Stepping Into Your Role

Talya Lehrich

Those who know me know that I have sold my soul to a lovely little outdoor sleepaway camp in the Rocky Mountains where I spend the summers teaching through the outdoors and romping around in the Colorado wilderness. Every other week we take off into the backcountry for week-long backpacking, biking, and climbing treks. Rumors circulated the camp of the mysterious David Michael Scott, a former Naked and Afraid star (season 7 episode 11!) making a guest appearance to lead a specialized backpacking trip focused on wilderness survival.

I first saw David from afar, as I stood in a shed amidst a rainstorm, looking at a map of the backpacking route we would soon be leading together in the Sangres de Cristo mountains. He paced back and forth in the rain, wearing a blue rain poncho and attentively sanding a spoon he had just finished carving. I began to panic slightly, glancing at our trip details paper and seeing my name next to the “Trip Leader” role and his next to the “Additional Leaders” role. The role of Trip Leader can be quite arbitrary because all leaders in the backcountry share responsibilities and decision making. However, specifically, as Trip Leader you carry the Garmin inReach to communicate with base camp, keep track of the maps and emergency protocols, and most importantly you make all final decisions —especially in times of heightened stress. What made me qualified to be the Trip Leader when David was over twice my age and harbored a lifetime more experience? Confident in the previous three weeks of trust I had built with the kids we would be leading, I tried to convince myself to own the role. 

With only brief introductions to each other, David, two other leaders, and I set out on a five day backpacking trip with a van full of teenagers, one with a case of the sniffles. When we arrived at the trailhead, David pulled me aside, saying, “I have observed that you are the leader here, and I would like to respect that, all final decisions will be left to you.” Again, slight panic struck: he has far more experience, why me? What if I make a decision he doesn’t agree with?

Nonetheless, we took off with a week's worth of trails to hike and survival skills to learn.

As any good backcountry excursion goes, we began to encounter some challenges on day two, which required approaching and traversing the first of three 12,000 ft mountain passes and getting back below treeline before the afternoon storms hit. With difficult terrain, high altitude, fast encroaching storms, and an increasingly sick group, more game-time decisions became necessary. While we always talked through decisions as a group, David consistently yielded the decision making to me such as when and where we would stop for the night, how safe our camping stop was from lightning storms, when to distribute snacks, and most importantly, how hard to push the kids. I leveraged the past three weeks I had spent with the kids and used them to guide my decision making.

On day three, bad weather threatened our ability to complete our route and learn the skills David intended to teach the group. As leaders we came up with two plans in which David and I held different ideas of which route to take: one would cross the third mountain pass with new terrain and mountainscapes, and the other drop below treeline sooner to shelter from the storms and allow for more time to learn survival skills. Despite this disagreement, David yielded to me in wanting to allow the kids decide how to proceed. We gave the group the map and explained what each route would look like for the rest of the trip in terms of mileage, difficulty, and time to learn wilderness skills, and gave them time to decide together. Ultimately, the kids decided to take the route that David preferred, but it was the dialogue in which we were on equal footing that led to this decision. That evening featured a lesson on wildlife, the accidental adding of soap instead of olive oil to our dinner, a case of (almost) trench foot, late night fireside spoon carving, and stargazing.

After another long rainy day, almost the whole group was noticeably sick, featuring one early morning case of respiratory distress and three fainting spells. On the final morning, the kids eagerly voted that we would wake up before sunrise and drive to the Great Sand Dunes on our way back to base camp. As all the kids went to sleep, David pulled me aside, voicing that he thought an alpine start was not a good idea due to the volume of sickness in the group, but nonetheless let me make the final call. I was torn, but reluctant to dismantle the excitement to see the Dunes that had built up throughout the week. When that 4:30 AM alarm went off in the frigid dark I wished I had agreed to sleep in and hike out leisurely in the daylight. Instead, we began the scramble to pack up camp in the mosquito ridden dawn hours and hiked to the trailhead by headlamp light and the sound of sniffles and coughs.

Seeing how much fun the kids had sliding down the Sand Dunes and enjoying each others’ company was all that was needed to solidify my decision. David later approached me, saying that it was the right decision to go. I have never wanted affirmation for my work in the backcountry, but in the presence of a man with far more professional and lived experience, I felt a sense of validation and certainty in my role that I never knew I needed.

While I may have learned how to start a fire 15 different ways, how to carve a magnificent spoon, and how to send a light signal to a plane, what I will be forever grateful to David for is allowing me to learn, grow, and step into my role as a leader. Before leaving base camp and returning to his day job in Denver, David handed me a spoon, the one he had been sanding when we first met. I now always carry it with me in the backcountry as a reminder of the leader we can all tap into. You are never too young or too humble or too female to take on a leadership role, especially in the presence of others with more experience; that is how you learn, that is how you safely make mistakes, and how you get comfortable being uncomfortable. 

*the mystery sickness turned out to be COVID which we all later caught :))