Were We Lucky, or Were We Good?
Aug 14, 2026 · 19 min · 9 segments
Part II of our two part series with Kate Koons, talking about lessons learned from risk management in Antarctica and beyond. What has Kate learned from outdoor education, avalanche education, mental…
Kate KoonsGuest
Steve SmithHost
This is the last thing I'll say, is one of my mentors in the avalanche world is Lynn Wolfe.
And she was the longtime editor of, uh, The Avalanche Review, and she, she would ask a very similar, "Did we make good decisions or did we get away with it?"
So it's, it's basically the same thing, and I, I really instill this upon people in Antarctica to, at the end of the day, ask this question: "Were you lucky or were you good?" And they can whiteboard it, and are they all on the same page? Because if somebody thinks that they were, like, being really good and somebody else thinks it's lucky, you know.
... dialogue if one person thinks, "We did everything right today," and another person's like-
This is the last thing I'll say, is one of my mentors in the avalanche world is Lynn Wolfe.
And she was the longtime editor of, uh, The Avalanche Review, and she, she would ask a very similar, "Did we make good decisions or did we get away with it?"
So it's, it's basically the same thing, and I, I really instill this upon people in Antarctica to, at the end of the day, ask this question: "Were you lucky or were you good?" And they can whiteboard it, and are they all on the same page? Because if somebody thinks that they were, like, being really good and somebody else thinks it's lucky, you know.
... dialogue if one person thinks, "We did everything right today," and another person's like-
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