PNOA Outdoor Safety Workshop on January 20th, 2024
After a winter storm had blown through southwestern BC, the road condition in Metro Vancouver was not ideal. Here came the Outdoor Safety Workshop held at Elgin Hall in South Surrey on Jan. 20, 2024. 38 people planned to come but only 28 showed up. Some could not come simply because they didn’t feel comfortable driving on icy roads. On the other hand, 7 people walked by and dropped in. In total, there were 35 participants. The majority participants were from the local. But some did drive a long way to South Surrey from Coquitlam and even Maple Ridge.
Event Coordinator Suzey Jiang opened the workshop in a cold afternoon on Jan. 20, 2024
Kimberly had to ask her husband to help push her car out of her complex to a main road in order to get here. Lots of local side roads were still covered by deep snow. Kim was one of the two speakers from Search and Rescuer BC. They provided a cold talk to educate people about how to prepare and deal with cold while hiking, skiing or camping in winter. Li Wan, one of the founders of Pacific Northwest Outdoor Association gave a presentation about Avalanche Basic. Maddie Li, a Rover from 21st South Surrey Scouts, demo his winter camping Gears. The workshop lasted for 4 hours. All audiences were very attentive and engaged. The event coordinator Suzey Jiang had to call a stop about 15 minutes after the planned ending time.
Left: Kimberly and Jordan from SAR BC presented a Cold Talk to 35 audiences.
Right: Maddie Li, a Rover from 21st South Surrey Scouts demo his winter camping gears.
PNOA President Li Wan talked about how to identify the risk of avalanche
Audience listened attentively to the speakers
“This workshop is full of information”, June, one of the participants commented on her social media. After the workshop, a survey was conducted and 15 participants responded. The feedback was extremely positive. The overall satisfaction score is 4.8 out of 5. The comments include that the contents of the workshop were very informative, speakers were very professional, and the workshop was well organized. The areas that need to be improved include that the location of the workshop could be more central, time control of the workshop could be better. All of the respondents want to hear more about outdoor safety and some has specified the workshop contents could cover more in avalanche and safety gears such as GPS.
Neighbourhood Small Grants sponsored the workshop with a grant of $500 and PNOA recruited 9 volunteers to help with reception, arena setup and taking down as well as translation and snack services. This is the second time Suzey Jiang organized an Outdoor Safety Workshop. The first one was held in Nov. 2022. She is hoping to host anther one next winter. The topics could be Navigation and Leave No Trace.
