Embark on a riveting journey with our guest Anna Scheirlinck, whose life reads like an adventure novel, brimming with courage and a relentless drive to make a difference.
From academia to the frontlines of law enforcement and disaster relief, Anna's tale is not just one of career changes but of chasing the greater good, regardless of the terrain.
Her experiences stretch from the lecture halls of social policy to the dusty streets of Alice Springs, and from the earthquake-struck streets of Christchurch to the snowy peaks of New Zealand's mountain ranges. Anna's story is a testament to the human spirit's capability to adapt, serve, and lead in the most demanding circumstances.
My conversation with Anna isn't just about her past glories; it's a deep dive into the ethics of policing, the essence of community service in crisis, and the raw leadership honed in military and mountaineering feats. She unearths the nuances of serving as a constable in an outback town, the human connections that can evolve from disaster recovery, and the relentless physical and mental trials faced in both army training and alpine rescues.
Anna's narrative is a powerful reminder of the strength found in vulnerability, the leadership born out of service, and the adrenaline that fuels a life dedicated to surmounting both literal and figurative mountains.
As we conclude our episode, Anna's voice brings us into the heart of alpine search and rescue operations, where the stakes are as high as the peaks. With humility and raw honesty, she opens up about the support systems that uphold her and her team, the culture of debriefing that they rely on, and her dreams of scaling New Zealand's formidable 3,000-metre summits.
You can connect with Anna here.
Embark on a riveting journey with our guest Anna Scheirlinck, whose life reads like an adventure novel, brimming with courage and a relentless drive to make a difference.
From academia to the frontlines of law enforcement and disaster relief, Anna's tale is not just one of career changes but of chasing the greater good, regardless of the terrain.
Her experiences stretch from the lecture halls of social policy to the dusty streets of Alice Springs, and from the earthquake-struck streets of Christchurch to the snowy peaks of New Zealand's mountain ranges. Anna's story is a testament to the human spirit's capability to adapt, serve, and lead in the most demanding circumstances.
My conversation with Anna isn't just about her past glories; it's a deep dive into the ethics of policing, the essence of community service in crisis, and the raw leadership honed in military and mountaineering feats. She unearths the nuances of serving as a constable in an outback town, the human connections that can evolve from disaster recovery, and the relentless physical and mental trials faced in both army training and alpine rescues.
Anna's narrative is a powerful reminder of the strength found in vulnerability, the leadership born out of service, and the adrenaline that fuels a life dedicated to surmounting both literal and figurative mountains.
As we conclude our episode, Anna's voice brings us into the heart of alpine search and rescue operations, where the stakes are as high as the peaks. With humility and raw honesty, she opens up about the support systems that uphold her and her team, the culture of debriefing that they rely on, and her dreams of scaling New Zealand's formidable 3,000-metre summits.
You can connect with Anna here.
There's nothing as satisfying and exhilarating as being able to use your skills, be part of an amazing team and be there for somebody on their bad day to get them out of trouble.
Speaker 2:Anna. She was a lecturer in social policy. She was a constable in the Northern Territory Police Force. She was with New Zealand Red Cross and assisted in the Northern Territory Police Force. She was with New Zealand Red Cross and assisted in the earthquake recovery. She was an officer and a lieutenant in the New Zealand Army. She's a ski guide. She's a certified emergency manager, she is a mountain rescuer and she is now working on a really interesting climate tech startup.
Speaker 1:And that's a mission that we won some awards for in terms of the Silver Bravery Award from the Royal Humane Society, and at first it was funny because I thought what I'm not brave? I was just doing my job.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you're clearly somebody who likes to help people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest minute. So let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. I want to tell you a little bit about desk work. Desk work is your offshoring option. If you want to save around 50% of your total headcount cost for equivalent talent across accounting, marketing, sales, your operations or your admin, then check out desk work. Honestly, if I was looking to start an accounting firm again, it would be a no-brainer for me to use Deskwork. I've used offshoring teams before in the past. I got past my skepticism on being able to do it and it was so phenomenally successful. Go have a look at desk-workco backslash, greg, and book yourself a free discovery call to learn more about it. Better still, mention my name and get yourself some discounts. Check it out. Now back to the show.
Speaker 2:My guest today is Anna Schelling. Anna is somebody that was introduced to me by actually somebody who does a lot of introductions to podcast guests, and it's Janine Granger, the founder of Easy Crypto in Aotearoa, new Zealand. And when Janine introduced me to Anna, she said, honestly, you need to meet her because she's just so interesting. And I'm just going to rattle through a few things about her. Well, firstly, actually, welcome, anna. I'm going to just say welcome. I actually think otherwise. If I go through all these things first, it's going to take forever and I still won't have introduced you. So here we go, anna.
