SARDay 103: Lost hiker on Eagle Ridge
At around 22:00 on Monday night the team was paged by Coquitlam RCMP to search for a hiker reported overdue on Eagle Ridge. This was my first search as a SAR manager in training, so I was privy to the …
Category: Blog Entry
Regular blog posts
On Coordinates; part 2
GPS Track of helicopter flight into the Pitt River area.
In my previous post on coordinates, I stated that the best coordinate representation to use if you need to use geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) was decimal degrees (or DD). It’s preferable to use UTM, which is pretty much a …
Backcountry Skier dies on Mount Seymour
Please see updates at the end of this article. A week from my last post on his pattern of accidents, and there’s another accident, this time fatal. Details are sketchy, but the media are reporting that the individual was snowshoeing …
On Coordinates
SAR Member using a map
An article about recording and transmitting geographic coordinates accurately.
Snowshoer rescued on Hollyburn Mountain
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 …
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
Our 50m rap onto the glacier
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
A description of my backcountry ski rig for SAR and reasons why I chose it.
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 …