New Zealand Rafting Association

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1 NEWS FROM THE CHAIR Volume 10 - Issue 3 - September 2010 You ve just got to love spring all across the country raft companies are gearing up for another season, old gear fixed, new gear ordered, SOP s getting a polish for the up and coming audit. Bookings coming in, staff being trained and secured. Guides who have been working overseas longing to get home put their feet on NZ soil again after another summer abroad. All very exciting! Spare a thought for your Executive they have been flat out over the past 6-8 weeks, some getting their own businesses ready for the new season ahead along with managing their portfolios for the NZRA. Some areas where the Exec have been dedicating their time and expertise are River Rescue Work Shops, Skills Active, River Boarding, Maritime NZ, Wild Rivers Campaign, Raft Racing. Your Exec put a lot of time into their portfolio s and at the end of the day all in the name of professionalism and striving for excellence. Which brings me onto the Risk Management and Safety Review in the Adventure and Outdoor Commercial Sectors from the Ministry of Tourism, which was released in August this year. In my opinion the NZ rafting scene came out looking rather organised and leading the way, there are a few minor implications raft companies will have to adopt however there seems to be a very loose time frame for this with no one I have talked to being able to give me a concrete answer as to when we need to be on board. I hope to have a more detailed brief for the next newsletter. In this news letter you will find an article from Annie Dignan Mountain Safety Council, on the National Incident Database (NID) this is something raft companies should be looking into supporting if you have any questions regarding this then please contact Annie. Something new this season we are trying out is to set some assessment dates for rafting and river boarding assessments. See proposed dates below and contact Raewyn if you are keen for an assessment. Early contact will ensure these events happen. North Island River Boarding - Dec 3,4,5 North Island Rafting - Dec 7,8,9 South Island River Boarding - Dec 13,14,15 South Island Rafting - Dec 17,18,19 River Rescue workshops Planning and organizing is well under way for this seasons workshops the new format has received some great feedback and the Exec are working hard to build on from this. Part of the underlying structure to the new format as well the teaching and sharing of river rescue techniques, is to identify the level of the participants, working at extending guides towards future roles as trip leaders and potential assessors. In doing this, we are securing the sustainability of the professionalism of the industry for the future. North Island Rangitaiki Training 1 st 3 rd November, Workshop 3 rd 5 th November South Island Murchison Training 22 nd 24 th November, Workshop 24 th 26 th November To help us for planning it would be appreciated if you could book in early. Registration and information forms are available from the website at or Raewyn. Memberships are all due for renewal as from 1 st October for the 2010/11 season. As requested at last year s AGM, companies will now receive an invoice for their membership. Guide members from last year have been reminded via that their membership is due for renewal. We ask companies to encourage guides to renew their membership. With the reduction in guide membership fees, membership has increased from around 120 to over 200. Thank you to the companies that took an all in approach. Remember - more members, more voice! Well that s all from me for now, thanks to the Exec for the work over the last 2 months it has been huge. I look forward to meeting many of our members at the workshops coming up, as it s the place to been seen in the rafting scene. Steve Brown

2 Page 2 NATIONAL INCIDENT DATABASE UPDATE Current accepted best practice requires that that your rafting organisation needs to have a robust mechanism for recording, analysing and sharing your organisations outdoor incidents. This expectation has been highlighted by the DOL review into outdoor commercial adventure activity and recent coroner s reports. Could your rafting company accurately answer the following simple questions: are the incidents that occur within your organisation happening on the water or off it? Is your incident rate declining or increasing? What percentage of incidents rates are low severity based on a 10 point severity scale? The National Incident Database (NID) provides organisations with the ability to answer all of the questions raised above. It is a free online repository of information on outdoor safety incidents which is available to the rafting industry. The NID was launched in May 2004, since then over 20,000 incidents have been reported, providing invaluable insights to guide future incident prevention. The NID is a joint project owned by Tourism Industry Association, Snow Sports Council, New Zealand Outdoor Instructors Association, Mountain Safety Council, Ministry of Education, Education Outdoors New Zealand, Outdoors New Zealand and the management is provided by the Mountain Safety Council. Registration is simple and your incident information is only available to you. The categories of incident include injury, illness, fatality, near miss, damage to property, or a combination of these events. In the last year the usability of the reporting functions has been simplified and it literally is a tick the box system to be able to graph incidents based on a range of filters, e.g. time of day, weather, age etc. The graph below is an example of using the severity filter to better understand how severe the incidents that occurred were. In addition to tracking your own incidents the NID allows an annual report of the compiled anonymous data to be produced so that we can share what is happening across the country and learn from these incidents. The 2009 summary of incident data is available at where you will also find the report. If you want to meet best practice expectations by having the ability to record, analyse and share incident data, you can start now by registering on the NID. (And it s free) After that all that is required is the commitment to record your incidents (which takes about 2 minutes per incident). For further information contact Annie Dignan at the Mountain Safety Council annie.dignan@mountainsafety.org.nz or Phone

