The Course I Wish I’d Had – Reflections on building OGA Level 3
Thirty-five years as a professional guide. And honestly, the lessons that stay with you aren’t the big dramatic ones.
They’re the quiet ones. End of a long day, something nearly went sideways. A decision you should’ve made two hours earlier. A conversation that needed to happen before you left, and didn’t. When you’re working somewhere genuinely remote, those little gaps have a way of turning into real problems.
That’s where Level 3 came from.
It was never meant to be another course. It was built as something I’d have wanted thirty years ago — when I first started working in places where there’s no ambulance, no backup, and no straightforward way out. Where real medical care might be a full day away, and everything that happens is on you.
Working Where Help Isn’t Coming
Guiding in remote environments does something to how you think.
When there’s no support structure behind you, decisions get heavier. The margin for error shrinks. And when things go wrong out there, it doesn’t just mean a bad day — it can mean something much worse.
In those conditions, it’s not really about the route anymore. It’s about the people with you. Their fitness, their headspace, their fatigue. How the group is getting on. Medical history. All of that shapes the day far more than any line on a map. The route is just the container. The people are what actually matters.
That’s the shift Level 3 is built around — moving from route-focused to person-centred guiding.
A Journey Before You Arrive
One thing that always bugged me about traditional training — the idea that learning starts when you walk in the door.
It doesn’t. It should already be underway.
Level 3 is set up to reflect that. You arrive having already engaged with the planning process, already thinking about how a trip actually gets built. From there, the course follows a real expedition as it takes shape, runs into problems, and forces decisions.
Case studies throughout — not polished success stories, just honest accounts of what happened and why. The point isn’t to give you answers. It’s to put you inside the thinking.
Over two and a half days you move through the whole arc. Planning, preparation, delivery, the pressure moments, what comes after. Less about sitting and absorbing, more about actually being in the process.
Experience, Distilled
No two expeditions are the same. But the patterns underneath them usually are.
Between myself and a lot of the OGA guides, there’s a lot of accumulated experience. The kind that’s hard to teach in any normal way — it lives in instinct, in how you read a situation before it fully develops.
This course is an attempt to make that accessible.
Not as a set of rules. More as a way of identifying the thinking underneath good decisions. The simple routines that create structure when everything else is uncertain. The habits that free up headspace, so you can focus on what actually needs your attention.
Those small, repeatable practices are what keep you ahead of a situation rather than chasing it.
The Space to Think Clearly
Mental bandwidth doesn’t get talked about enough in guiding.
Fatigue, pressure, constant decision-making — it all draws from the same well. Without some structure underneath you, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Even when you know what you’re doing.
Part of Level 3 is about that internal side. Recognising when your thinking is starting to slip. Understanding how stress actually shows up for you personally. Having simple, reliable ways to get back to a clear state when you need to.
The pressure doesn’t go away — that’s the job. The goal is to function well inside it.
For Those Stepping In, and Those Moving Forward
Level 3 works in two directions.
If you’re newer to remote environments, it’s a real introduction to what that world looks like — a way of thinking and planning that builds confidence and reduces risk.
If you’re already experienced, it’s more of a recalibration. A chance to step back and look at what you already do. A lot of it will feel familiar. Some of it will just finally have words around it.
Either way — the aim is the same. More deliberate, more self-aware, more effective in the environments you’re working in.
Why It Was Built
There wasn’t one moment that made this happen. It’s years of things going well, things going badly, and long conversations with guides who’ve dealt with similar situations in very different places.
Most of what we learn, we learn through experience. Often the hard way.
This is an attempt to shorten that a bit.
Not by replacing experience — nothing does that. But by giving you a framework that helps you make sense of it faster. Better decisions, sharper planning, fewer things catching you off guard.
It’s the course I’d have wanted at the start.
OGA Level 3 launches October 2026 – https://theoga.info/l3guideoct26/
Two and a half days of immersive, narrative-led learning shaped by real expeditions, real decisions, and real responsibility.