I met recently with my Outdoor Studies colleagues Paul Twardock and Eeva Latosuo for a discussion about our expectations of students when they pursue their own back county interests. I guess you could say I drew the short straw because, as you can see, I’m writing the essay. Laying an after school expectation on you won’t be easy, so I better start at the beginning.

Last summer, well after the spring term ended, a helicopter plucked an OS student from Turnagain Arm. He was attempting to surf the incoming bore tide when he capsized, missed his role and exited from his boat. The current quickly ripped most of his dry suit off and in short order he was half a mile from the group he started boating with…and then the helicopter showed up.

The easy path would be to blast away at the student for being out there, but we’re not interested in that. We understand that there are at least three or four different sides to this story. What we want to tell you is that you’re up against more than just the current...or avalanche conditions, or loose rock, or some ornery bear. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a whole culture arrayed against you, a culture that celebrates the epic and turns a deaf ear on trips that went according to plan. You know the story; it usually goes like this “…there I was, death was all around me”…. Think about it, that story conflates competence with incompetence. It glorifies what we “screw up” while ignoring the incompetence that led to it.

Here’s a recent example. The movie Touching the Void celebrates the bond that forms between two climbers when one cuts the rope and the other crawls on his hands and knees for a week. What the movie doesn’t say is that the route they chose was a death route…and that the guy who cuts the rope does it because he doesn’t know how to pass a knot. Mountaineering as well as every other outdoor pursuit is marketed to the general public this way…by celebrating the epic…because it sells copy and gear and inflates the ego…but they leave out details like how the absence of skill and competence contributed to the epic in the first place.

At APU we like our students to live the skills they are learning. That’s one reason why we have an expedition requirement. It’s very gratifying to watch a student group set up camp in the rain and sleet, cook a mouth watering meal, and know they’ll be sleeping warm and dry that night. And we don’t stop there. Outdoor Studies faculty routinely tell their students to grow their skill and judgment by executing their own trips…and there in lies the rub: how can you keep them safe when you’re not there?

There are at least two answers to that question. The first is to make sure we provide the best training we can. We do that by offering long trips and staffing them with seasoned instructors. The second answer is that we have the same back country expectations for our students whether they are in class or out of class: conduct yourself as a professional. That means choose your partners carefully and prepare everyone thoroughly. If you think what you do on your own time is none of our business, think again. You don’t stop being an OS student because class is out. You’re a member of this program until you graduate or move on. Most professional programs have standards like this because student behavior reflects on the faculty and program whether they are in class or not.

We’re not so worried about how we look as we are about you being dead, especially since your generation faces a bombardment from advertisers and extreme sport phonies that celebrate the epic. You know the line… “death was all around me”…. That story’s good for impressing the uninitiated (that’s how the purveyors of this stuff see you), but if you want the respect of the outdoor community, tell boring stories about the trips that went just the way you planned them…and remember, there are few compliments better than being called “competent”.