Speaker 2:She was a lecturer in social policy. She was a constable in the Northern Territory Police Force. She was with New Zealand Red Cross and assisted in the earthquake recovery. She was an officer and a lieutenant in the New Zealand Army. She's a earthquake recovery. She was an officer and a lieutenant in the New Zealand Army. She's a ski guide. She's a certified emergency manager. She is a mountain rescuer and I can't wait to kind of get into that and she is now working on, in Janine's words, a really interesting climate tech startup. So yeah, anna, it's really, really cool having you on the show. I honestly don't know where to start with somebody like you, because you've done so many things, how about we start with the Northern Territory Police? You sound like a Kiwi. How did you end up as a Northern Territory Police officer?
Speaker 1:That's an interesting story actually. I've grown up in Aotearoa all my life and in my early 20s I was looking for something interesting in terms of a career and I started looking at the police force and at the time in New Zealand the police force they were not recruiting a whole lot of people. I went through the process and got through and they said, oh yep, two years and then you can come to, yeah, police college. And I thought two years I'm in my early 20s, that's far too long for me to wait. So, yeah, kept it over to Australia and within months of applying for the Northern Territory Police Force I was accepted and went to police college in Darwin. So yeah, that was quite the experience. Bit of a culture shock, thought. Australia was just like New Zealand but slightly different, but it was actually quite different. And then I got deployed to Alice Springs. So right in the heart of Australia was my first station as a constable, which was very eye-opening.
Speaker 2:It's just extreme. So why Northern Territory? Did you apply to all the different state police forces and then see which one you could get into the fastest? What motivated that one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of bit of impatience to it. And yeah, I did a bit of research, looked at a couple. I got accepted into Western Australia as well but did a quick trip over to Darwin and the landscape, the adventure, the remoteness of it was quite attractive to me. So I thought let's grab it by the horns and jump on and Alice Springs.
Speaker 2:That must have been a pretty extreme place to be A police officer. I don't know a lot about Alice Springs, but I can imagine that crime is a big problem in Alice Springs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, alice Springs, to be fair, was the big culture shock for me. It's a part of Australia that's not viewed by many people outside of Australia. I'd say there's a lot of issues in the social context there. It was really sad in a way to see all of that upfront and personal and really for somebody who wears their heart on their sleeve a little bit, it was quite confronting. I'd say but yeah, I went for an adventure and I sure got that.
Speaker 2:So you were in your early 20s or mid-20s or whatever at this point just huge culture shock. How did you deal with that at such a young age, or was that almost you know that was the purpose of it. Was to have that culture shock.
Speaker 1:I think the purpose of it. I wanted to get outside my comfort zone. I had done a little bit of traveling overseas and countries some different yeah kind of language and history than New Zealand, but I didn't expect to find so much, such a diversity within the centre of Australia and for me, it really shook me up in terms of my grounding for my ethics and thinking about. You know, what do I value? What's most important to me? Racism is a very real and raw issue there and seeing how that was being handled was quite scary and I had to really, yeah, take a stand on many situations where it felt like the institutions were only reinforcing the legacy of racism in a way. That was quite confronting for me.
Speaker 2:And that must have been exceptionally confronting and challenging because you are working for one of the authorities, so your colleagues, potentially what's viewed as okay, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it definitely had me on the line. I, you know, would be watching a colleague and they would approach things with a cynicism and a sort of institutional, I guess, violence, not necessarily always physical, but very much present in terms of how we control people that we don't understand or don't like or have different ways of doing things in their lives. And the town camps around Alice Springs were the most eye-opening part for me. It was like people wanted to put the undesirables outside of the town and keep them at arm's length, and as long as they were at arm's length, then people were happy. And that's what really scared me. I didn't really want to be part of reinforcing that social context. So I, yeah, after a while I realized I couldn't just be another cog in the wheel and I needed to move on and I was craving coming back to New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can imagine just the culture shock of going into a place like that, where alcoholism is a problem, clearly racism is a problem, and yet working for the authority to maintain order, your own own senses, your sense of what's right, what's wrong and your moral values coming up against how you were trained and how you were shown how to deal with. You know some of these people. Plus, it's hot, it's dry, it's barren and it's not green. Old New Zealand Aotearoa, you know so it would have been really confronting.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. And you go into the police force. I imagine many people go in with the ideals of you know, I want to keep people safe, I want to protect my community, I want to, yeah, do my best by the country that I'm living in and all these ideals that you go in with. And there's a bit of a naivety to it, I realised. And there's a bit of a naivety to it, I realised, when there's also a part where you're having to reinforce social institutions and sometimes, of course, I want to keep people safe and the first thing that I need to do is prevent more harm happening, and sometimes that requires the use of force or taking people away from those situations. But at the same time, more needs to be done and that's the difficult part to stay amongst is that there's just because I've locked somebody up doesn't actually change the social situation in their community. A really raw and difficult thing for me to grasp early on in my career, but I think has made me who I am and taken me to different places.
