Safety and Risk Management

Sound Risk Management allows participants to build valuable skills and resilience through authentic experiences while having a safety net in place.

We build a tight and redundant safety net around all our programs. Therefore, accidents are very rare and participants have the opportunity to safely experience the richness and educational opportunities of Wilderness Expeditions.

The safety net for our wilderness expeditions has three elements: experienced and knowledgeable staff, comprehensive planning, and carefully selected equipment.

Click on the buttons below to learn more about each of these facets of safety.

Building skills with a safety net.

Staff

We hire experienced outdoor professionals who have consistently demonstrated good judgment in their past fieldwork. They bring a variety of nationally recognized qualifications, such as Swift Water Rescue Training, CPR and Wilderness First Responder, and are graduates of outdoor recreational programs and teacher training programs.
We maintain a generous instructor to participant ratios. On river trips, 1-6 ratio is our ratio. We ensure there are qualified instructors on call for every trip, in case one of our instructors needs to leave the trip for any reason.
Current Farthest Field Expeditions program directors Tom and Lily have combined experience of leading trips for over 26 years, and have 16 combined years of experience as program directors for wilderness expeditions. In this time, they've gained invaluable insights into running a safe program, and have never had a serious injury requiring evacuation.
Each trip has two Certified Wilderness First Responders who have completed a nine-day intensive certification by Wilderness Medical Associates, Wilderness Medical Institute, or SOLO. Wilderness First Responder is the industry-standard medical training for outdoor professionals.
We work with a medical director who oversees our medical and evacuation protocol. He is an ER doctor who has taught remote emergency medicine to medical students and is available for satellite phone consultation during trips.
We review our emergency response and safety plans with third-party industry leaders.

Plan

Each trip we run has a custom Emergency Response and Safety Plan (EMSP) which includes :

Safety management plans for risk factors specific to each trip, such as participants, weather conditions, and local conditions
Detailed mapping and trip itineraries. Back-up expedition plans, should local conditions make the original itinerary unwise.
Before each season, we carry out a staff training, to familiarize program instructors with program areas and our protocols
We collect detailed medical information about our participants
A routine and emergency communication plan with the Farthest Field office, client schools, and emergency response professionals.
Permits and permissions for our program areas.
Multiple evacuation strategies to definitive medical care based on location in itinerary and level of urgency. We follow Wilderness Medicine Field Protocol as criteria defined by Wilderness Medical Associates, and Wilderness Medical Associates Evacuation Criteria, refined by our medical director.

equipment

We use quality speciality and group equipment.
We use personal protective equipment such as coast guard approved PFDs
We maintain and carry extensive first aid kits with wound control supplies and life-saving medications
We carry a satellite phone and/or satellite communication devices
We carry swiftwater rescue equipment such as anchors, prusiks, pulleys, and other emergency equipment.
We manage our routine and safety equipment in the field so that it performs properly when we need it.