May 13, 2021
Our guest today, Roger Yim, has over 430 weeks of leading and instructing wilderness-based expeditions, focusing on leadership, wilderness skills, personal development, environmental stewardship, and expedition behaviour. He started working in outdoor education in the early ’90s. In 1996 Roger began working for the Canadian Outward Bound School, and it 98; Roger took his NOLS River Instructors course and work 18 years with the school. He mostly worked on ski, mountaineering, rock climbing, avalanche, and whitewater courses but has led several rock climbing caving and sea kayaking courses.
Now, Roger lives in Nelson, British Columbia and works as an ACMG ski guide in the winter. This summer, Roger is excited to return to NOLS, leading course in Alaska after a few years hiatus from the school.
In this episode:
- (02:38) Roger talks about the day of the helicopter food drop on a Yukon mountaineering course and how the weather took a drastic turn, leading them to have no food for two days. But since desperate times call for desperate measures, before they completely ran out, the group shared whatever food they had left and ate it together, forming a strong bond between the members and help them survive during the difficult times ahead.
- (20:40) Roger shares the story about running out of coffee mainly to share the “real truth.” This may not be a strange scenario in most cases, and everyone runs out of caffeine eventually but what makes it funny is that the rumour wasn’t even the real truth. While leading a hiking course, Roger explains that he had his final paperwork flown in with the last food ration. Everything seemed perfect until he realized that he forgot to include every evaluation. Coming closer to the pickup date, Yim had no choice but to compromise his pride to do a call from the sat phone, and instead of stating the ‘real deal’ he ended up complaining about the shortage of coffee and requesting them to send a few packs along with the folder he left in the filing cabinet – It’s even more hilarious in his narration.
- (26:11) Roger shares yet another funny story about his companion KG and the giraffe. KG being the most incredible and fantastic instructor, had an entertaining way to educate the students by stating facts about every big animal that walked the forest of Kenya – starting from giraffe all the way to rhinoceros. Not only leaving students hysterical but also the other instructors in the fit of laughter because this class on a NOLS course in Chile!
- (28:44) Roger takes us back to his experience of Denali Highway and some dog mushers. While his students were on their small group expedition without Instructors on an Alaska Mountaineering NOLS course, he and his pal Andy stumble upon a dog musher company owned by an ex-model. Not able to contain their excitement to meet a model in real life, they paid all their savings for the tour to meet the beauty – but end up disappointed when the model never shows up, and the short-lived tour turns out to be just visiting dogs.
- (38:35) In the end, Yim shares a story behind “Runaway in Vegas.” He tells us when one of the students was kicked out of the course for breaking the no drug rule, and he was left to take the responsibility to take the student back to the NOLS branch. He further explains how the rebellious kid runs away when hiring a rental car and was nowhere to be found. The story is filled with more thrill and suspense, but as they say, hard work only pays off when it meets the right plan of action – the same goes with this one.