3 Page 3 NOTES FROM RAEWYN Hi All Recently I wrote to companies with regards to the NZRA s contribution to the Wild Rivers campaign. The NZRA has invested around $1500 into this project so now we are looking for companies and guides to give their support to get the best impact. We have had 20,000 postcards printed as an initial project and if/when it is needed to be reviewed for more printing then we will look at options for companies to come on board financially towards the project. It is important that companies/guides take control of the postcard for posting purposes, as we don t want a client taking it away as a lovely momento, so we request that you get the client to sign them then post them from your base yourselves! You may have a Donation box and this could go towards either the Wild Rivers campaign or more printing if required, so should probably be identified as the NZRA Wild Rivers campaign, so there s no confusion. I still have four boxes of postcards in residence at my house, so if you have not already contacted me with your numbers required, please do so SOON! We would appreciate all companies coming on board, there is no cost just your willingness to take the time to get clients to sign the postcard and post it (postage paid). Take care Raewyn

4 Page 4 UPDATE FROM MARITIME NZ MNZ has contracted Rachael Moore to assist with internal technical advice to the organisation in the rafting and riverboarding area while Colin Sonneveld takes a period of leave. Rachael is well known to many in the industry and MNZ is grateful that she has been able to step in at short notice. Rachael will be working through Jim Lott, Manager Recreational and Small Craft and also assisting Jeff Horne with his work with the rafting community. Colin is due to return to MNZ later in October. Because of the short nature of the contract anyone wanting specific advice should continue to work through either Jim or Jeff. RAFTING AND WHITE-WATER BOARDING FROM SKILLS ACTIVE Skills Active, in partnership with New Zealand Raft Association (NZRA) and Maritime NZ (MNZ) have reviewed the current raft qualifications and developed two new qualifications for the white-water boarding industry. The outcome of this review is a new National Certificate in Outdoor Recreation (River Guide) that reflects the licences required to guide on white water in New Zealand. The qualification structure allows guides to become qualified in both disciplines while minimising the duplication of assessment.

5 Page 5 RAFTING AND WHITE-WATER BOARDING FROM SKILLS ACTIVE contd Please note that Maritime New Zealand s (MNZ) licensing requirements requires candidates to hold unit standard 6400 or demonstrate equivalent skills and knowledge. We refrained from including 6400 from the qualification as this provided more flexibility regarding the first aid standard. If you are unsure if your first aid qualification meets MNZ requirement please contact MNZ directly. What does this mean for rafters currently working? Skills Active will continue to manage the database of raft guides and those qualifications will continue to be recognised by MNZ, however only guides and senior guides that are assessed against the new standards will receive the National Certificate in Outdoor Recreation (River Guide) (Level 4). As part of the qualification transition arrangements, Skills Active will work with existing qualified raft guides to assess and award the National Certificate. Existing raft guides will need to apply via a training agreement and will need to be assessed as still current by an assessor. Attendees of the river rescue workshop will be offered this opportunity. The detail of the assessment process will be posted on our website at the beginning of November. This will be offered to qualified raft guides at no charge and be assured that it will be as simple as possible. Anyone converting their qualification will have the new qualification registered on the database and will be re-issued a raft card. If you wish to become a senior guide and hold the current raft guide qualification you

6 Page 6 RAFTING AND WHITE-WATER BOARDING FROM SKILLS ACTIVE contd What does this mean for current assessors? Current assessors will automatically have their status updated to include the new units. You will also be provided updated assessor workbook. The workbook will contain the new administrative systems assessment guidelines and check sheets. Please read this documentation and apply the new systems. Although they have been changed it has been simplified. The cost of the qualification All raft trainees are required to sign a Skills Active training agreement to enrol into the qualification. The charge for this is $125. Included in the cost is: Registering the units and completion of the national certificate on NZQA. Registering the qualification on the National Raft Award Register. Issuing of a raft licence. If you have any questions please contact Paul Richards directly on paul@skillsactive.org.nz or REMINDER - Guide Memberships are due for renewal.

