A Team Policies

We, the A Team (Alpine climbing team), are amateurs and enthusiasts who are interested in off-trail traveling, scrambling, and climbing.

Expectations

Hiking, scrambling, and climbing are dangerous in nature. Life is good. The safety of a trip relies on both individual capability/skills and collective effort from all team members. As a result, it is required that.

• Team member must sign the wavier before participating our team activities. 
• Team member must read and study the route information provided by the leader for a trip and use his/her own judgment to decide whether he/she wants to participate or not.
• Team member must be responsible for his/her own safety and must speak out if the route or other conditions are not in his/her comfort zone. 
• "Come home safely" must be the first priority and turn-back is always an option. 
• Team member must be a team player and help each other along the route.
• Team member must respect other team members' privacy when sharing pictures and videos with outsiders.

It is also expected that.

• Team member should have good physical fitness and conditioning, for example, has no trouble to hike up Mailbox Peak old trail in 2 hours and 30 minutes or less in normal trail condition.
• Team member should be comfortable with class 3 scrambling.
• Team member should keep improving his/her skills such as route planning, navigation, ice axe, rope, avalanche awareness, first aid, and rescue techniques. 
• Team member should read the book "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, 8th Edition" at least once to get to know the basic mountaineering knowledge.
• Team member should be committed to be active in the team. Inactive members for a half year will be removed from our web chat group. 
• Team members should keep the same pace and keep in sight of each other on a trip unless the route is a well-traveled regular trail.
• Team member should be on time for the trip and leave trip itinerary with your family or a responsible person.
• Team member should provide an emergent contact phone number so that a Standby member, i.e., one person from our team who does not participate in the trip, could keep track of the team trip progress and call the search/rescue team and the appropriate emergent contacts if necessary.
• The team is managed by senior team members collectively. Senior and experienced members should take turn to lead the team for different trips. 
• Team leader should provide detailed route information including weather and avalanche danger, emergent plan, and turn-back time to all team members before a trip. 

Equipment

Please bring 10 essentials and other required items.

• Winter:
• Required: extra clothing, headlamp, firestarter/matches, pocket knife, food, water, trekking poles, ice axe, microspikes, helmet, boots, gaiters, sunglasses, sunscreen, Gaia GPS or other GPS apps, emergent blanket.
• Recommended: crampons, snowshoes, Rope Cordelette,  Carabiners, Harness, Compass, radio, first aid suppliers, emergency bivy.
  
• Summer:
• Required: extra clothing, headlamp, firestarter/matches, pocket knife, food, water, trekking poles, helmet, boots, sunglasses, sunscreen, Gaia GPS or other GPS apps, emergent blankets.
• Recommended: Rope Cordelette, Carabiners, Harness, Compass, radio, first aid suppliers, emergency bivy. 

Apart from the above, as a team, some members (usually the trip leader) must carry ropes, first aid suppliers, emergent blankets, and other tools if required by the route.

Route Planning and Navigation

For each trip, a leader is responsible for the following tasks.

• Collect route information.
• Create a caltopo route and export it as a GPX file for GPS applications.
• Update team members with weather, avalanche danger, and other route information in advance.
• Provide emergent plan and turn-back time to team members.
• Designate a Standby member to check team progress on the trip.
• Be responsible for the navigation of the route.

External Members

Our off-trail trips are usually more strenuous with much higher danger, as a result, we don't expect to invite external members to travel with us. However, we also do regular hiking from time to time and we accept external members for regular hikes.

GAS Sharing

It is expected that each member shares the driving responsibility and gas cost.

• When external folks ride with us for regular trails. We will charge $5 for hiking within 1 hour round-trip driving and $10 for 2 hours,.... This will be included in trip announcement.
• Gas share using the formula: c = R/25 * 3 * f /n, where c is the shared gas fee for everyone in the car including the driver, R is round trip miles, 25 is the average MPG, 3 is the gas cost per gallon, f is a factor. If there are three or less people in the car, we use f=1.5 and f=2 otherwise. Finally, n is the number of total people in the car. As a result, a ride needs to pay c and the driver earns (n-1)*c.  We will do bookkeeping for the cost and calculate the cost distribution among team members and pay the cost every three months.
• Every time, the mileage will be recorded and aggregated for a driver and will be used to decide who will take a turn to drive for the next trip.
• If a team member rides with an external member, please use the external policy for gas sharing.