What makes a successful expedition

Well, good to know that my guide was so comfortable in our environment, but this attitude greatly impacted my experience and compromised our safety. Up on that mountain, where I already felt exposed and inexperienced, my confidence started to fail. I imagined him falling and me feeling helpless.

My strength and fitness transformed to weakness in comparison to him. And when I discovered that this climb—a challenge and thrill for me—was a boring exercise for him, I deflated. I found it hard to recover my confidence over those days of climbing. The result was emotional and physical. I grew stiff and scared. Safety was compromised. On the last day, we met another group coming down from the peak above us.

They were clearly beginners, less experienced than me, but they were smiling, and the guide was smiling too. She encouraged them all the time, and it showed. They were building their confidence and therefore their skill and safety , while mine was crumbling. Visit Boreal River Adventures. Contact 1 FR. Our guiding team with Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic in Iceland 5 ways to improve group safety 1.

Learn their names Help your guests feel respected and important; nobody wants to be anonymous during their adventure. Listen People need to hear your instructions and safety information, and you can foster a listening environment by role modelling.

Establish your credibility Give your guests evidence that they can trust you. Set boundaries Early and firmly. Encourage your guests This one is simple, fun and perhaps the most effective. Fortunately, much of the Diver Training Programme needs divers to be going diving, so training and experience should be relatively easy to build-in to most dives.

In my early diving career, I recall many a successful expedition with the sole objective of getting club members the dives to complete their next grade. The instructors just happened to use a great dive trip to deliver the purpose. For example, as a member of Loughborough University Sub-Aqua Club, I recall volunteering or maybe being volunteered to organise the annual club shore-diving expedition to St Abbs, in Scotland, to enable members to complete their initial training and make a substantial dent in their progress to Sports Diver.

This also conveniently doubled as Advanced Diver training for myself as the expedition leader. With some 36 divers, many of whom had at that point only dived inland sites and not in the sea, this was quite an undertaking, but it was also very exciting. This was again a whole week dedicated to getting members from the equivalent of Ocean Diver up to Sports Diver and the location was perfect to be able to cover the whole range of diving experiences required.

More recently, for expeditions catering for the more experienced diver, I have set the pre-requisites at both a minimum qualification and a minimum number of dives, emphasising any key skills that divers need to have. For example, when doing some of the more extreme drift dives off the west coast of Scotland, there is a higher risk of separation from your buddy and so there is a need to be extremely confident and competent to launch your own delayed surface marker buoy dSMB from mid-water.

For this sort of trip, I stipulated a minimum grade of Dive Leader or equivalent as the dSMB skill gets taught at this level, but I also did some check-out dives on more sedate sites beforehand before committing divers to the more hairy drifts.

The Outer Hebrides wreck-hunting expedition will require a minimum diver grade of Sports Diver dive depths are expected to be mainly in the m range and we will be diving from small boats and pumping our bottles and potentially mixing our own nitrox.

Compressor Operation and Gas Blending provide the skills for filling the tanks. Now, some skills are simply best acquired before the expedition rather than trying to complete them as part of it. That way, you turn up with the knowledge to help rather than having to learn on the go. With SDCs, time is made to focus solely on the learning. However, there is no hard and fast rule here. On a recent expedition I ran, there were two experienced divers who needed to undertake their Diver Coxswain assessment.

As soon as they mentioned this, they were made responsible for all the boat operations that week and, under supervision from qualified instructors, consolidated and honed their boat handling so that at the end of the week they were able to sit the Diver Coxswain assessment and pass with confidence and competence. Looking back at the day-to-day run timeline of that particular expedition, running a full formal boat handling course at the same time would simply not have worked.

There were simply not enough hours in the day to accomplish that effectively and deliver the expedition. However, building experience following on from the course and finding time for the assessment could be comfortably achieved in this case and worked well. On another expedition I ran, its remote nature meant that a bit more thought needed to go into the provision of first aid.

Well, that was probably the diplomatic way of saying that I was concerned about the ageing demographic of the team. While they were very experienced divers and fit to dive, their age put them in a higher category of suffering a cardiac event; well at least that was my perception.

It also allowed the club to make an informed decision on buying an AED unit for the club to use alongside the oxygen kit. For example, most sport diving is between the m range; perfect for nitrox. However, add into that mix the twin set course and some accelerated decompression and you can dramatically increase your bottom times, especially for second dives, when compared with air diving.

They also introduce dive-planning discipline back into your diving, which is easy to forget when you strap a computer to your wrist.

So far, we have covered skills getting us in and out of the water safely in the right location. So what are you going to do underwater? Well, this depends on the purpose of the expedition, which could simply be diving that particular site.

Most branches nowadays rely on social media and the internet to get their message out, so having members who can capture good quality digital photographs in often challenging conditions is a very valuable asset; providing much-needed content for a website, or even a future feature in SCUBA magazine?

We organised an in-branch course some years ago which proved to be great fun. We learnt a huge amount from the tutors; one from our branch and one from a neighbouring branch, both of whom were skilled photographers. For more information on BSAC expedition diving and the support and guidance on offer go to bsac.

The BSAC network is working together to keep people connected to the sport. With online training, special interest webinars, competitions, support to clubs and the trade, and much more F or more membership benefits, visit bsac.

Images in this online version may have been substituted from the original images in SCUBA magazine due to usage rights. Privacy notice This site makes use of cookies. Continue Read our cookie policy. Training Learn to scuba dive New to scuba diving? Learn to snorkel Try snorkelling Find a snorkel club What gear will I need? Encourage and celebrate success.

Not just ultimate success but remember the little successes of individuals and sub-teams that contribute to the overall objective. Step aside and credit the team in success but step up and accept responsibility in defeat or failure. Every now and again, do a little private dance to celebrate your own success when the team prevails. Finally, know your weaknesses. Know your gaps in knowledge, accept that you will get tired, you will make mistakes.

You are only human. Find our more about our Afghanistan expedition here. Now taking applications for I was wrong. This was truly an expedition in every sense of the word. It felt like I was out there with my team experiencing everything first hand and unscripted — loved it! There will be unforeseen outcomes and some discomfort but these are all part of the fun. If you want to see a rainbow framing an alpine lake under a glacier in the Congo, then SC trips are for you. The right frame of mind is a prerequisite.