Hello friends,
We at Triad River Tours take your safety as our first priority; we also care about the comfort level that people have on our local rivers. Recently, we have been contacted about an accident that occurred involving the loss of life on one of our local rivers. Triad River Tours was not involved in the incident. Our staff were conducting a Swiftwater Rescue Course on the Snoqualmie River at the time and were not on that specific river that day. Triad operates on the Sauk, Snoqualmie, and Skagit Rivers at this time. When we heard of the incident, we immediately offered our help and worked to provide support for all involved. Unfortunately, this particular event ended in tragedy.
The first thing we have to say is that our thoughts and love go out to absolutely everyone involved. Triad River Tours’ staff has worked alongside search and rescue, fire departments, and private search parties, and many of our staff know the trauma that can come from being even remotely close to the loss of life. Please take care of yourselves. The second thing for you to know is that Triad River Tours always takes your safety as our first priority. We truly care about you while you are with us, and we do not cut corners on our safety protocol. Safety systems are our religion, our structure, and our foundation.
For those of you who are unfamiliar; in our industry a protocol is an operational system that provides sets of guidelines that help steer our trips away from danger, and towards safety. We have a large document containing written protocols, and we have other aspects of the protocol that are involved in our training. Part of Triad’s protocol is the equipment we use. There is also a protocol for how to train to use that equipment, how to use a particular piece of equipment within the structure of the safety system, and how to teach our guests about utilizing that piece of equipment. There are also protocols for how we communicate with each other, which platforms (we use Slack, most of the time) we use to collaborate with each other off the river, and how to hold meetings before, during, and after trips. Many of our protocols are installed during the early part of the season, when we reconstruct everything, test our systems, our crew, and analyze river conditions.
River conditions are analyzed separately from our equipment. Our equipment is analyzed separately from our guides. Our guides are analyzed and evaluated separately from both river conditions and equipment. Finally, our system is put into place, and we check, recheck, and check again, running the same section of river over and over until we reach a level of proficiency and safety that is consistent with the level of risk that is acceptable for that section of river, and that is consistent with the risk analysis that is presented to our guests on our website. If, for example, we put together our protocol for running the river, and select our equipment, and our guides, and we cannot run the river with a rate of success above what is expected, we cancel every single trip on that river until we can. In 2022 we did just that. As of the date of this writing (June 17, 2022), we just finished cancelling every single Skykomish River trip that was scheduled for this year. The revenues are refunded without question. We do not simply “send it” when we have human lives in our hands who have paid us to care for them.
The important thing to note is that when you pay for a trip you are not just paying for that day, you are investing in research and development that truly happens all year round; paying for scouting trips through the winter, or on the early mornings before changes in river levels, to pay for drone footage, to pay for additional research to go into river conditions, equipment testing, and guide training and evaluation. Meetings with our staff happen all year; long discussions by phone, Zoom, in meeting rooms, and at the river. Our guides do not talk about these things on the river necessarily, because the trip is about your experience and not about our job, but they are a part of the life we have chosen to live. The river is our canvas, and running the river is our paintbrush.
Please note that at any point, if any aspect of our river safety system does not function as it should, it is immediately pulled out, inspected/evaluated, and there is a collaborative process that includes potentially hiring outside third party consulting services, or reaching back into the decades past and talking to guides that ran the river before us. River conditions. Equipment. Guides staff. All of these are given incredibly close scrutiny that goes on endlessly. There is no limit to what we will do to refine this system; we put pressure on this system because it needs to prove itself in the worst of situations. We put pressure on our equipment, for the same reason. We also put pressure on our guides, who know full well the job that they have in front of them is not easy. We help our guides staff by always working with them to empower them to do a better job. Triad River Tours voluntarily pays for Swiftwater Rescue Training for our entire guides staff before each season, and numerous (seemingly endless) training trips to help them develop skills. Not once would Triad ever negate an opportunity to improve any aspect of its safety system. This is the core of what we do. Each day, it is the first thing we consider. We have to be ready; that’s #1. The river has to be runnable; that’s #2. Our equipment must be sound; that’s #3. Our operational system is thorough, and detailed, but it is not concrete; it was created by professionals, and it is adaptable by our professionals. The system is operated by the guides, who are in complete control of it. Guides are the pilots. Guides are the engineers. Our guests are our crew. When you arrive for your trip, the synergy between the guides and our guests begins, as we move forward operating a river trip upon the platform created by the countless hours of work that took place before we arrived at the river. The river trip starts long before the meetup time.
