Phone calls and e-mails are a primary tool to use to shape your trip. You can answer tripper’s questions, solicit their help, inform them of the meeting place and time and other trip information, check whether they have their own equipment or will need equipment, find out whether they can drive and help haul people and gear or whether they will need transportation. You may hate them, but phone machines can be very helpful at this stage of your trip, especially if you or they don’t have e-mail access. For longer, more complex trips, consider having a pre-trip planning meeting a few weeks before the trip attended by as many trippers as possible to help communicate and coordinate details.

On more physically or technically demanding trips, you may need to screen potential trippers to try to be sure that they have the proper equipment, suitable skills, stamina, and temperament needed for the expected conditions. If you don’t know the person calling, try to find out their abilities and past experience, and filter their responses through a bullshit detector. Ask for references C.O.P. circles and then call the reference and check them out. Your trip is a bad place to find out that a tripper is totally unqualified.

I once called a reference to check out a shaky-sounding tripper for a intermediate whitewater kayak trip and was told "Yah, he’s swum the Cheat Narrows before." I took him on the trip anyway since he did have some experience and the trip was large enough to afford a marginal kayaker on this section of the river which runs right next to the highway. After swimming 5 times before carrying his kayak around Calamity Rapid, he finally started paddling his kayak all the way to the end of each rapid instead of quitting halfway down and swimming. The next day he paddled all of the rapids and only swam at Calamity. Knowing the possibility of this in advance was important. I could afford it on this river since the road along the river could allow someone who was overmatched to take off of the river at any point. On a more remote river without good access, taking off would not be possible and I probably would not have allowed him to participate.

Many C.O.P. activities are by their nature equipment intensive. Two hundred miles from home is a bad place to find out that someone doesn’t have something essential. For example, a whitewater trip leader needs to make sure everyone on the trip has a boat space (canoe, kayak, etc.), paddle, PFD, helmet, boat floatation, etc. The trip leader also must make sure that group safety equipment is taken, including first aid kits and throw ropes. If you’re not sure what might be required, ask more experienced leaders for suggestions or recruit a co-leader to handle the technical side of the trip. On a whitewater trip, this co-leader is referred to as the river boss. You could have this co-leader do tripper screening too.

A part of being the trip leader often involves picking a meeting place and time and organizing or coordinating transportation of people and their "stuff". For simple trips such as day-hiking, this can be fairly straight forward. Almost anyone who can drive will have room for a couple extra people with their daypacks. For more equipment intensive trips such as backpacking, the space required to transport equipment can have a significant impact on what vehicles are appropriate and useful on a trip. You start hoping that the woman with the van will go on the trip. On a boating trip, you start asking everyone who calls if they have racks to haul boats on top of their vehicle or a trailer hitch to tow the canoe trailer almost before you say hello. While some experienced trip leaders wing-it and do car pooling at the meeting place, novice trip leaders should make life simple for themselves by having this planned out in advance. Things will be busy enough without having to do this too at the meeting place.

The day of your trip arrives. At the meeting place, you will be checking people in, getting waiver signatures, collecting trip fees, arranging car pooling and equipment hauling (if not done in advance), verifying that people have necessary equipment, etc. This is usually a very busy moment, especially if you don’t have help. Drivers need directions to the trailhead, river, campground or other meeting places. Simple maps and directions to hand out are very helpful, especially if not traveling in a convoy or if the convoy falls apart.

At the trailhead or put-in, you will be coordinating unloading of equipment or boats, pairing up or grouping your hikers or paddlers (if not done in advance), arranging the vehicle shuttle to the other end of the trail or river and making sure all of the drivers understand how it will work, appointing lead and sweep boaters or hikers to keep the group somewhat collected, coordinating with the river boss or trail boss if you have one, ...

Usually once on the river or trail, you can afford to relax somewhat and ignore the fact that when you get to the other end you will be reversing most of the things you did at the trailhead and then the meeting place. And then there is the paperwork. Oh Joy.

Although this process can be intimidating at first, starting by leading short small trips makes trip leading manageable. Having a co-leader (who may be no more experienced than you) or an experienced trip-leader that you can go to for suggestions and encouragement can make leading a trip rewarding and enjoyable. C.O.P. is a volunteer, participatory organization and runs upon the strength and energy of all of its outdoor family members. When you volunteer to lead a trip, you help to make our family stronger by providing more outdoor opportunities for more people. You help reward the people who lead the trips you went on in the past by giving them a trip to go on that they don’t have to lead. And you help demystify trip leading for others, providing encouragement for them to lead a trip. Give trip leading a try - you may lead the best trip you ever went on!

More Leader Information  --  COP Home Page