Celebrating 12 years of OutdoorEd.com

We are thrilled to be celebrating our twelfth year on the Web. When we started back in 2000 the Web was in it's infancy and OutdoorEd.com has continued to expand and grow ever since. Our core mission is still the same--to help make all outdoor education programs better by bringing together outdoor ed professionals and sharing our best practices with each other. While we operate diverse programs across the globe, we share common issues--how to design great programs; how to train the best staff; managing risk and safety; researching the impacts of outdoor education programming; connecting with and conserving our natural heritage. Thanks for being a part of our community. Explore, Learn, Contribute.

Thanks for making us the online resource for outdoor professionals.

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Months of hard work has gone into bringing you this totally new approach to OutdoorEd.com. We are really psyched to open the new site for you! It's clean, easy to navigate, ripping fast, and full of expanded features.

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Winter 2012 Wilderness Medicine Magazine Now Online

The winter issue of Wilderness Medicine Magazine published by the Wilderness Medical Society is now available online (PDF) featuring...

• Dr. James Raitt on the challenges of the African Medical and Research Foundation’s Flying Doctors of Africa
• A harrowing rescue operation in Dispatches from the Field
• A new take on GORP by our nutrition expert
• Plus, Footprints for Kids, Kindred Spirit updates, Book Reviews, and more

Risk Management Blog: Skier Intentionally Triggers Huge Avalanche - What are the Consequences?

A professional guide intentially triggered an avalanche in the Tetons to 'create safer conditions' for his party of skiiers. The result was a huge avalanche that, luckily, did not involve anyone else. This situation raises real risk management questions about how decisions for one group can put other parties in the backcountry at considerable risk.

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Wilderness Medicine Blog: Wilderness Medicine - 6th Edition released

I want to let everyone know about the release of the 6th Edition of Wilderness Medicine, the premiere textbook on the subject, edited by our frequent contributor Dr. Paul Auerbach. There are not too many books out there that I personally consider as "classics" in our field (titles like Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills comes to mind), for wilderness medicine, this book is a classic. I've used previous editions of this book for teaching first aid and it was one of my core reference books when writing the first aid chapter in The Backpacker's Field Manual. I'm really excited to see this new edition and that there will be an ebook version. At over 2,300 pages it's no wonder that this textbook is widely referred to as "The Bible of Wilderness Medicine."

This is one book that I recommend that every serious outdoor program have on the shelf as the ultimate reference guide. It covers every conceivable aspect of wilderness medicine in articles written by experts from around the world. What makes this book stand out is the combination of the breadth of coverage and its great readability. I try and keep current on wilderness medicine issues, but as a non-physician, reading things like the New England Journal of Medicine often leaves me scratching my head at the super-technical things that I don't have the background for. This textbook, written for both medical professionals and non-medical provides a great balance. Don't let the price tag deter you, any textbook of this magnitude is worth every penny. The book is available from the publisher Elsevier.com as well as on Amazon.com in hardcover and Kindle format and at Barnes and Noble in hardcover and Nook format.

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The Recreation Law Center: Understanding the Work Product Doctrine: Are your Records Protected?

Bad event. Write it up? Maybe not. A quality operation records near misses and loss-causing events and may collect witness statements and other materials pertaining to the occasion. Some organizations do this as a matter of policy and practice, so that management can understand what happened (or almost happened), determine how to reduce the chance of it happening (again), and, perhaps, determine whether the organization has an obligation to compensate persons affected. Other organizations record such events only, or primarily, in anticipation of having to defend a lawsuit arising from the incident or related to the near miss. The more likely a claim, the more likely a record will be made.

Responsible leaders are confused about the vulnerability of any such record to discovery by an adversary in a law suit and how any such vulnerability might influence what is recorded and how. Some lawyers, in fact, have been known to discourage the maintenance of any kind of record of an event, for fear that it will increase an organization’s exposure to claims and liability—or at least greatly simplify the task of the opposing lawyer. In the latest case at The Recreation Law Center by Reb Gregg and Catherine Hansen-Stamp offers a window into application of the "work product" rule as a vehicle to protect incident and accident reports, e-mails and witness statements from discovery by the opposing attorney in the context of a lawsuit.

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Wilderness First Aid Blog: Lightning Safety Awareness

In an article entitled “Lightning Safety Awareness of Visitors in Three California National Parks” by Lori Weichenthal et al, the authors set out to assess the level of lightning safety awareness among visitors at three national parks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. There were no surprises in the conclusions derived from this study, but the investigation reinforces the notion that we don't recall all that we need to know, or may have never fully understood lightning safety in the first place. For instance, while participants in the national parks knew that lightning is more likely to strike in the afternoon, they were not aware of the dangers of seeking shelter in a small cave or group huddling. Few people understood proper body position, and other than avoiding metal objects or isolated tall trees, the respondents had too many errors with respect to advice such as avoiding water or thick groves of trees. Dr. Paul Auerbach presents some of the key facts that everyone should know about lightning.

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Latest Company Listings

OutdoorEd.com has the largest directory of outdoor and experiential education companies, schools and organizations on the Web. These are the newest Company Profiles. Welcome these new organizations to the Outdoor Ed Community!

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