We benefit from generations of river runners, decades of feedback, and the highest quality safety systems, equipment, training, and river conditions data possible. We believe in the way we do what we do and the quality and attention to detail we give our work will never change. Many of you have been with us before and you know that this is the core of who we are as a company. Nothing about that will ever change here; safety is our first priority every single day. It is not about money to us; it is about two things: #1: Protecting Human Life. #2: Protecting the Environment. We constantly adapt, give and receive feedback, and update our protocols. They are living aspects of our safety system, and we have put extensive work into them. We have learned to “trust the system, trust our training, trust our team”. We are not perfect, and our system is not perfect, but it is very good, and we know our abilities, as well as the limitations of our safety system.
Our safety protocols are very detailed, and we are regarded across the industry as a conservative outfitter; clearly sparing no expense when it comes to safety. We have developed our reputation as an industry leader when it comes to safety as we have canceled trips, foregone additional revenues, and created a safety system that is inherently very expensive. All of this has been done under the guidance of business professionals, and a core belief that in the long run, the sustainability of our operation will benefit more from spending the money to develop the trust of the public, that they will see what we do, and that they will tell others. It has been just over 10 years now, since Triad River Tours was developed, and we have done just that. Our business has doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and we now run more people down the rivers of Puget Sound than any other outfitter. Our belief in the process, and the belief that trust is currency (shout out to that TED Talk :), and that reputation will always outlast frills and gimmicks has guided us. When guides come from other companies, and they ask us “how can you pay people more, and have nicer gear, but yet not charge more money?”… the answer is not a secret, but in business schools it is called CLV (customer lifetime value). In our world, we simply call it building community, building trust, and building loyalty. We have come to recognize that in this day and age, when so few things are reliable, that our guests relish when they come to rely on us, and many people now will only go with Triad River Tours. We believe that if we re-invest the revenues from our trip bookings back into the guide staff, into paying for swiftwater trainings, and into scouting trips, better equipment, that it will come back to us.
We have never hesitated to cancel a trip if there is any safety concern whatsoever, and that isn’t about to change. We do not believe that taking short cuts saves us money in the long run. We do not believe that taking unnecessary risks benefits our company in the long run, and we ignore the short term gains of one days revenues, and in exchange, we give our efforts over to our ideals and our ethics. We follow them, and if for some reason we cannot follow them, we do not go on the river.
The level of detail in Triad’s safety protocols is highly extensive and thorough, and for most people it will be very boring, but we are working on writing these out so that people can understand these better. In the meantime we have published our employee manual here. The manual does not include more detailed information that is within our operation, but hopefully it will help our guests gain a better understanding of our operation as we share it with you on trips.
Given the increase in incidents among private boaters, we are looking at a way to make our safety protocols public; we recognize that the expense we have incurred for the research involved in our safety systems could be of benefit to others, and we intend on sharing what we know of our local rivers.
Triad River Tours is the Western Washington whitewater rafting industry leader, and while we have not been involved in any serious incidents, we are by no means immune to harm. Please know that rivers deserve our respect, and our attention, and they do not function by the same laws as our highways, our trail systems, or man made obstacles. Rivers are inherently dangerous, and that is why we go to so much work to ensure that we can control as many variables as possible. We cannot control a river, and to a river we are small… that is why we must use our intelligence, and do our very best to arrive prepared to meet the river on its terms.
One thing you can do to support us is to recognize that our work requires great cost, and we need your participation in order to be successful. When Triad operates during higher water, we typically hire more guides, and incur higher costs, but we do not charge more. When our guests cancel trips our guides are still paid, and paid well. What you can do to support us is to make it to your trip on time, and watch your safety video, and show up informed and prepared. Your support with this is appreciated. We look forward to sharing more about our safety system with you. We spare no expense and have always maintained a position of leadership regarding safety. We are the only rafting outfitter in our area the requires all guides to pass SRT-1 course. Our extensive online + on river guide training is something we also pride ourselves on. Triad River Tours remains committed to hiring only the finest guides in the industry, and paying them well above industry average, as we expect well above average quality of work. Our equipment is impeccably sound, inspected, and replaced whenever needed. For those of you that have been rafting with us before, none of this is new. For those of you who haven’t; we look forward to showing you the way that we operate.
Take care everyone. Take care of yourselves, and each other.
Sincerely,
Luke Baugh
Executive Director of Triad River Tours