Speaker 2:So where did you go after that? Did you come home?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I moved into the I guess, the softer side of helping and supporting communities and I. This was shortly after the Christchurch earthquakes, so I got a job with Red Cross in Christchurch as a team leader with the Earthquake Recovery Program. So that was very much about community outreach and finding the people that hadn't had connections with social services or organisations or who were left vulnerable and in need following the quakes, and so my job was to connect with them and to provide some of the support that Red Cross was offering at the time through grants and other initiatives that we ran, but also to connect them with other services in the community or networks, or even just help them link in with some local community groups that could help them stay connected.
Speaker 2:And are you a Cantabrian Like, was this going home?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was born in Otatahi but I hadn't lived here much as an adult. But I spent my life trying to return and now I'm back. I'm very content I spent my life trying to return and now I'm back.
Speaker 2:I'm very content and just for those listening from outside of New Zealand, otatahi is the Māori word for Christchurch, and Cantabrian is the province that Christchurch is in. So you come home and you do that, did that sort of push all your buttons? It satisfied what you were looking to do, because obviously you're clearly somebody who likes to help people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that was great at the time. I really enjoyed it. I worked with an amazing team and I had about between 40 to 60 volunteers who would just come through and walk the streets and connect with people in the regions that we were working in. They were able to see the kinder side of humanity, which I'd been missing out on a little bit in the police force. So that was refreshing for that time and I really enjoyed being able to work alongside the Human Rights Commission, a project where we investigated the effects of red zoning of houses across Christchurch after the earthquakes, because they deemed certain areas to be unsafe or not suitable for habitation. So, yeah, it was really cool to be on the grassroots again, but I guess on another side of it from policing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely something that's much more for the soul. And then, was it from there that you jumped into the Army, or had you already had an involvement with the New Zealand Army?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the New Zealand Army I joined the reserves or the territorial force when I was at university actually. So I was studying a Bachelor of Social Work and I was looking at my options for the summer and somehow I came across an army advertisement and thought that's me running around in the bush learning some new skills and going down the opposite pathway to learn some leadership skills was quite attractive to me. So I thought that's a great way to spend my university holidays. So I joined at the time and that became quite an amazing side career for me over the years, which evolved into a full-time job with the Army Leadership Centre after I was at Red Cross. So, yeah, the Army has always been close to my heart. I've met a lot of amazing people through that. The training that I received there was, I would say, life-changing and phenomenal in terms of the leadership training and the skills that I learned in what way is it around?
Speaker 2:you know the obvious things discipline, no purpose no so the discipline side of things.
Speaker 1:I guess that's what everyone thinks of when they, when they think of the island, being really strict and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, that goes with it, but that's by the by.
Speaker 1:For me, it was the camaraderie that, just the way that you look after and you look out for the people that are next to you. It was so strong and I really appreciated that and I've never found it to be so strong anywhere else over my career that you knew that, whatever happened, that you have the back of the person next to you and they have your back, and that was yeah, that was really special. I also learnt so much about leadership and sometimes and I guess this goes throughout my career is what I've learnt hasn't always been by having an amazing leader or anybody standing up the front and spouting out a few leadership slogans or something like that. It's often been by having a really bad leader and and then just getting inquisitive about it and thinking what is it about them that's so hard for me to understand them? Or want to do what they're telling us to do, or why does nobody like them? And does that matter when you're trying to be a leader and get people to do things that?
Speaker 1:they don't actually want to do anyway. So, yeah, I think a lot of it was a mixture. I came across a couple of amazing leaders in my time, but I also came across a few and I thought note to self for a couple of amazing leaders in my time, but I also came across a few and I thought note to self for future, when I'm in that position. Don't be like that.
Speaker 2:It's super interesting because I actually say to my kids and I remind them of this quite a lot they're adults now, but leaders have followers and if you don't have followers then you might think you're a leader but you're clearly not leading because nobody wants to follow you. So you know, being able to know what that means, and actually there is probably no greater example than when battles involved and you know some sort of military type thing, that leadership is just so critical. So are you still in the New Zealand Army? Are you still connected to that?
Speaker 1:I'm very lessly connected. I'm on a general reserve list now but I'm not in active service at the moment. But yeah, as I said, the people that I met, especially in my early days of training. You go through a lot of shit together and that's unforgettable. That helps you build strong bonds, yeah those friendships. Yeah, it's irreplaceableable.