7 Page 7 UPCOMING EVENTS NEW ZEALAND R6 SELECTION RACE FOR WORLD RAFTING CHAMPIONSHIPS COSTA RICA 2011 BULLER RIVER MURCHISON - 14th and 15th of November Entry form available from NZRA. Entries close 30 th October. NZRA MOKININUI RIVER TRIP th - 28 th NOVEMBER - after the workshop. Details available from NZRA. Numbers will be limited so if interested please make early contact. Details of costs yet to be finalized. Definite numbers will be required by 8th November.

8 Page 8 UPCOMING EVENTS (cont d) RIVER RESCUE TRAINING AND WORKSHOPS NORTH ISLAND - RANGITAIKI Training 1st 3 rd November Workshop 3 rd 5 th November SOUTH ISLAND - MURCHISON Training 22 nd th November Workshop 24 th th November Information and Registration packs available from nzraftingassociation@xtra.co.nz. Registration forms must be completed and signed to confirm you place. NZRA AGM As required by our constitution, this is a reminder notice of the Annual General Meeting of the NZ Rafting Association, which will be held at Murchison Rivers Cafe on the evening of November 24 th at 7.00 pm. The current executive are: Steve Brown (Chairperson,WSNZ profile), Grant South (MNZ profile), Nick Chater (Raft Racing, SPARC profile) Paul Eames (River Rescue profile), Koryn Gould (River Rescue profile), Tim Marshall (Wild Rivers, Raft Racing profile), Rachael Moore (Skills Active profile) and Tak Mutu (River Boarding). At this stage I am not aware of anyone who does not seek re-election. Nominations are now being called upon so please fill in the nomination form below for the Association Executive. NB Nominations will only be received from current financial members of the Association. Please print all names! 1) Committee Member Candidate nominated.. Member nominating. 2) Committee Member Candidate nominated.. Member nominating. 3) Committee Member Candidate nominated.. Member nominating. Please ensure nominations are received prior to 30 th October 2010 via nzraftingassociation@xtra.co.nz Please include a word profile from the nominated member for circulation. Note: Memberships are due for renewal 1 October Annual General Meeting Agenda Please note any items you would like to be included in the Annual General Meeting:

9 Page 9 JOB VACANCIES Raft Guide/Trip Leader Required We specialise in family trips on the Grade 1 & 2 upper reaches of the Shotover River. We need a raft guide who holds Grade III or IV NZ Raft Guide Award (or equivalent qualification) and who would enjoy joining our small Family Adventures team, full time for the summer. Excellent communication skills are essential. A good knowledge of the Skippers Canyon area and history, as well as a P class licence, would be advantageous. Apply with your info and CV to info@familyadventures.co.nz Interviews to be held in Queenstown MOHAKA RAFTING Senior Grade III Raft guide Experienced Senior Grade III (NZ qualification) raft guide required to work on the Mohaka River. Must have had previous Trip Leading experience on varying volume rivers (preferably in New Zealand), be capable of working on their own and have a high literacy in computer work. The successful applicant will be required to participate in all aspects of rafting from bookings to marketing and must have good people skills. This is a live in position at a fairly remote base. Please apply to: Norm Brown, norm@mohakarafting.co.nz, Phone

