Guess what? I had such a great weekend and I'm super excited to tell you about it. Let's kick this off with a picture that may or may not summarize the weekend:
Okay, I know it doesn't really show what I did this weekend but it does have the following elements
*Avalanche beacon
*Blizzard
*Search and Rescue jacket
*One happy camper
One happy camper? That's right, I went camping this weekend with Search and Rescue. I've been involved with SAR for around 6 months now and I have learned so much. I'm more confident on an ATV, Snow machine and with my rescue skills. Over the weekend we had hoped for nice weather to do some training throughout the day. However when we pulled into the parking lot, the blizzard of 2012 decided to set in. We jumped on our sleds and made our way up 15 miles to base camp. That was interesting...I had Lane's sled and it doesn't have scratchers. Those are this pieces of metal that you put down and they scratch the ground as you drive and put snow on the track of the sled. This keeps the machine cool. Without the scratchers, I had to stop and put snow on the track and on
the back of the sled just to cool it down. So the trip up was eventful. At one point I decided to get into the deep snow to cool things off. The problem with a sled is you just can't lean to turn, you have to stand on the side of the sled that you want to turn. Well I almost got stuck but I jumped on the side, hit the throttle and got back on the trail. The problem was I fell off the sled and was running next to it. How embarrassing! The man behind me said I pulled it off.After we made it to base camp we sat in the main tent for a while debating on how we were going to deal with the 60mph winds and all the snow. When it was lunch time, this is when I started taking HUGE steps to make the best of the situation. I'm randomly picky about what meat I eat and ham isn't one of them. So for lunch there was ham and cheese sandwiches. The best part, they were on WHITE BREAD! I never eat white bread. It gets stuck in my retainer and it's nasty. To the food tent I went, slapped some cheese and mustard on some bread and a big old slab of ham. For the time being it worked. Now that I had been at base camp for about an hour the men (because there were over 20 of them) started losing their filters. Don't worry, I held my own. When we thought the wind died down, we broke into two groups to go over some training. The first group went outside to work on avalanche probing. The reason for this is when a person is involved in an avalanche, you have approximately 10 minutes to find them before they don't have any more air
. So you line up like this picture and start sticking these medal probes into the snow as far as you can. Hoping you'll feel a body. Unfortunately this is very difficult for me. For this training there were bags buried to simulate a body. My group missed the first bag but found the second. It's challenging to distinguish between the snow pack and a bag. I was very frustrated and worried that in a real life situation, I wouldn't be able to find someone quick enough. We also worked on using beacons. This are very beneficial if you and a friend are out skiing, sledding or any back country winter activity. If there is an avalanche and one person is above the snow, you just turn your beacon to search mode and it beeps as you get closer to the buried object. We were able to find the beacon quickly and it was a great tool to gain more information on. Another challenging part of this trip was the depth of the snow. Granted this is one of the lightest snow fall years in a while but the snow up there was roughly 4 feet deep. Well this hefty gal kept sinking. It was so embarrassing/frustrating. I was sore the next day from having to pull my legs out of the snow. Let me make a comment about this picture of my group: I don't understand why men don't smile in pictures. Honestly! I'm sitting there 
with a huge grin, loving this experience while they are obviously not showing their love for the training. Maybe they kept it inside because they were afraid to outshine me. HA!Our second training was in the big tent and we went over our gear bags and some mandatory items we should have inside of them. Then we discussed building a fire in the snow. This is one of the most challenging things for me. I couldn't even keep a fire going in my tent. Ugh!
When it came time for dinner, I knew what was to come. Obviously the worst choice for a meal where people are sharing tents. CHILI! Not just any-old chili, Stag chili. It was a big old can of this stuff. In addition to the chili they cooked up some frozen hamburger patty's for us to enjoy. So...it was some high quality food being ingested between all of us. For the most part, we enjoyed some fun conversations along with many stories. I learned so much about everyone including things that I didn't want to know.
After dark, our team leads made sure we felt confident in using a probe, beacons and the gear we needed. We all knew what was to come. We were going to have a mock-call out. We all got geared up, put on our beacons and waited for the scenario. There was an avalanche. Four victims, one made it out and called for help, the other three were missing. Things were a little chaotic at first trying to get the coordinates plugged into our GPS then hopped on our sleds and up the trail we went. During the entire drill we had evaluators who also happened to be our team leads. Thus, the medical team didn't have our lead EMT. During my EMT class I have learned that people who have a higher license than me take charge of the scene before me. I do not have my license yet and there are two other men that should have taken charge. One is an First Responder, that's basically a step above having a CPR card. Then there is an Emergency Responder and that is a step below an EMT. I was a little shocked when none of them took lead. Having a B+ personality sometimes A-, I took charge of the event. Normally we wouldn't have any need for medical unless there was a patient. Not knowing we would have a patient, we weren't prepared. When searching for victims, we "came across a conscious man." AKA he fell in the snow in front of us. Enter EMT state of mind. Our patient had a fractured leg and was in and out of consciousness. What would you do if you had no splints with you? Use an avalanche probe to splint? Yes! That's the correct answer. Other things that could be used...tree branches, the othe
r leg...anything that is rigid. In this situation, it is MOST IMPORTANT to keep the patients neck in a inline neutral position. AKA holding c-spine. You always assume when there is a fall they have hurt their back. So I had someone holding c-spine the entire time. It is also important to manage the patients airway making sure they are still breathing. Keep them warm and then let's get them on a back board. I must say, I was very nervous because sometimes I don't feel confident in my EMT skills. After getting our patient strapped in, we put him in a sled and pulled him up the hill. After getting ready to transport him out, our patient scenario was over. Back down the hill to help the team probe for the third victim. This was the most challenging part of the entire scenario. We probed and dug for so long, struggling to feel anything. Each time we would find something and dig it up, it would be a tree branch or the ground. Such a challenge! We finally found the body aka a bag full of snow. Funny thing is the bag had a lot of holes in it where we had probed right through. Obviously we have some work to do when it comes to probing in avalanches. After everything was said and done, we packed up and headed back to camp for a debrief. I stoked up my fire in my sweet 
tent, then headed in the man tent. There was positive feedback all around and some good criticism as well. There was good conversation and we staid up late just chatting away. I went to bed about 1ish then got up and stoked my fire around 2. About 4 I woke up FREEZING! My fire had gone out and I was NOT going to get out of my sleeping bag/bedroll to start it again. For the most part I was warm but my head was freezing. I slumped down a little further made sure I was covered and fell back asleep. I didn't sleep well after that...just shivering...burrrrr....The next morning we had a delicious breakfast of nasty liquid egg and precooked sausage. Boss man had a steak (YUCK!) Then we broke down camp and headed back into town. All-in-all, it was a great overnight. I enjoyed gaining more experience with my medical training. Our next training is a week from Saturday and I guess we're supposed to do snow machine training. Ummm...I think it's almost spring so this will be interesting!Have a great day!
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