Recent Exposures

Today I finished my 80 hour intensive Wilderness First Responder Course.  The course was taught by the Wilderness Medical Institute (WMI) and was over a 10 day period starting last Wednesday through the weekend until today.  There was a 250 page
book to read, many practice wilderness medical scenarios throughout the week and today we had our 100 question written exam and practical test.  The exam was pretty difficult and
required several days of studying to pass.  The practical was also difficult and it took several people two tries to get it down.   With this certification I am legally able and actually required by law to give medical assistance to injuries in the outdoors over an hour from "definitive" care.  I learned such skills as closing a punctured lung, applying traction to a broken femur, how to treat shock, admnister epinephrine, close wounds, CPR, etc.  I’m happy and I feel empowered with the knowledge that I now know how to treat most wilderness trauma and medical emergencies.  :)  Oh… 
I also through a BBQ for the whole gang at my place on Sunday night before our day off.  Check out the awesome traction splint I put on my HuckDoll :).  haha.  ooohhh yeahhh.

This week was the final written exam for the Benton County Search and Rescue class on Thursday night.  It was a piece of cake and I scored a 95% on it.  On Saturday was our field practical evaluation.  We traveled to Starker forest at 6am and spent the morning conduction grid searches (I found a gun) while carrying a full daypack.  Then as we were eating lunch we were confronted by a full blown rescue scenario.  Todd (a CMRU member) came running down the forest road screaming bloody murder about his girlfriend and friend getting shot at or something.  We quickly mobilized, Nate Meehan assumed command of the rescue team and I took over responsibility of looking for the hurt girls.  We came across the first girl with "no pulse" written on her wrist and a mock bullet hole in her head.  I decided to move on with our real life EMT Gabe to check out the second girl who was found in a stream drainage with a compound fracture of her femur and heavy bleeding.  I held her hand, manned the radio, and coordinated a litter to be brought to the scene while Gabe administered first aide on her with his experience. We then packed her into the litter and carried  her out to the road where the scenario ended.  It was a great experience and I liked the fact that my ability to assess the situation correctly and lead properly was tested.  I think it went well and I definitely learned a lot.

We were set loose in the area at around 2pm to gather firewood and build a shelter for the night.  It was great weather so I didn’t bother too much with an elaborate shelter and focused instead on gathering wood quickly. In the process I came across a huge skull with a bullet hole through the brain that looked like it must have been a
huge horse, elk, or perhaps cow.  I hung it at my site for kicks.  I then settled with with 4 cans of Starbucks double-shot espresso and my Geophysics book to study.  I easily got my fire blazing with plenty of wood and was able to study until about 3am when I just couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer and fell asleep. 

In the morning the Benton county Posse (horse people) made us a huge breakfast of pancakes, eggs, ham, etc which was terrific seeing that I was then running on about 5 hours of sleep for the prior 48.  We talked about our experience, packed up all the trucks, signed out of the search scenario and headed back to the Public Works area to wash vehicles and put gear away.  We all had officially passed.  I then spent the afternoon on Sunday taking naps and trying to get work done for this week.  The SAR course was amazing and I learned a lot but thankfully it is over with because it took up a lot of my time and killed my weekends for nearly two months.  Once I get through my 80-hour Wilderness First Responder Course over the next two weeks I’ll be fully certified with CMRU and will have spent over 250 hours of volunteer time with the organization since the 1st of this year, nearly double the annual time commitment expected in the first 5 months!!!

Here is an article on us… (click me)

This weekend was a full weekend of CMRU-related training.  On Saturday with the Benton County Search and Rescue class I participated in a town-wide mock downed-plane search.  The teachers triggered an actual plane distress beacon
somewhere in Corvallis and we as teams of 4 had to triangulate the signal using what appeared to be large tv antenna’s strapped to a stick (basically we looked ridiculous walking around with it). The strength of the signal determined the direction we were to move in which was coordinated by the base of operations for the scenario.  I’m happy to say that my team was able to locate the beacon most accurately at the fairgrounds.

On Sunday with CMRU we practiced highline rescue techniques.  We are one of the few rescue units in Oregon certified to use these techniques in a rescue scenario.  We use them when a victim is down in a ravine or similar area where they need to be
pulled up and out of.   This involves a very complicated rigging of ropes to elevated trees, the use of pulleys, belay lines, and a litter to haul the person out with.  It took us all afternoon and by the end of the day my back was killing me from all the pulling of the rope… it certainly didn’t help heal it at all.  I took video for most of the day when it wasn’t raining out (rained the whole weekend) and I really feel like I learned a lot from the scenario.

Upon getting back to campus I rushed off to our first softball game of the year with our team "Team Upwelling" where we dominated and the game was called by the mercy rule in the 5th inning when we were up by 10!

Today we first had fire building and shelter building for the Benton County Search and Rescue class out on Mary’s Peak.  Nate and I made a fantastic natural shelter out of downed trees, bark and moss but we had a bit of trouble starting a fire out of the wet vegetation in the area.  If we had had a machete like our buddy Mike had (teacher of the ROTC at OSU) we would have been able to chop down to dry wood but instead we ended up using a small candle to start our fires.   Nate and I stopped for a quick lunch at Poor Boys and then headed to the Corvallis Airport for Helicopter training.