Speaker 2:So I have a lot of friends now who, yeah, I went through training with in the army and that's priceless and what are some of the craziest stories of your time in the army, whether it was training, whether it was things that you maybe you can talk about, as opposed to things you can't talk about, any kind of cool things that stand out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there was plenty of sleepless nights where they're, I guess, simulating a battle scenario and trying to get you into that situation so that you can respond yeah, how you're meant to respond. And I remember one night we were doing some training and I was so short on sleep that I just, I remember one night we were doing some training and I was so short on sleep that I just started seeing like little leprechauns and gremlins coming out in the dark and yeah, hallucinating out of pure tiredness and fatigue and yeah, and then I just come in and out of awareness. But, yeah, definitely some situations where you got pushed right to the limits and realized, wow, there it is, I found it. And now I know what I need to do to try and avoid that next time because, yeah, when things really do get tough, you don't want to be seeing gremlins and like.
Speaker 2:It's not ideal, particularly in a military context. I always remember hearing a story from a mate of mine who was doing some sort of training in the New Zealand Army and he was somewhere up in Waiouru and up by the desert road there.
Speaker 2:And he was saying and I don't know if this is true, but part of training I don't know whether it's everybody gets trained like this is you have to escape, you're given a certain amount of time and you have to basically not be tracked down, and so there's dogs released to try and find you and vehicles released to try and find you, and your job is not to get caught. Did you go through anything like that?
Speaker 1:I didn't get to play that game. That sounds like a lot of fun, but at least I guess the dog catches me.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's not good. I think the dog would probably just hopefully just lick you and then roll over, and you know, it's all about not getting caught.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I definitely was aware of some of those activities. Yeah, there was all sorts. It's like another world. And yeah, I spent a fair amount of time in my summers in Wairu in the heat and the cold, and yeah, it becomes quite a special and memorable place in the heart of New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then, what about this sort of this link through to the mountains? So, as a ski guide, as an alpine rescuer, how did you get involved with something like that? Was that through your time in the army, or was it through you know, something that you enjoyed doing as a child Like? What was the connection there?
Speaker 1:I had started rock climbing with a few friends when I was living in Auckland and when I was in the army. I really wanted to do a leadership course and it so happened that these leadership courses were well, this one was run in the mountains, and so we went mountaineering for a week and we did it in Arthur's Pass, which is Canterbury region, just inland from Christchurch, and it's basically this valley with peaks that shoot up either side from it. So to get to the top of any peak, you basically head straight uphill for a good thousand plus meters, and that was my intro to mountaineering. Every day we went out and we climbed a new mountain and I just remember my calves were burning. I went through all these different emotions with the people I was with, because you have highs and lows and moments of fatigue and moments of irritation.
Speaker 1:And then, yeah, we did a lot of self-assessment in terms of how do we perform as a team and as individuals, and that really opened up to me, both mountaineering, adventuring and that whole side of, I guess, leadership under pressure, and I wanted to do more of that.
Speaker 1:I latched on to a couple of people who said here's the pathway, here's how to get there. Get yourself a couple of qualifications. So I went out and got those on my own, just went rock climbing and learned how to teach it. And, yeah, ever grateful for the people that sort of just walked along me and gave me a few tips along the way of how to tie a better knot or how to use better protection when I was climbing or little things like that, and that really got me into climbing. And then I just took off and everywhere I went I wanted to go rock climbing, mountaineering, and then the skiing came and I mean, who wouldn't want to ski down instead of walk down the mountain? So it got me and, yeah, then I became an assistant ski guide with the New Zealand Mountain Guides.
Speaker 2:With the skiing down? I mean, this is the dumb question, but presumably to ski down you have to have your ski gear, so you've got to climb up with the ski gear. That must make the climb a lot harder, or not so much. What's the feels harder?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, you work for it, but nothing's worth it if you're not really working for it, right? Yeah, and so I would. Sometimes you hike up with your skis on your back, and other times you put skins on the bottom of your skis and then you can move up with those. They basically give you friction going uphill. But, yeah, as soon as you're on skis, it just feels like a lot of fun to me.
Speaker 2:And do you go? You know, other than the rescue situations which we'll get into shortly, do you go up with others? Obviously, it's safer to go up with other people, and so you're doing a climb together and then you ski down together. Is that essentially how it works when you're just out there for fun?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I always go back country skiing with other people. Yeah, it is much safer. Nobody can hear you if you're by yourself and you get hurt. So, yeah, we go out and we'll climb a peak and then ski down it, and now I teach people to do the same or guide people in those situations. I was ski guiding in February earlier this year in Canada, so that was my first time actually skiing in Canada. It was a lot of fun, some glaciated skiing, and I'd totally love to go back there and do some more guiding.
