate to restrict the participation of individuals who fail to demonstrate adequate competence in the requisite skills as they are taught and practiced. Thorough preemptive screening of participants is imperative. Disabled individuals (including overweight fifty year olds with potential heart problems) should be accommodated when possible, but not at the cost of an increased threat to their own or other's safety. Be prepared to direct participants who do not qualify for your program to more suitable programs.
Most climbing programs run their participants through a practice belaying session on the ground before going to the rock. If the climbing is limited to simple sling-shotting, it is possible to start climbing right away and to teach belaying with deliberate, hands on supervision of each belayer.
Accurate record keeping is essential. Good records are an invaluable resource. They enable accurate tracking of trends within the program and staff development, timely equipment replacement, and will provide essential documentation of program practices and incidents in the event of a safety inspection, insurance review or litigation. At a minimum, written records must be maintained of organizational practices that can fairly be called policy, incidents that compromised safety, regular employee evaluations, employee and institution certifications, and equipment purchases.
SAFETY RECORDS
Each safety compromising incident should be recorded in detail. Clear distinctions must be drawn between actual accidents and occurrences which only raised the risk level to an unacceptable level. Incident records should include a narrative of the event along with an analysis of why it happened and what could be done differently. Whoever has ultimate responsibility for safety in the organization should evaluate each report.
Attempts to hide, obscure or distort the facts surrounding an accident will be detrimental to your cause in the case of litigation. Accurate record keeping and a history of a responsible dedication to the pursuit of the truth will contribute to your standing and image as a quality outdoor adventure company. However, be advised that all written or recorded material which references an accident or program practices, including personal notes, may be demanded and used during litigation. Limit your recorded comments to the facts and details of the accident, relevant previous events which foreshadowed or contributed to the accident and unpresumptive analysis.
EMPLOYEE EVALUATIONS
Evaluations deserve your attention. Evaluations help to track the strengths and weakness of instructors, as well as their development or stagnation. Evaluations provide the documentation to support a firing. Evaluations can also protect you should an individual who was injured by one of your employee's negligence attempt to hold the you liable on the grounds that the you negligently retained an irresponsible or incompetent employee. Evaluations are a waste of time if they devolve into routine, homogenous, busy work.
Evaluations should include assessments of the instructor's ability to perform the particular skills required of him or her by your organization. Evaluations should also include assessments of the instructor's general maturity, responsibility, etc..
EQUIPMENT RECORDS
You need to know (and to be able to document) when you bought what. As discussed below, ropes in particular have a limited safe life and should be retired at a prescribed date, regardless of how good they look.
If by chance, a rope should slice over a sharp edge during a hard, pendulum fall, you will sleep better if you know that excessive rope age was not a contributing factor. Of course, your instructors should prevent pendulum falls from occurring in the first place and you shouldn't be operating on a rock with sharp edges, but reality is sometimes unpredictable: participants panic and behave irrationally, rocks break and leave sharp edges.
Regardless of what you might have heard, the law aims to be reasonable. There are no secret tricks for avoiding liability. There are no sneaky hidden clauses that will release you from culpability in instances of gross negligence or conversely, which would lead to the loss of a law suit if you were running a responsible program. The best defense against tort litigation is a well managed, well delivered program. Pay attention to details, do things right, create a solid plan, maintain good records, run a good training program, and keep up to date with industry standards.
Take for example, the case of an employee who is frequently cutting corners in the safety management of participant activities. Regardless of all of the rules written into your program plan which prohibit his actions, if those violations of safety policy result in an injury, and it can be proven the employee's supervisor was aware of the violations but did not succeed in ending them, the supervisor and the organization will share responsibility for the injury.
Program plans, records and participant release forms will not protect you from liability when an accident or injury is the result of overly negligent management, program delivery or care for a participant. What the plan, records and forms can do is to help document the quality, standards and practices of your program if they should be questioned.
There are different levels of negligence, but in adventure programming negligence is usually either ordinary or gross. Ordinary negligence is the "failure to perform with a degree of care the circumstances require, the omission of that care which a person of prudence usually would be expected to give or the want of "ordinary care."" A climbing instructor is expected to actively supervise and critique participant belaying. A climbing program manager is expected to actively supervise and critique climbing instructors. The reasonable care which must be given corresponds to the reasonably anticipated and foreseen risks. "Negligence is based upon those unintentional acts which harm, but wherein the person does not wish to bring about the consequences which follow, nor does that person believe that they will occur, but in fact such consequences could have been foreseen by a reasonable and prudent professional in the same situation and action to guard against then should have been taken. The reason for failure to foresee the consequences, whether it be carelessness, bad judgment, excitement, simple inattention, inexperience, ignorance, stupidity, or forgetfulness, is immaterial, even though acting in good faith." Gross negligence differs only in degree. Gross negligence is still unintentional.
