The van departs at 0600 Saturday. One of your participants has a peanut allergy you didn't know about until the campsite snack bag got opened. Another one has never pitched a tent before despite the pre-trip skills survey. And the emergency contact number for the kid who's having a rough first night is somewhere in an email thread from three weeks ago. This is what inadequate participant documentation looks like in practice.
Health and Safety Before the Trailhead
Allergies, Medications, Physical\Psych Limit, Insurance\Policy, and Physician constitute the medical record that should exist in the hands of at least two leaders before any vehicle leaves the parking lot. The allergy field isn't a formality — in a group eating trail mix and freeze-dried meals prepared on shared stoves, an undocumented tree nut allergy is a genuine emergency risk. The physical/psychological limit field handles the less visible situations: the participant who has a knee condition that precludes extended descents, the one who has anxiety in confined spaces.
Emergency Contact Name, Emergency Contact Phone, and Emergency Contact Relationship are the three fields you need at 11pm when a participant is running a fever and needs to go home. The relationship field matters because the contact who's available at 11pm may not be the parent of record — it might be an aunt, a neighbor, an older sibling. Knowing that relationship context before you call shapes how you open the conversation.
Height(inches) and Weight(lbs) alongside the birthday field establish baseline biometrics. For harness sizing, gear fitting, and any activity with weight-rated equipment, having this on file before the trip eliminates the scramble of measuring everyone at the trailhead.
Skills Inventory Before Departure
Light Stove, Pitch Tent, Brought Compass, and Attended Pre-Trip Meeting are the four skills and preparation checkboxes that separate participants who showed up ready from those who need hands-on instruction from the first hour. A leader reviewing this record the night before departure knows exactly which tent assignments need an experienced camper paired with an inexperienced one, and which participants haven't confirmed they have their navigation equipment.
What they want to learn captures the participant's stated goal for the trip. In a youth camping program, this is the field that allows leaders to give participants a specific skill moment — the stove lighting, the map reading, the first fire build — that they came specifically to experience. It's also the evaluation baseline: at trip end, did this participant get what they said they came for?
Needs further training and Problem Student are the post-trip assessment fields that inform future program decisions. The participant flagged for further training gets a follow-up invitation or a specific skill assignment next time. The problem student flag — a field that requires honest use to be useful — documents the behavioral or skill gap that affected the group's experience, not to exclude the participant, but to ensure the next trip has an appropriate staffing ratio and a plan.
Logistics and Leadership Identification
Meeting at Carpool Location confirms who's confirmed for the carpool rendezvous point. In a Car Camp format where participants meet at a staging location before driving in convoy, the carpool confirmation is the field that tells you whether you have a seat shortage or a gap before you're standing in a parking lot counting heads.
Driving marks which participants can drive, relevant for multi-vehicle camps where adult-licensed participants may be needed as additional drivers. Potential Leader is the forward-looking field — the participant who demonstrates the competency and temperament for a future leadership role gets flagged now so the program director can put them in a junior leader slot next cycle rather than discovering the talent after they've aged out of the participant tier.
not attending handles confirmed withdrawals cleanly. A participant who drops out after registration but before the trip needs to be marked absent in a way that doesn't delete their record — the medical information and emergency contacts should stay in the database in case of late re-enrollment.