Speaker 2:Have you had situations where you almost felt like you may need rescue services yourself, where you've been up there and it's actually been a bit sketchy.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I have had a situation actually where I pulled a PLB, which is a person located with Beacon and I was with Brent and he cartwheeled wearing his crampons. We were coming down from an attempt on Mount Cook. He took a bad fall, severely sprained both ankles and we had some really difficult terrain over the Tasman Glacier to travel. There was no way we were going to be able to crawl over that with his broken feet. So, yeah, I pulled a PLB and the Aureki Mount Cook rescue team came in with a helicopter and took us out. So I've been on the other end of a rescue as well, which I think more than anything makes me appreciate it so much and want to do the best by the people that call for help when they need it.
Speaker 2:And so did you not, obviously, on that ascent, but you've climbed Mount Cook before Mount Aoraki.
Speaker 1:I haven't actually made it up to the summit yet. They're still on my to-do list the goal yeah, yeah, I've had a couple of attempts and part of living a long time while you're climbing mountains is knowing when to turn around and come back, and so a couple of situations where I've had to go ended up turning around because the weather or the avalanche conditions went right, and so I knew that the mountain will be there another day you that the mountain will be there another day?
Speaker 2:Hey, just let me pause you there for a second and tell you about some help that's available for startup founders. One of the biggest reasons startups fail is that the founders give up. They just burn out through struggling with aligning all of their people to what it is they're trying to do. It doesn't have to be like that, though. Jess Dahlberg is an expert in startup performance and she works to align your team to the performance you need so that you, as founders, can get on and scale with confidence. Simply head to jessdahlbergcom backslash scaleup. That's jessdahlberg D-A-H-L-B-E-R-Gcom backslash scaleup. Use promo code scaleup2024 and start removing those headaches. Let's get back to the show. Is that, mentally, really a tough choice to make? Or you've gone that far and it's been hard work to get that far? It must be tempting at times to go. I don't really want to have to come back and do this all over again. It must be tempting to push on, albeit that that might not be a great choice yeah, yeah, summit fever is is real okay, that's what they call it, summit fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see why yeah, you've already sunk a lot of your energy into it. So, just like you see it as a sunk cost and and you want to keep going and make the most of it, you've given up your days, the cost of getting there. You found a friend to do it with. There's so many things to line up to make it all happen, so it is really hard when you need to turn around and try another time, which may be months or even years away.
Speaker 2:And what about you as a rescuer? So how did you get into that? I can see why you would want to, because there's this confluence of things you love and the sense of adventure. But how did that get started with you becoming an official rescuer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so generally with search and rescue, they take people on for the specialist teams who have existing personal experience and skills in that pursuit. So I was a climber, I was a mountaineer, I'd been instructing and guiding and, yeah, I put my hand up to join the team. There was a bit of a probationary period where they suss you out and make sure that you have all the skills that they're looking for. And then, essentially, yeah, you go through a bit of a training program with search and rescue. And then, essentially, yeah, you go through a bit of a training program with search and rescue. You learn how to search for people, different search techniques. You learn how to operate safely around helicopters and aircraft.
Speaker 1:You learn how to do a lot of first aid and medical support, because you may be with a patient for quite a while before the paramedics can arrive, yeah, and then learning how to move people in really difficult terrain. So we're moving patients with any sort of injury or condition and you're at altitude and you're in a steep area and it may be snowy or icy or just rocky. So, yeah, there's a lot to figure out. And so, yeah, the training, it's ongoing. I'm always learning new ways of doing things and our team is always like improving our techniques, learning from international best practice or even setting our own best practice when we can see that something works best in our area.
Speaker 2:How often is a rescue Like I know? Obviously they're not scheduled, but you know, like, on average, are you out there like every weekend. Are you out there every Wednesday? You know, like is it a weekly thing. How often roughly, do you have to head up into the mountains?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, they're very sporadic. Sometimes you might get two in a week, other times we may not get one for a few months. But with my team that's the alpine rescue canterbury team we cover the canterbury region alongside our akimat cook team and we would get a job for our team on average about once every month or two. Yeah, and these are the jobs which are too technical or the conditions are too serious or dangerous for the land search and rescue ground teams to go into. So the police or the rescue coordination centre will call us up and ask us to head on in and we go prepared to perhaps stay out there for 24 hours. There's always an unknown factor Sometimes we get dropped off by the heli and we don't know if they're going to be able to pick us back up. So we have to go and prepare for all circumstances to both look after ourselves and the people that have called for help.
Speaker 2:So what does that look like? Do you get a little notification that comes through on your phone, a phone call or whatever, and then you suddenly have to, you know, head out to catch a helicopter, or how does that work?
Speaker 1:it's sort of very international rescue sounding, it's like yeah, yeah sometimes it feels a little bit like that yeah, we get a phone call essentially comes through, and then our team communicates with each other around who's heading up. But yeah, basically it's. Then we drive to the aircraft hangar, jump on maybe the Westpac heli or another rescue helicopter and, yeah, within an hour we can be flying over the southern alps of New Zealand and looking for the person who's called for help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's quite surreal when you're working in an office in the afternoon and then next minute an hour later you're flying over a two and a half thousand meter peak in the snow and sunset looking for somebody who's injured themselves. Yeah, sometimes you're going to pinch yourself.
