It was an honor to be part of the team that revised American Whitewater’s Safety Code—and a very welcome opportunity to get paid to write! Sarah Glaser won the contract for this work (funded by the USCG) and pulled me in to help with editing and delivery. Fans of The Packraft Handbook will appreciate the new look of the Code!
You can access all document links at americanwhitewater.org.
One of my priorities in emergency preparation is to determine what actually goes wrong and what is actually useful to teach and practice. There are a lot of technical solutions that just aren’t practical with small teams and remote settings. Then what?
The first thing I did on this project was research the question: “What actually goes wrong?” I reviewed the American Whitewater Accident Database and interviewed Charlie Walbridge, the database manager. Then I worked with Sarah Glaser, Evan Stafford (AW communications director and project lead), and Sarah Lindsey Design to come up with The Big Four.
By the numbers, these are the best ways to avoid river incidents:
The second half of The Big Four effort was to create a concise checklist. I researched checklists (The Checklist Manifesto) for guidance:
Our other goals were to re-organize the existing content in the code, update a few concepts and crafts (especially SUPs and inflatables), and try to draw readers in with Sarah’s illustrations.
We created a series of one-pagers within the document for easy downloading and sharing. These pages are available as PDFs from americanwhitewater.org:
It was a real pleasure to work with Sarah Glaser, Sarah Lindsey, and Evan Stafford.
I hope this project opens the doors for future editorial, educational, and writing work!
Fantastic work!