The challenges of keeping a group together naturally go up as scenery and/or conditions get more interesting, but I have two suggestions based on experiences guiding. Obviously, leading an outing differs from guiding a paying group, and this may not work as well with people who are more confident in their experience. First, I think it's important to establish pre-paddle consensus. Staying in clear visual contact is about as stretched out as I want a group to be. I also ask someone whose judgment and skills are sound to serve as a sweep. No one goes behind the sweep or ahead of the leader. A few signals for "group up", "go on", "stop/no go" suffice. Does that mean the group moves at the pace of the slowest paddler? I guess so, but group paddles are social outings by their nature. Further, the presence of a sweep is a friendly reminder that a paddler has fallen to the back, and may be holding things up. The result is that the group tends to stay together better and move faster than a paddle without a sweep. Mark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Sep 26 2000 - 12:04:40 PDT
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