In October this year I headed up to Scotland with college as part of the Mountain Leadership module. We spent the first few days of the trip in the Cairngorms with the intention of completing a one night expedition over Ben Macduhi and sleeping under the Shelter Stone. As one of the stronger members of the group I was to use this time as valuable leadership experience.
The expedition was not a success and in retrospect it is possible to see how it came down to one moment in that day which caused the trip to fail. By looking at Martin and Priest’s Adventure Experience Paradigm (1986) it is possible to see where, as a leader, I made a mistake.
We had reached Coire an t Sneachda by late morning in thick mist and rain. The plan was to head out of the back of the coire via a steep path to the summit and follow the long plateau to Ben Macduhi. Leaving the coire I made a navigational error which left us attempting to pick our way up the steep slopes and gullies.
As can be seen on the diagram below, Martin and Priest’s (1986) theory suggests that the more competence and experience a person has, the more they can push the risk levels to increase arousal. The arousal levels will go through several stages before that person has become over stimulated, feels out of their depth and becomes frightened.
We realised that we couldn’t find a way up the way that we were going and so made our way back to the coire and eventually found the path. By this point it was too late. Several members of the group had become quite scared and shaken by the experience and just wanted to head down.
This theory can be very useful to a leader provided that they are always conscious that what might feel fine to them may feel very frightening to someone else. In the future I will make a big point of finding out what experience group members have and never pushing on in difficult conditions and terrain with people that are unhappy with it.
References
Priest, S, ‘The Adventure Experience Paradigm’, 1986
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