Beyond the area of careless negligence we find intentional recklessness, willful and wanton misconduct, malicious conduct and conduct with felonious intent.
ASSUMED RISK
The assumed risk defense against tort litigation is important, but it is effective only to the degree that it can be proven that the participant understood the risks involved with the activity. A thorough and consistent teaching plan is one of the best ways to ensure that participants are adequately educated to the risks involved. The program plan should be specific as to what participants will be taught before and during each activity. These guidelines should be included within the operating procedures that all instructors are expected to know and practice.
Written procedures can become liabilities. If written guidelines are disregarded because they have become outdated, inadequate or are too rigid for the diversity of participants and situations encountered, they can be held against your organization as a sign of poor management. This does not mean that written operating procedures should be avoided, but rather that they must be kept up to date.
PARTICIPANT FORMS
Even the most carefully researched and developed participant form is not reliable protection against a law suit if an injury has been sustained as result of extremely gross or intentional negligence. Nonetheless, release/ liability/assumption of risk forms are important. When an individual signs a form stating that they assume responsibly for, and accept the risks associated with particular activities, that individual is asserting their right and ability to protect themselves from injury by their own good judgment. At that point is incumbent upon the individual to choose among adventure organizations on the basis the organization's reputation, practices and credentials. This is how the relationship between the organization and the participant should be. Otherwise, the individual can neglect their responsibility to evaluate the trustworthiness of an organization and assumes that he or she is protected by the general threat of litigation — hoping that any organization will do its best to prevent injury out of a fear of litigation. When organizations are guided by a fear of litigation rather than the need to maintain a good reputation and sell programs to educated customers, program quality suffers.
Take for example, the common high risk activity of driving your participants around in the van. When the participants have signed a release form, they are acknowledging that in their judgment, you are a reasonably competent driver who will do his or her best to avoid an accident. They are accepting a certain amount of risk. The driving skills of those who are legally allowed to drive varies greatly. There are no perfect drivers. Every driver is negligent to some minor degree every time they drive. If you are driving, have an accident and participants are injured, those participants will be unable to recover damages if they signed a form releasing you from liability for ordinary negligence. It may be true that another driver might have had faster reflexes and could have avoided the crash which left two participants paralyzed for life, but that is one of the risks each participant accepted when they signed the form and agreed to let a conscientious but imperfect driver such as yourself drive them to the rock sight. Of course, if you were being grossly negligent (overloading the van, driving in hazardous conditions) or intentionally negligent (drinking, speeding, steering with your feet or driving with a suspended license) no participant form will protect you. Neither will froms offer protection if you as a program manager failed to take reasonable precautions such as checking your employee's driving records, having the van inspected or firing employees who drove too fast.
Forms can help to prevent frivolous litigation. They can also help to build the participant's level of knowledge about the risks that are involved with the program activities. Forms are the first step in the education process, whereby the participant becomes familiar with the risks associated with the activity and meaningfully accepts those risks. The forms should include a detailed description of possible risks. A description of risks can not be exhaustive, nor should it be touted as such, but it can indicate just how wide the range of possible risks really is.
An attorney can help with the creation of forms that are appropriate for a given program and location. The laws on such forms vary from state to state. What offers complete exculpation in one state may be considered unconscionable in another. The type of form you should use will be affected by whether you sell programs to individuals, contract with large groups or serve as a subcontractor for another organization. Participant age has a bearing on form design.
Within tort law are found Agreement to Participate forms, Informed Consent forms and Parental permission forms. Under contract law are found Covenants not to Sue, Releases containing Exculpatory Clauses, and Indemnification Clauses. A program will probably be best served by a combination of forms. A Lawyer can help you decide what that combination should consist of and how it should be worded. Generic forms are not recommended.
INSURANCE
Liability insurance is essential. A risk must be accepted when running a high risk program that you or someone working for you might act with extreme negligence and cause an injury. If this is the case, it would be both your legal and moral obligation to compensate the injured party. Insurance can make it possible to meet such an obligation. Consult both an attorney and an insurance agent about the type of coverage you require.
FINAL NOTE
Well managed and well delivered institutional programs are less likely to be subject to tort litigation than many people seem to believe. Risk activities which are difficult and demanding are less vulnerable to litigation than amusement park rides or bungee jumps. The skill and awareness required of the climbing participant and the obvious danger of tall cliffs guarantees a higher level of knowledge about the risks involved. Do not throw away this advantage by neglecting to teach a progression of increasing skills and responsibilities that enable each participant to accept risk in a meaningful manner. Do not make the mistake of telling participants that there is no danger. They may believe you and see no reason to ask for help when confused with a knot or an unexpected situation.