It was a cold excersize (helicopter not running) but we were able to go check it out and learn all about how they run their operations.  I even got to sit in the cockpit.  I felt like I was in Air Wolf and wanted to rise out of a dormant volcano (points if you get that reference).  I honestly don’t know how they fly those things because there must have been over 100 buttons, nobs, dials etc in the chopper that I had no idea
how to read.  There are about 20 people stationed there and 3 are on call at all hours.  They can be in the air in less than 7 minutes, have a range of ~150 miles and the bird flies at 175mph fully loaded.  They run on average atleast one mission a day and all, even the pilot, are medically trained so they can freely rotate positions.  It was truly amazing to see how specialized and well trained the personel were.  Later this year we may also be able to train with a hovering Black Hawk helicopter such as the ones used on the famous Mt. Hood rescue where one crashed.   Check my flickr site for photos under the CMRU set.

This morning I got up very hung over to go to the Search and Rescue field Training for Benton County to learn how to track human beings that are lost through pretty much any terrain.  The trackers who taught us were experts and can find a trail in any conditions.  It was sad to hear that they often aren’t called out on rescue searches and because of that rescue teams often head off in the wrong direction based on incorrect information that the trackers would have picked up on easily.  I learned a bit but definitely not as much as I’d like to.  I really want to take more tracking classes and get certified so that I can bring that skill to CMRU when we are out looking for lost people but right now I don’t have enough time in my life.  Perhaps next year or the year after.

This month’s excercise for CMRU was ropes training in Santiam Pass across from the Hoodoo ski area.  It was tough to get up at 6:30am after 4 hours of sleep to drive the
hour and a half up to the pass alone for the training but I’m determined to learn as much about mountaineering as possible from every resource.  I quickly packed in the morning and had a quick breakfast while slamming gatorade to cure the hangover buzz (didn’t help cause I forgot gatorade gives me horrible heart burn!).
At the training was Aaron, Chris, Jonathan, Todd, Drew, and I.  I brought my snowshoes so Todd was nice enough to go with me on his as well.  This worked out perfectly because the distance we had to cover was nothing compared to the workout the guys on skis got.  Jason Wood and Bob showed up briefly as we were gearing up to say hi as they were on Hoodoo cross country ski patrol for the day.  Bob even
asked us to radio in to dispatch at Hoodoo our coordinates to catch them off guard and to keep them on their toes (Bob is the God of mountaineering and training in my mind… everyone respects his authority on any matter in the outdoors).  Todd and I headed through the woods to our first GPS coordinate - an avy beacon buried in the snow earlier by Chris.  We made great time to it with me navigating in the lead and dug up the beacon quickly to find a note saying, "Hi, I’m Tim.. I’m dead,
take me home".. haha.  We radioed in CMRU’s code for deceased body (I’m not going to say what it is) and headed back towards our fake "SAR base".  This entailed traversing around a large hill with
great views of Three Fingered Jack to the North and Mt. Washington to the South.  When we got back to the trucks we dumped all our extra stuff to gear up with CMRU rescue gear such as the litter, ropes, harnesses, medical kits, etc as Chris went off into the woods to play a lost hiker with two broken legs at the top of a steep slope we would have to lower him down with a complicated rope setup.  This turned out to be really fun and I learned a lot about setting up anchors and lowering an injured climber.  Plus where we were would be a sick place to build a ski jump next year in some powder… stay tuned for that one.  We got Chris down safe and sound,
packed up and headed home.  When I walked into my apartment Jason looked at me and said, "oh my God, you’re fried"… oooohhh yeah… I was burned ridiculous from being in the sun all day and not really thinking about it.  And to top it off I had a long sleeve shirt on pulled up to my elbows so my tan looks ridiculous!  And… I’m off to bed… covered in aloe and in pain looking like a lobster!  hehe.

Tonight I went to my first Search and Rescue (SAR) meeting at the Sheriffs Department.  We worked on map and compass skills for the night and were introduced to the new Sheriff as well.  This class is required by Oregon Law to be a member of a search and rescue unit such as CMRU.  It is every thursday for 3 hours and every saturday for 4-8 hours.  At the end I have to pass a test as well as spend a night alone in the woods at a random location in a snow cave to get the experience of being on a real mission.  We were all given a binder about 4 inches thick to study and complete problems form.  I think I will learn a lot from the course.  Also… I finally got the official invitation application from CMRU as well.  I have been going since September and have obviously proven that I am committed.  This means they will do a criminal background check on me (It’ll be funny if they see I was arrested once for skateboarding!) and then I get the official interview before being accepted into the group as an official trainee.  As an added bonus… 6 months from now I’ll also be able to get Pro Deal on almost any equipment I can imagine!  Glorious!

Today we drove up to Tombstone in the pass to learn all about placing snow protection on climbs.  Snow protection includes climbing tools such as pickets and flukes and digging bollards in the snow.  When properly placed these devices can hold a lot of weight
as we found out.  I’m not going to go into details about any of it because unless you are an avid mountaineer you will fall asleep.  I will point out one interesting fact though.  When we placed an ice axe in the snow perpendicular to the slope about a foot deep, packed it in, and tied a caribeaner and rope to it, it took 3 of us pulling on it with all our strength to dislodge it from the snow.  THAT IS HOW STRONG SNOW CAN BE. We actually ended up bending a picket clean in half before the snow gave way and it was
pulled through.  Obviously the strength varies with the snow conditions but last year Jason said they had one picket so secured
in the snowpack that when they attached to climbing rope to the truck winch it actually pulled the parked truck sideways before giving way… unreal.  It was a beautiful day with blue skies.  After learning a bunch of new rope skills and placing snow protection we learned briefly how to read a snow pack for avalanche danger and also how to properly use avalanche beacons to find buried avalanche victims.  On the way I took a few pics of the moss covered trees up in the South Santiam river… pretty cool with the light
passing through them and the mist rising off the river.  I got home early enough to even go on a bike ride in MacDunn…. and man am I out of shape!