2024 Wilderness Risk Management Conference

The geographic spread of organizations in the outdoor industry has widened to attract talent and students, and while the tools at our disposal and the administrative capacity of organizations in our industry have grown, distributed organizations are faced with unique challenges when a critical incident occurs. In January 2023, the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE)—a permanently remote organization with “home office” staff spread across four time zones—responded to a critical incident in which a staff member suffered a medical emergency and ultimately passed away during a field course. While operational and organizational actions taken were unlikely to have changed the outcome, this presentation will focus on how critical incident response impacts administrative staff, both in the moment and long-term, in a distributed work environment. We will share key findings from the incident based on our utilization of a consensus review process, and how research rooted in organization management, critical response, and stress injury gives us a lens to improve organizational culture and systems while addressing individual staff needs. You will walk away from this presentation with tools and strategies to unveil things you didn't know you didn't know in order to improve immediate and long-term responses.