Speaker 2:It's actually, it's crazy, and presumably there must be some situations where it's gone off and you're out for a drink or something with colleagues and you presumably at that point have to go look, I have to tap out here. I'm not going to be able to do it, or do you go on call like how does that work?
Speaker 1:yeah, we have a bit of a cool roster system but, yeah, there's definitely times where you have to say I'm unav, unavailable today. Somebody else is going to have to take it up. So we've got a good team to share it around with. I mean, there's 16 of us at the moment in the Christchurch-based team and we share it around. We have an encore roster so we know how many people we have available. And then it means that we can at least have our fast response team head out. That's two members to start with, and then we build it up as it gets more complex or difficult or prolonged.
Speaker 2:And do you keep all your gear at home or is it all out at the airport or what happens there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. It's something that we've been looking to change and improve on as we professionalise the team. So now we keep it all out at the airport. We used to have it at home, but you can imagine getting the call up and then you're hunting around your garage looking for all the bits and pieces that you need, and then some of it you used for your own adventure in the weekend. So it's drying out on the line, not what you want to be doing when somebody is.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's life or death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, so yeah, we've been able to, through like really generous funding and grants, slowly build up the equipment we need and all of the gear, so that the dream was and becoming a reality is, that we can turn up in your shorts and your t-shirt at the heli hanger and all the gear is there. So next minute you're dressed up, ready to go into freezing conditions on on the top of the mountain and safely yeah execute what needs to be done. Do you get scared?
Speaker 2:no.
Speaker 1:I don't get scared and this is an interesting one, because I think not many people would admit they're coming to scared if they're a rescuer but there's certainly moments where my heart beats quite quickly. There's quite a lot of adrenaline going because everything's you know the heli's wearing up, you've got all your gear on, you've got seconds to make decisions. So, yeah, you certainly have to calm down and start thinking quite logically. We put things in place checklists so that you don't forget anything and so that you can make really sound decisions, because, yes, some of those decisions are life and death. Sometimes we're putting ourselves in a potentially dangerous situation it could be avalanche conditions or poor weather, so we need to make some really big decisions quite fast, compared to when you're going out on your own adventure. So, yeah, that's something that sort of really engages my mind and I enjoy that to an extent. But, yeah, sometimes I would say I get a little bit nervous for sure.
Speaker 2:So there must be times where and I'm guessing a lot of times where there are just simply conditions or factors that you need to bring into the equation that are completely outside your collective control, like weather or access or avalanche, and you are then having to make a decision that's not optimal the weather's, it's foggy or it's raining or whatever and then you're having to make a literally a life and death decision around some of those things. Has that helped you sort of look at making decisions outside of Alpine Rescue just in your general everyday life and make it seem a little bit easier to handle big stuff when you can't really control everything?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it certainly does put things into context and helps me to go through a few of the same processes. That it may not be the holly blades are wearing up and the weather is turning, but I may be in a situation where a client needs something tomorrow and everything is just broken. So what are we going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, is just broken. So what are we going to do? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so when you get into these situations, you're in the, in the mountain. You must have had some times where you've just had some really good outcomes, and then there's been other times where maybe it hasn't been good. Any stories around those, those sorts of things yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a real highs and lows like the optimal highs and lows like the optimal highs and the optimal lows.
Speaker 1:There's nothing as satisfying and exhilarating as being able to use your skills, be part of an amazing team and be there for somebody on their bad day to get them out of trouble.
Speaker 1:That's super rewarding in and of itself. On the other end of that yeah, there's, the reality is sometimes, by the time we get the call, the person who's in trouble has already passed away, or yeah, or this situation ends up and they have a permanent disability or even psychological trauma from the event, and so those situations are so much harder to navigate. It takes a real team to deal with that. We're such a small community in the climbing and mountaineering community in New Zealand, so there's many a time when we know the people that we're responding to on the mountains or somebody knows them. So, yeah, there's a huge amount to to navigate together and it takes a lot of support and care amongst the team for each other as well as really for the for the people we're going up to help, and often their families reach out to us or their friends after an event as well. Yeah, that's, it can be quite gut-wrenching to be true, and how do you deal with that?
Speaker 2:are you given counseling? Do you share amongst the team? How do you process that?
