Backcountry best practices in the coronavirus era
The novel coronavirus has upended life as we once knew it. With therapeutic treatments and vaccines, we’ll revert to our old normal eventually, but in the meantime we’ll have to learn to live with it — How can we still work and play without compromising our own safety or that of our family, friends and neighbors?
As an avid backpacker and the owner of a backpacking guide service, I’m particularly motivated to develop and adopt backcountry best practices for this coronavirus era. A fact-based set of policies and protocols can help to reduce risk, minimize unfounded fears, and perhaps even encourage land managers to lift restrictions.
This four-part series is specifically designed for my guided trip program, but it has significant relevance to the broader backpacking and outdoor communities. Some of it was directly influenced by reader feedback to a very popular post from last month, “When & how will backpacking be safe and feasible again?”
Guidelines and table of contents
What have I accounted for in these best practices? For more bite-sized reading, I have given each main consideration a dedicated page, and will update links as I publish them:
What are the symptoms of Covid-19? How is it transmitted? Who is most at-risk? And, importantly, what do we not yet know about it?
Part 2: The activity
A one-size-fits-all set of best practices won’t get it right for everyone. Instead, adjust the specifics for your unique situation, such as risk profile, group size, and location.
Part 3: The restrictions
How should we navigate the layers of restrictions that have been placed on outdoor recreation and broader travel?
Social distancing at 12,000 feet on Snow Mesa in southwestern ColoradoExecutive summary
Backcountry travel — and life, more generally — has never been risk-free. In an ordinary season, I will encounter swift water, lightning, grizzly bears, steep snowfields, cold soaking rain, and shifting talus, among other variables that are inherently not safe, oftentimes while leading a group of clients.
That may sound like chest-beating, but I point this out because I’m approaching Covid-19 the same way that I address every other risk:
Understand it, and
Take steps to mitigate it.
With mitigation efforts that focus on distancing and surfaces, the risk of COVID-19 can be greatly reduced. It will not be zero, however. So there is a matter of individual choice. Are you willing to accept some level of risk so that you can hike, camp, run, climb, and ride? Or will you wait this out at home?
For me — and probably many others — that choice is easy. So the more consequential issue may be the the multitude of mandates, advisories, and decisions made by government representatives, health officials, land agencies, communities, business owners, and search-and-rescue teams. Even if you decide that the risk of Covid-19 is acceptably low, your trip may be ill-advised, impractical, or illegal because of these overarching conditions.
Why am I sharing this here?
I have not before shared core program resources, like our emergency protocols or operations plan. But posting these best practices online has multiple advantages:
1. Clients and land agencies rightfully want to know how we are handling this risk. I can easily point them here, where I can keep our policies current as we learn more about the virus.
2. Organizations large and small are trying to figure this out, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. In this case, more heads is better than one, and I’m hoping that public feedback can lead to marginal improvements.
3. Covid-19 has been a monkey wrench for many organizations, including mine. Perhaps I can help save time and improve program safety for a hiking club, Scout troop, or less established guide service.
Disclaimers
1. The extent of my medical training an 80-hour wilderness first responder course plus biannual 24-hour re-certifications. So don’t put stock in my medical advice, though I think you’ll find the content to be consistent with the opinions of medical experts.
2. Our understanding of COVID-19 is rapidly changing, and I expect to update my policies and recommendations accordingly. These pages should be accurate as of the most recent publishing date.
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