A veteran SAR volunteer's experiences in British Columbia
It’s almost amusing to see how media agencies attempting to describe where Meager Creek is. The mix of “north of“, “West of” “x km from” or even “near x” etc is confusing to say the least, especially when it’s basically …
If anyone has been following the blog you will see the progression in the SAR curriculum; in the spring the courses involve navigation, then the rope rescue course kicks in. Then we do technical travel skills. At this point in …
I really shouldn’t complain, but 5 calls in 12 hours is quite a lot. Sunday night started with a late evening page for a lost person near Burnaby Lake. I did not respond to the call, but I did monitor …
SAR Day 44: For god’s sake, make the beeping stop!! Read more »
I’m used to the pager going off in the middle of the night, but believe it or not I have had “emergencies” in my other line of work (software engineering) as well. One such happened last Wednesday. In my day …
Some SAR Days are exciting, and some are not. On the weekend the team was paged out for several missing hikers; I did not attend the search, but from time differential between when the pager went off and the stand …
The other day I was climbing a well known 5.8 test piece in Squamish. I led, and Sylvia, who is 6 months pregnant, seconded it. About half way up she was heard to say “I think we’re at the inflection point; …
You may not know this but most of the internet is based on a series of standards known as an RFC. They started out as a way to kick off a discussion on how to solve a problem, but rapidly …
The following link has some text and a video clip from a recent rescue in the Fraser Valley. http://bc.rcmp.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=50&languageId=1&contentId;=15653 As you can see they are performing what we call a hover stretcher load, which I wrote about today. Now I …
As noted in past posts, we do a lot of helicopter work. Sunday covered some advanced helicopter techniques, such as this: a hovering helicopter, and SAR member in the back seat, doors off. Team on the ground passes the stretcher …
I was unable to make this rescue. From what I gather, the team was called to rescue an injured subject on the Diez Vistas trail, around Vista 6. Members hover-exited at Vista 3 and hike to the site. The subject …