Speaker 1:lots of ways we support each other but from counseling from an external provider through to talking it through, we do a team debrief after every single rescue, no matter how well or otherwise it went. We will be there for each other. We have a real honesty culture so you can call out anything that you thought was unsafe or just, yeah, not best practice. Essentially and yeah, we don't take it personally it's all about learning together and then also being there for each other when things go really, really badly for the person that we've responded to. Yeah, we have group counselling available as well and it needs to be ongoing because these things, you know, will pop up three weeks down the line, three months down the line, even years down the line. It's not unusual for such a I guess it's not unusual for such a I guess a big, excitable sort of situation to become quite traumatic for people over time. So we also give people time to deal with that and there's no pressure to jump back on the next job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is there a command structure on the mountain? So, in terms of with the rescue team, is there a clear this person is the boss and then these people are subordinate to that. Yeah, it's a pretty flat structure.
Speaker 1:You know you may be working just around the corner of a bluff from your teammate and you just need to be able to trust each other. And it's more than anything. It's a really high trust environment. The pilot has to be able to trust us because they're sending us down on a winch, which means that essentially, at some point we're attached. You know, we're on the ground and we're attached to the helicopter and there's a lot of trust in that. There's the winch operator. They have to trust us that we're not going to attach ourselves onto something that could be dangerous. Yeah, so there's a whole lot of trust going on. So, whilst we do appoint a field team leader, that's basically just for the ease of making decisions, so that they can make the final call on things. But yeah, it's similar in some respects to the Army and the camaraderie that I felt there, that you know that each person is very good at what they're doing and they are looking out for everybody else's safety as well as for their own. That's critical to a well-oiled operation.
Speaker 2:And so then you get off the mountain and you do some sort of debrief and look at you know what could we have done better? And are pretty open about feedback about something that wasn't done well or could be improved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really encourage that in the team, like I just encourage people to throw their egos out the window and I have to, I guess, exhibit that by taking leadership and owning. When there are things that I could have done better and I can see that somebody else may bring it up, and there's always something. As much as we like to think we're very good at what we do and we are, there's always something we can refine for next time. And, because these situations are so unique, there's no rescue that ever looks like the last one. There's always something different. Whether it's the people we're picking up the injury one, there's always something different. Whether it's the people where we're picking up the injury the weather, the snow conditions yeah, so it's it's just so much to learn and deal with every time.
Speaker 1:And we also debrief with the heli crew as well, and if the police ran the operation, we'll debrief with them, so that there's a line of, yeah, accountability and learning throughout that. Yeah, and I really appreciate that we just own it. Yes, that's something I could do better. And if it's something I could do better, then probably something other people in the team could learn from as well. And so, sharing those experiences amongst the team and saying, hey, yeah, I could have attached this better last, and then everybody else learns from it.
Speaker 2:So and I think there's some learnings there that parallel across into the business world as well, because you know you're in an extreme environment, but you're also in a high performance environment and so in that environment it's okay to be able to give feedback, honest feedback. That wasn't good enough. What could we do about that? And yet we feel like in a work context it's you know, it's oh. I don't want the person to be upset if I give them that feedback, yet it's so critical in the environment you're in. So what would be a really memorable rescue for you?
Speaker 1:that you look back and you think you know whether it was a good outcome or a not so good outcome, something that really was quite a memorable experience for you yeah, for me it was one of the first rescues that I took part in, and it happens to be just me and one other team member that deploy on the helicopter into the mountains that day. There was two people who were stranded at the top of the mountain. There were some quite active avalanches occurring around the mountain and the weather looked like it was about to pack in for the next five days, so not a situation where you want to tell them to sit and wait it out on the summit whilst they were shivering in the snow. So they had spent the night there and we managed to get into them early morning. It took quite a while to find a way to access the mountain with the helicopter, so they had spent the night there and we managed to get into them early morning. It took quite a while to find a way to access the mountain with the helicopter.
Speaker 1:We did a lot of circles at the base of a glacier in the helicopter and as I was looking at the mat in the heli, I was looking out the window, looking at my mat, looking out the window, looking at my mat, and there was a lot of clouds outside the window, and it was my first, I guess, experience in doing so many rotations in the heli. I instantly felt sick and I'd had a cliff bar, a muesli bar or half muesli bar for breakfast that morning at, I think, 4am or something. And anyway, just five minutes before we're about to winch down onto the glacier, I lose the contents of my stomach inside the heli. So that happened, put my mic back down and the pilot asked if I was okay. I said yep, no, we're fine, carry on. I felt much better after that and one minute later I was winching down onto the glacier, ready to climb up to this peak to rescue a couple of people. I must say that it's one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had, and the poor heli crew had to clean it up later on.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I headed up the glacier with my colleague. We climbed up it took us a couple of hours to get to, because it was quite misty and foggy and rainy to get to where these two people were. They were huddling inside a ice cave that they dug out with their ice axes, and then they'd slept in during the night on top of a rope. So they were, fair to be said, quite cold, in a sort of mildly hypothermic condition and completely disoriented as to how to get out of there, and very fatigued as well. So we guided them down the summit, across, back, across the glacier, only to be told that the heli wasn't able to come back for us because they'd been called on another mission and so we were going to have to wait. But we could see the cloud rolling up the valley and we were so worried. Is this cloud going to prevent us getting picked up? Because if it does, we've got a good seven hour hike back up over the mountain and through terrain that I had to assess for avalanches and then out to the valley floor. So doing that with two very fatigued and mildly hypothermic people was going to be quite a mission. After a full day out already, by this time we're drenched to the bone. Your waterproofs only stay waterproof for so long, and we dug a snow pit and set our patients inside of it to keep them warm. At least we had a turnaround time. We said 5.30, that's it, we're going to have to go. If the heli can't make it here by then, that's it, we're going. We were so lucky At 5.30,.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at my watch.
