The Hoofer System: Using Bureaucracy to Enhance Safety
By Teresa Gryder
I am that dork who worries, perhaps more than I should, about how to enhance safety on club trips. One way to do that is to make sure that everyone goes on the right run for them, on the right day, with the right people. But when trip coordinators and participants self-select, there is no way to guarantee this rightness.
There are two ways that the self-selection process goes wrong. One is that an eager paddler chooses to go on runs that are too hard or dangerous for their current skill level. This results in days spent survival boating, and weeks spent healing from injuries. The other way it goes wrong is that the more tentative paddlers are afraid to go on trips that they think might be too hard because nobody is helping them choose when and how to step it up.
It's a little dicey letting just anyone "coordinate" a trip. How do we know if we can trust them? What if they are totally off their rocker?? What if they don't actually lead a good trip and take care of all the participants? There is no control to prevent this in our current system and it could be a disincentive both for participants and trip coordinators. Why would anyone step up to lead when the crew has little reason to trust them and might be under-skilled? Would a more bureaucratic system enhance people's willingness to lead? These are open questions.
In the LCCC many of us know each other and we know which runs we want to go on. The best strategy for new members is to ask A LOT of questions. Ask the people who are coordinating trips. Show up for in-person events and talk to whoever you meet. Study up on the river sections. Choose an easy-for-you first run to get a sense of the local waters and the crew. The more information you have, the better you can choose the right river, flow, and day. It still requires some boldness to participate, because you don't know all these people yet!
The Hoofers is a club with a bureaucratic system to keep members progressing without undue risk. Being a college club (U. Wisconsin, Madison) they have a lot of rookies, unlike the LCCC which tends to draw in a lot of more experienced boaters who have recently relocated to our area.
The Hoofer system involves hierarchy and ratings for both paddlers and leaders. People who learn paddling in this club are some of the best paddlers around, with strong skills and a potent safety ethic. Hoofers don't end up on class 4 rivers before they know how to peel out. They will tell you in no uncertain terms if you should portage a particular rapid. Some folks hate hierarchy and authority, and won't stick around in a club like this. The ones who tolerate it thrive and learn quickly because the system helps them know what skills to work on to progress to the next level. The system is designed to increase their safety.
The Hoofers do lots of activities besides whitewater paddling, but they've been teaching people to paddle rivers since the 1970's. I have heard about the Hoofers many times, and paddled with many of them. Every time I run into a group of Hoofers I am happy because they run good trips. They are organized and they look out for each other. Even more impressive, they are friends and still do stuff together decades after they left that club. What is going on here?
The bureaucratic system that the Hoofers use has been improving since the 1970's. It all started in 1968 when a young man on a club trip drowned after he fell out of his aluminum canoe and hit his head. Their safety chair said "this will not stand" and started working on the system that THEY STILL USE today to rate paddlers and leaders so they can safely teach people how to paddle. They used to have wallet cards with their ratings on them. Now everybody's ratings are on the cloud, but the system has not strayed from the original concept. I keep thinking maybe we should try something similar.
To get started with a rating in the Hoofer system you have to pass a swim test. Basically they think that if you can't swim you shouldn't be on whitewater. This is of course debatable but I happen to agree. For the swim test you have to swim 100 yards and then tread water for 5 minutes without a life jacket. Apparently a lot of people fail. Would you pass this test?
If the LCCC ever did decide to assess and rate paddlers and leaders, it would take time to implement. In the Hoofers, trip leaders are chosen by a panel of trip leaders (trip coordinators in LCCC language). Trip leaders are authorized to "promote" paddlers through the skills ratings. Promotion of a paddler qualifies them to go on trips of a certain difficulty. The result is a pipeline by which people have support while they learn paddling and develop leadership skills, and trip coordinators have more reason to be confident that the crew that shows up for a river adventure is well vetted.
River runners in general and this club in particular have a libertarian streak. We like to make our own choices. My desire to enhance the safety of every single paddler and trip coordinator is thwarted by our natural desire to be free.
The Hoofer system has yielded great results in terms of enhancing safety and developing skills. These are two of the LCCC's four stated objectives. Do we actually want to enhance safety? Are we actually going to help people improve their skills? If the answer is yes, perhaps someday we will get a little more systematic about it.
