Beginning this year a two-credit River Guide Leadership class is being offered during the fall semester to teach students theoretical outdoor leadership skills and give real experience on the water.
Assistant Director of Outdoor Programs Sam “Salmon” Norgaard-Stroich teaches the course. According to him, the class is being offered largely to increase the number of qualified Outdoor Program (OP) trip leaders. “Whitewater rafting is definitely one of the most fun trips we lead. But there are also a lot of risks and a lot of responsibilities for leaders, and it requires a lot of training,” said Norgaard-Stroich.
The class is open to people with any level of experience. Spots are held for first-years in the hope that they will start building their skills now and be ready to lead trips during their junior or senior years.
Norgaard-Stroich hopes the class will allow the OP to lead two rafting Scrambles for first-years. The whitewater rafting Scramble has been the most popular trip and the fastest one to fill up, but more leaders are needed to offer another trip to accommodate interest.
Sophomore Krystina Andrews took the class because “it sounded really fun and I wanted to lead more trips with the OP,” she said. Andrews helped lead a snowshoeing trip last year.
Andrews said the class involves practicing things like “diving the raft and rescuing people and doing rapids and flipping the raft.” They meet once a week for two hours and take two trips, one to the Deschutes River and one to the Lower Main Salmon over Whitman’s four-day break. The class involves “quite a bit of lecture, and tests and projects that [the students] write, so there’s a bit of a traditional classroom experience. But you can’t learn raft-guide leadership from a book, so you have to get out and do it,” said Norgaard-Stroich. “It’s a real experiential course.”
Andrews is considering becoming a certified raft guide, but she said she needs more experience and she’s unsure about the process she should go through.
“[This] class doesn’t actually make you able to lead rafting trips,” she said.
Norgaard-Stroich clarified this: “We don’t do a lot of whitewater rescue training in this course, but that is a certification we require for people to be raft guide leaders here.”
The best way to go about getting the experience necessary, according to Norgaard-Stroich, is to work for a commercial guiding company over the summer. “This [course] is a great way to get a job as a raft guide,” he said.
Students who want to become trip leaders can also participate in the OP’s leader-in-training program, which allows students to work closely with an experienced leader learning how the program works and helping to lead trips. Gradually, these students take on more responsibility until they are ready to be paid leaders.