Speaker 1:I'm telling my colleague okay, radio in, we've got to go. We've got to climb back up, over and out. Don't want to do this, but that's our safety time and we've got to stick to it. And I turned around and saw a clearing in the cloud, so jumped on the radio and told the pilot back up, come back up. I heard the blades whirring in the distance and they started coming back up to us.
Speaker 1:I had a mouthful of coffee left in the thermos which we'd saved so that we could throw it all over the snow to give it some definition. And as soon as the heli came within sight, we threw our coffee all over the snow so that they could see where to hover. And we proceeded to jump into the heli with more of a belly plant because still wearing crampons at the time. So that was one of those real close calls and just a real success at the end of the day. But we worked for it and it was quite memorable and that's, yeah, a mission that we won some awards for in terms of the silver bravery award from yes from the royal humane society and at first it was funny because I thought what I'm not brave, I was just doing job.
Speaker 1:But I realised there was quite a few moments throughout that where yeah, a little bit nervous.
Speaker 2:It was sketchy, it was, yeah, it was touch and go, probably Uncomfortable, yeah, and the family members of those involved, let alone those involved, must have just been so incredibly appreciative of you putting your own life on the line.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's awesome to be able to help people. I feel very lucky. It's really insane, I mean, for those listening. This is an audio only podcast. You can't see how wide my mouth is open just listening to that story, because actually one of the things I'm intrigued about is so in 2024, for the helicopter to find you, you have to throw coffee on the snow. There's no like better technical solution than that coffee on the snow.
Speaker 1:There's no like better technical solution than that. Oh, that's funny there. There are a few tricks out there there's you can have a spray paint and spray a high this spray onto the snow. I didn't happen to have any of that in my pack that day. So yeah, the coffee it was, and it did a really good job. It gave a lot of definitions, so the pilot was grateful honestly, you are living such a high octane kind of life.
Speaker 2:So what now for you? Obviously you're enjoying sort of alpine rescue. Is there something that you really want to tick off the bucket list that maybe you haven't done yet? Well, that's a really good question from an adventure point of view, you know like it's something that would really challenge you. It sounds pretty challenging. For most people that's way outside their comfort zone, but you must be getting kind of familiar with that. Like do you want to do like a big mountain climb? Is there something like that in there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really enjoying the New Zealand mountains and I think I'd like to work away at the 3,000-metre peaks Not in any rush, I don't need to do them all at once, but, yeah, I'd love to just keep climbing those 3,000-metre peaks. They're quite diverse and they all offer their own challenges, so that's my dream over the next decade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's just scary. How many are there in New Zealand? Must be about 10 or something like that, maybe. I think it's just scary. How many are there in New Zealand? Must be about 10 or something like that, maybe.
Speaker 1:About 23. Is it?
Speaker 2:23? Because Cook or Aoraki is 3,400, something like that, and I guess along the Southern Alps there's just a whole bunch of them there. Honestly, that is phenomenal. Honestly, anna, you are an inspiration, because I think there are people out there who we all love our sort of nine to five existences and working from home and going to the supermarket and that sort of thing, and yet you're out there just doing some really crazy things and some extreme things and, in the process, saving people's lives.
Speaker 2:So you know, huge ups to you for doing what you do, because it's this most people wouldn't want to do, that there's no way most people want to help people. There's no way that they would want to go into alpine conditions and put their life on the line up in the mountains to go and rescue others. So thank you for the work that you do do in New Zealand for those who do choose to go up into the mountains and keeping them safe. It has been a huge honour to chat to you today and again, big ups to Janine Granger for the introduction. She, like I said, she was just. She couldn't speak highly enough of you and the person you are, the character you are and the work that you're doing, so I just really want to thank you for your time today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, greg, appreciate it, it's been fun.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't forget to check out Deskwork, the team behind you, being able to build high-performing offshore teams for your startups and SMEs. It's deskworkco. Backslash, greg, and go and save yourself some hard-earned money.