10 Page 10 FOR REAL! Colorado rafting guide arrested after girl's rescue By Jason Blevins - The Denver Post Posted: 06/12/ :00:00 AM MDT Clear Creek sheriff's deputies arrested a rafting guide for swimming to a stranded young rafter who had tumbled from his boat on Clear Creek. Ryan Daniel Snodgrass, a 28-year- old guide with Arkansas Valley Adventures rafting company, was charged after the Thursday incident with "obstructing government operations," Clear Creek Sheriff Don Krueger said. "He was told not to go in the water, and he jumped in and swam over to the victim and jeopardized the rescue operation," said Krueger, noting that his office was deciding whether to file similar charges against another guide at the scene Thursday on Clear Creek just downstream from Kermitts Roadhouse on U.S. 6. Duke Bradford, owner of Arkansas Valley Adventures, said Snodgrass did the right thing by contacting the 13-year-old Texas girl immediately and not waiting for the county's volunteer search-and-rescue team to assemble ropes, rafts and personnel. "When you have someone in sight who has taken a long swim, you need to make contact immediately," said Bradford, a 15-year rafting guide and ski patroller from Summit County. "This is just silly. Ryan Snod grass acted entirely appropriately. These guys came to the scene late, and there was a rescue in progress. They came in and took over an existing rescue. To leave a patient on the side of a river while you get your gear out of the car and set up a rescue system you read about in a book is simply not good policy." Snodgrass stayed with the girl until the other rescuers could use a line and raft to bring her and him out of the river. He was then arrested. Snodgrass' raft flipped about noon Thursday in the runoff swelling Clear Creek, and the girl, Victoria Hernandez, swam from the raft. Krueger said the girl was missing for 30 to 45 minutes while Snod grass and other guides searched for her. He said she swam a half-mile from the spot where the raft capsized. Because it had been so long, Krueger said, it was no longer the rafting company's rescue. "They should involve themselves up to a point. They lost contact," Krueger said. "Whether they want to say they were trying to rescue their customer, when they had lost visual contact and had no idea where their customer has been for 30 to 45 minutes, then it becomes our issue." Search-and-rescue outfits tend to operate from a conservative standpoint, working from the least risk throwing a rope to the highest risk actually swimming said Mike Mather, a 20-year swiftwater training instructor. "It's all about evaluating your risk. This guide probably has much more whitewater savvy than your traditional rescue squad, and he probably did not consider that swim very aggressive," Mather said. "Rescuers come onto a scene and they have one person stuck, and they don't necessarily want to put another person in the water, especially if they don't know that person. They are in a tough spot. They don't have the whitewater savvy, but they do have rescue standards and protocols to follow." Either way, the story ends well. The teenage girl and another juvenile who fell from the raft were treated for bumps and bruises and released. Several rafting company owners said Friday they had never heard of a rafting guide getting arrested for participating in a rescue. "I've never had an issue like that, and I'm not sure anybody really has," said John Rice, owner of Clear Creek Rafting. Bradford said he would expect his guides to do the same thing again. His guides are professionals, he said, trained and certified in swiftwater rescue. Snod grass has been guiding for 10 years, he said. "To jump into water and navigate a river in a swiftwater rescue is common. You get into the river and swim. You have to do it," Bradford said. "The fact these guys don't understand that is disturbing. "Making contact immediately with your victim is essential. It's not about who is in charge. It's about the safety of a 13-year-old girl. You are going to do everything in your power to ensure the safety of your guest, and if that means in Idaho Springs you get arrested, well, I guess we'll just get arrested."

11 Page 11 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS FOR APPROVAL AT AGM

12 Page 12 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS FOR APPROVAL AT AGM

13 Page 13 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS FOR APPROVAL AT AGM

14 YOUR DETAILS Please Print GUIDE MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION FORM All information pertaining to the application will be used in accordance with the Privacy Act We will retain your details so that we may provide you with information relating to the NZRA. You have the right under the Privacy Act 1993 to access and correct your details. From time to time, we may also send you information on behalf of other organisations (such as TIANZ) which we believe may be of interest to you. Please tick the box if you do not wish to receive that information 1. Full Name 2. Postal Address 3. Company contact: 4. Phone Hm: Wk: 5. Mobile Fax 6. address ( will be the main point of contact for newsletters etc) 7. NZ Raft Guide Award held n/a Guide Grade 2 (please circle) National Grade 3 Senior Grade 3 National Grade 4/5 Senior Grade 4/5 8. Do you require a logbook? Yes No (1 st logbook is free, replacement fee is $30) (Please note if you have already received one from Skills Active this is your free one) 9. Do you require trip forms? Yes No 10. Are you happy to have your address on the guides login area to share with other members? Yes No 2010/2011 Subscription Fees TypeNZRA Sub Sub Total GST TOTAL Guide - 1 October 2010 to $20.00 $3.00 $ September Payment Method(circle) Cheque Direct Credit Other(cash or money order) Please make cheques payable to: New Zealand Rafting Association. Pay by Direct Credit: Bank Acc #: (Place your name in particulars and with date of payment) Please send/ this form to: New Zealand Rafting Association C/- Raewyn Larcombe 203 Orari River Road, RD 22 Peel Forest Telephone: Fax: nzraftingassociation@xtra.co.nz Office use only : Form Received: Payment Encl: Entered: Receipt#: M ship Number: Cheque#: