2023 Here we come! Plan to attend the 2023 WRMC in Portland, Oregon. Celebrate 30 years of Facing Challenges Together. Save the Date: October 18-20, 2023; Pre-Conference October 16-18, 2023.
Location: Holiday Inn Portland - Columbia Riverfront, 909 North Hayden Island Drive, Portland, OR 97217
Presentations: Presentation slides that are available will be uploaded to Sched in the next few days. Video Recordings: You might have noticed that some sessions were recorded. WRMC is experimenting with video recordings and has not yet decided how those will be utilized. If the recordings are able to turn into high-quality learning, they will be made available to conference attendees at no additional cost through the conference app Sched. Sign up to receive WRMC updates to be notified if recordings become available. The core objective of the Wilderness Risk Management Conference (WRMC) is to offer an outstanding educational experience to help you mitigate the risks inherent in exploring, working, teaching, and recreating in wild places. The WRMC is a collaboration between NOLS, Outward Bound USA, and the Student Conservation Association, in partnership with the WRMC Steering Committee. See the guiding purpose and tenets.
Overview: In our first risk-taking exercise, participants will be encouraged to turn off their electronic devices for the duration of the workshop. For those interested in taking this risk a step further, we will invite you to separate yourself from your devices by leaving them in a safekeeping box near the door
Capacity for compassionate risk taking is an outcome of effective adventure education. The culture of risk aversion has been adversely affecting quality of outdoor experiences. Fear of liability in its many forms moves outdoor industry away from Free Living in Nature towards prescribed and often transactional experiences of shorter duration and limited scope. In the past two years, the reduction approach to risk taking has caused substantial degradation of social well-being. To achieve social transformation and reverse the climate change we need to raise generations of compassionate and altruistic risk-takers and the adventure education has a unique role to play!
During this interactive workshop participants will examine the benefits of healthy risk-taking approach to life and education, create a list of personal and institutional healthy risk-taking habits, develop methods for holding exciting briefings with stakeholders aimed at replacing the irrational fear with excitement for adventure and leave inspired to change the institutional culture of fear.
Misha Golfman is a co-founder of Kroka Expeditions, a farm-based wilderness expedition school in Marlow, NH. He was raised by a dissident family in Northern Russia in an outdoor tradition foraging for sustenance and spending long winters at a ski-in cabin. Misha and his wife Lynne... Read More →
Prior to coming to Kroka, Nathan had served as a communications officer in the US Navy, taught English in Nicaragua, and worked as a 4th grade classroom teacher in rural New Hampshire. As an undergraduate he studied Physics, changing course later in life when he pursued a Masters... Read More →
Brendan Madden is the head of program and national safety officer at Outward Bound Canada. He has been active in the expedition-based adventure education field for over 30 years, mostly as a program director and senior instructor at both Outward Bound and NOLS. Brendan has also been... Read More →
