Any trip leader will tell you how easy it is to organize a trip when the members who sign up are committed to participating. In that case, members sign-up early, provide an honest assessment of their skills, remain committed to the trip (e.g. don’t sign-up for concurrent trips, or cancel at the last minute), and, of course, show-up on time at the meeting point with all the required equipment. Sounds obvious, right?

Well, we’ve had an issue with some members either not being aware of their poor behavior or not caring about their impact upon the trip and its organizer. This isn’t really a new problem for any club, but it’s become more problematic with the new BCMC website where it has become so easy to sign-up and remove oneself from a trip.

The Climbing Committee and the Executive have been listening to feedback from trip organizers and we are considering implementing a system that would track the reliability of club members signing up for a trip. It’s fairly simple: get a brownie point for good behavior, or a demerit point for bad behavior… add it up and you get your Reliability Score. That Score would be made available to trip organizers, and while screening potential participants for his/her trip, the organizer can take into consideration the Reliability Score.

What do you think? Any feedback is appreciated.

I would support implementing a simple score like the one proposed.  I think that most trip organizers have a personal list of people they've had reliability issues with, but it's impossible to know whether someone you don't know is prone to flaking out at the last minute (or worse, morning of the trip!).  I also think that having a simple scoring system like this would act as a deterrent from signing up to trips that the person isn't committed to participating on.  Something simple like this seems quite fair to me.

I think something like this would be great, especially for certain kind of trip, though I'd be really easy to hurt people's feelings.

The ACC has system where you can mark participants as a no-show. And organizers can see the the number of no-shows for each participant. They also have registration cut-off so in theory, if someone drops out after the registration cut-off, the leader can mark them as a no-show. In practice this doesn't happen very much. I think most leaders are pretty lenient (and I've heard of a case where some people where marked as no-show because they missed the organizers last-minute email where they changed their plans and showed up at a different spot).

I think it would be a great tool, but it requires organizers are clear about their expectations and requirements of the participants.

I think that most trips only need 7 days open for registration. The narrower window of opportunity will certainly create a certain level of sign up competition and potentially weed out the more impulsive registrants. The software is already set up for this and no complicated tracking or grading system is needed.

Lately I've been trying a two week sign up "window" for my outdoor climbing trips to the Squamish area.  For trips requiring more planning and preparation I'd use a much larger sign up "window", such as 6-8 weeks for a multi-day technical alpine trip.  I like the idea of knowing which members are consistent with showing up for trips they've signed up for and been confirmed a trip participant.  That said, I do understand that sometimes people have to back away from their commitment for "last minute" emergencies.  It's those few members that have a history of backing out close to the trip start time that I prefer to avoid counting on.  Not so critical for large-group Squamish climbing trips in the Bluffs but it will matter when I switch to multi-pitch climbing trips and the group size will be smaller... with every confirmed participant spot important for me as a Trip Organizer.

How much of the problem is people signing up for multiple trips at the same time?  Because that part could be eliminated by changing the trip organization tool so you cannot sign up for more than one concurrent trip.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far!

Geoff: Definitely, members who organize a lot of trips will already have a sense for who is, and who is not, reliable - the Club wants to try to assist those members who do not organize quite so many trips and/or who are new to organizing trips. This issue is now starting to affect the Club itself - over the past winter and spring, I have been contacted by a number of "newer" backcountry skiing and mountaineering Trip Organizers who have expressed their frustrations about members who "double book" for trips scheduled for the same weekend, and others who sign up for trips and then "drop out" at the last moment (or who simply do not show up at all...).

Allan: What is being contemplated for the BCMC would be quite similar. The goal would be to keep the system very simple, and for the expectations to be clear and consistent.

Peter: Seven days is a bit short for the organization of mountaineering, backcountry skiing and ice climbing trips (perhaps some some hiking and other trips as well) - I think those types of trip take more organization than others. However, too often, members are signing up for trips weeks or months in advance of the start date, thereby "holding" a spot on the trip (and effectively denying that spot to other members), and then dropping out within days of the start date. I think Trip Organizers need, and should have, a tool to be able to see who is, and who is not, reliable (regardless of the length of the sign-up window). Further, if the proposed system is implemented in a transparent manner, some of the "double bookers" and "drop outs" may be less likely to engage in this behaviour in the future.

Paul: I agree with you completely.

Scott: It was a big problem during the recent Winter/Spring, particularly with respect to backcountry skiing trips. We are considering the change that you have suggested.

Bottom line, these types of behaviour: (a) are rude and disrespectful to Trip Organizers; (b) can compromise the safety of a trip; and, (c) may negatively affect the Club itself, as past Trip Organizers lose their enthusiasm to post new trips. If anyone wants to gain some greater insight into the problems and frustrations that these behaviours create for Trip Organizers, please see Dave Scanlon's excellent article "Commitment" in the Spring/Summer 2013 issue of the FMCBC's Cloudburst.

I agree with such a system and leave it up to our capable execs to design one.