If you hike with GLS, you may be interested to read about what’s going on with evolving requirements for Sierra Club hike leaders. The national Sierra Club outings organization has some new — new to us, anyway — requirements and clarifications about medical forms, first aid and wilderness first aid training, incident reporting, record keeping, what’s a front or back country hike, and a few other things. Feedback from chapters that run outings may lead to further changes.
Local leaders have been bothered by some of these changes, especially perhaps leaders who have been leading for decades without a mishap. We remind ourselves that, unlike many outdoor groups, the Sierra Club does have significant training for leaders, does have safety standards and expectations, and does provide insurance. These things distinguish us from pretty much everyone else online offering to take people hiking.
The Angeles Chapter has upcoming leadership training sessions that will include information about the new requirements: https://www.sierraclub.org/angeles/leadership-outings.
Nancy Beverly, our Outings Chair, sent the following information to GLS leaders a few weeks ago to keep them informed about what’s going on.
Hi hike leaders,
Just got this announcement from Emmy Goldknopf, Angeles Chapter Outings Mgmt. Committee co-chair… and I’m honored that she mention our group as having sent feedback about the new outings policies!
Way below, I’m pasting the email I sent to one of our leaders about guidelines for medical forms to make your life easier (?)… 😁
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1. Leadership Training Seminar
The next Leadership Training Seminar will be on Sunday, May 17th, on Zoom. Please encourage prospective leaders in your entities to sign up ASAP. Here’s more info about the seminar and how to sign up.
- Those who registered for April 19 or May 16 are registered (rolled over) for May 17, the new date. New materials are being prepared and will be sent by the registrar to these people.
- Here’s a link on Campfire which also has info about the Seminar.
2. National’s new policies and our response We continue to engage the national Sierra Club with our concerns regarding new outings policies that we believe will have a negative impact on outings. In addition to individual feedback, letters expressing our concerns were sent to National staff and the board by the Angeles Chapter Gay and Lesbian Sierrans and by Wilderness Adventure Section’s Mark Mitchell. On April 1, Chapter Chair Coby King sent a letter on behalf of ExCom expressing our concerns to the Board of Directors, senior staff and Outings Safety staff. Please keep giving feedback to National!
National has made some concessions:
- The requirement that at least one leader on a backcountry outing be current in at least 16-20 hour WFA does not begin until Jan 1, 2027. (The requirement that all leaders on backcountry outing, and at least one leader on a front country outing, be current in CPR will also begin then.)
- The detailed list of items that should be in first aid kits is just “recommendation” (“for now”)
- The requirement that an early departure from an outing be reported as an incident has been limited to multi-day outings.
National still requires that we send waiver forms (and med forms for backcountry outings) to National’s Program Safety, unless the waivers and med forms have been filled out online. The new Campfire option of an online med form for day hikes may help with logistics.
3. First Aid — we expect that the reimbursements for Wilderness First Aid and the chapter-sponsored classes in Basic First Aid/CPR/AED will continue. Some entities may organize additional WFA classes.
4. Determining Front Country/Backcountry areas under National’s new definition — help needed! In most places, National’s new definitions of front country/backcountry will shrink the area defined as backcountry and thus limit where the new “backcountry” requirements apply. But that depends on typical response times by first responders in those areas under different conditions. We’ve done some research on that, and some is ongoing (you know who you are!) If you’d like to help out, please contact Emmy or Dave for a list of suggested questions.
5. Campfire Training — Campfire is the Sierra Club program the we use to enter and manage outing information. Some additional Campfire Events Training has been prepared – this one on using the Registration Option for example. There will be some minor changes coming to the platform. We’ll let you know.
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And from me, Nancy B. —
If someone filled out the med form online on the Sierra Club site (it’s a series of questions, I’ve now done it for our 3 Points to Cloudburst hike), you don’t have to upload their form, it’s already in the system. As a leader, just before the hike, you can go to the write-up in Campfire and click on Medical Forms to print things out (small print, short summary, easy to carry with you).
If someone RSVP’d on Meetup only — it’s good to include the Med form link in the hike write-up and tell folks to fill it out and send you a copy. Then you can upload the form to the write-up on the Campfire site and you don’t have to scan it. Here’s the link to the form: https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/medical.pdf
Then on subsequent hikes, they’ve already saved their Med form pdf and can send it to the hike leader w/o filling it out again. (Or, they can answer the Med questions on the Angeles Chapter site again.)
On our GLS Zoom meeting we came to the conclusion participants should bring a hard copy of their Med form because trying to access that info on your phone (or read a pdf on your phone) is way too hard. This is what we’ve done for years. Also having a hard copy to show Emergency Medical folks is easier.