How To Find Partners

Wed Oct 14 2020 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

Building A Team

This is perhaps the most difficult and important part of an expedition. The partners you choose will make or break an expedition and you may make or break theirs. Personalities and skills should be matched correctly with patience and understanding taking care of the rest. Don’t expect your team to necessarily be the best friends you have that you want to come. Expeditions demand a lot of time and monetary commitment and many people simply don’t want to do that. People come and go from this scene often finding it in a time between stages in their lives.

Places With Friction

You’ll find the people you need most reliably in places of friction. Lots of people coming and going, participating in an activity, and pushing the bar. How committed are you? If you want to run an expedition for a ski traverse in Alaska and you live in Florida then you need to move. Preferably to Alaska, but Colorado, Utah, Montana, Washington, etc might work as well. This might sound extreme, but expeditions are extreme so if you want to make it happen you have to go there. Gear shops can be okay. Places like rock gyms, ski hills, and hiking clubs can be good for meeting partners; however, the majority of people there are weekend warriors that may not have the commitment to go on an expedition. Better yet are the outdoor places that have high quality terrain. These are the famous spots and the local test pieces that attract the crushers who are committed to excelling at the sport. Don’t be afraid to talk to anyone. Ask people if they want to join, offer a meal or drink, start with a small step like going to the rock gym.

Alignment

Make sure that anyone you consider bringing onto the expedition aligns with your values and your vision. The worst thing is to have two clashing ideas of what the expedition is supposed to look like. Make sure everyone has similar risk tolerances, so that you don’t have one foolhardy member pushing the rest into territory that they will not be able to handle. Make sure you don’t bring on someone who will make unreasonable demands on other team members or berate them for dragging their feet when they're tired. Realize that both of these qualities are most likely to be in you as the expedition leader and creator of the trip. No one will likely have the same degree of commitment and personal investment as you and you can’t hold that against them.

Personalities

On expeditions, personality becomes far more important than skill. The team will be spending long hours in tents together, suffering through foul weather, cooking and eating and doing chores, etc. All these things take up far more time than the few moments of technical performance, and if everyone is in a bad mood by the time the hard stuff comes around they won’t perform as well or might even quit. Don’t discount oddball personalities and try to look at a bigger picture to see how everyone fits together. A stoked, enthusiastic, and slightly cavalier member might help the team push through hard times and would be balanced by someone a bit more cautious and measured who will make sure the team doesn’t get into trouble. Pay attention to personalities and try to play to everyone’s strengths.

Skill

Skill becomes necessary when risk is involved. No amount of enthusiasm can overcome ineptitude. If a team member must be able to confidently navigate a certain difficulty of terrain such as class III whitewater or 5.10 rock climbing and they are unable to do this on simple practice trips, then they are likely going to be a danger to themselves and the team if they attempt this during the expedition.