This previous week has seen warmer than usual weather with a lot of rain and fluctuating freeing temperatures bringing rain to the tops of the local mountains, and saturating the snow. Yesterday and today dawned cold and clear. Overnight sea-level…
Monthly Archives: January 2011
BCA Tracker 2 Update
An update to my previous post on this issue: Backcountry Access has published instructions on how to do the RA (return authorization) on the Tracker 2, get the software update, and a minor hardware upgrade. Really awesome: they’re paying for…
Why SAR members are tough on gear
What, do you think, is the primary difference between a SAR member on a task, and a person undertaking a hiking, backcountry skiing or mountaineering trip? On the surface they look to be the same thing. We use the same…
On Outdoor Responsibility
I found an interesting site the other day: Leave No Trace (there is a Canadian offshoot as well). It’s a site that promotes outdoor ethics and offers guidance on the best practises to preserve wilderness values, and reduce the impact…
Backcountry Ski rig for SAR
On the south coast, most below-treeline winter SAR is done using snowshoes. However, snowshoes are not always the most appropriate way to travel in the winter. Among the many reasons to not use snowshoes, the one that stands out the…
A “promotion”
I’m moving up. I’m going to be a manager. Being in BC, we get more SAR tasks than the rest of Canada combined. Being in the southwest part of BC, we get 36% of all the tasks in BC. This…
SARDays 73 to 102, the winter lull
I haven’t forgotten about my SARDay project, my ongoing attempt to track all the Search, training, and administrative hours for one team member of one team. It’s just with all the other exciting blog posts over the past four months,…
VOC Group size: a response
Phil Tomlinson, the current president of the VOC, composed a detailed and thoughtful response to my previous post. He had some trouble getting it into the comments, so I thought I would reproduce it here. Hi Michael,As the current President…
The UBC VOC and Group Sizes
This post is a bit of a rant, so please skip it if you’re not in the mood. A few years ago a friend and I travelled into the Cerise Creek area for some mountaineering. We were surprised to see…
BCA Tracker 2 firmware problem
Some versions of the Backcountry Access Tracker 2 have a firmware bug that causes them to go into a programming mode in certain circumstances. http://backcountryaccess.com/blog/?p=2718 Being a software engineer, I understand all to well problems with writing software and getting it…
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