Cave Rescue Training in Texas

 In late February I jumped on an airplane and headed south to Texas for a week of teaching National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC) training.

But before I started, I had half a day to spend with my friend Cassi. We headed over to the state capitol for a tour.

It was cool to hear about all the symbolism behind the shields. And guess which state capitol in the U.S. is the largest? Everything is biggest in Texas, right? 

The next day I slept in (oh, what a treat!), went for a run, and then Cassi dropped me off with a friend who took me up to Barefoot Lodge. We had our instructor's meeting, and then I gathered all the Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) instructors so we could go over our class. We checked in students that evening.

The next morning we began with the whole group, Levels 1, 2, and SPAR under the watchful eyes of dead animals.

Our SPAR classroom is outside, and fortunately the weather cooperated. In fact, it was downright balmy early in the week, even reaching 80 degrees! Here's Kelby talking about pre-planning and decision making. (Hint: some pre-planning can go a long way. And having extra gear in your vehicle means that your gear cache is close by if something goes wrong.)

 

 Later DJ did an excellent talk about Frog system optimization. As Americans, we tend to want to set up our gear our way. But the more I (and several other instructors) tweak our systems, the more they tend to look like what the Europeans use. Extra tips here: keep everything to the left of the Croll, oval carabiners are awesome (they are compatible with all gear), using a carabiner to attach to your upper ascender gives you a lot more flexibility.

 

Carrey gave a talk about SPAR psychology. This talk was demo'ed during the weeklong SPAR in the summer. I liked it so much I wanted to have it included in our three-day class, and Carrey hit it out of the ballpark. I don't mind sharing some of it, because I think sharing things that makes cavers safer is good to do. You can avoid many accidents if you watch out for yourself and your team if they're having any of these symptoms that fit in the acronym HALTY: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, or hYpothermic. Best treatment: talking, a hug, and food. Aw, now we all want to go caving together. :)

If an accident does happen, we need to know some basic medical. Andy covered that, with the caveat that the best thing to do is get some wilderness first aid/first responder training.

Next it's time for some haul system/mechanical advantage review/overview. It's good to know your 1:1, 2:1, and 3:1 systems with progress capture.

Then we had afternoon and evening stations, and I was so busy I didn't get photos of any of those. 
Day 2 we headed to some awesome cliffs in Colorado Bend State Park. We had four stations next to each other, so traveling time between them was minimal. That meant we had 1.5 hours at each station, a luxury to have so much time. One of the stations was a Convert to Lower station with Tommy. That basically means if you come to a rope with someone stuck on it, how can you lower them quickly?

Another station was climbing and rappelling counterweights. You learn quickly that having some high help (anchor off the ground) makes a huge difference. Our other two stations were crack and crevice and stacked counterweights. Then we did some rappelling with a patient through a rebelay and traveling haul through a rebelay. After dinner we were back at our classroom for some more demos and practice time. These days are long, but the great weather made it easy!

The next day was scenario day, with four students and two instructors heading into a cave. The instructors tended to have a lot of problems caving that day!

 Even though I've taught this class a lot of times, I always learn something new. This time around I was working on perfecting my Portuguese bowline, helped by peanut butter and jelly.

After our three-day SPAR had ended, I was planning on jumping in with Level 2 and helping there. But we had a surplus of instructors, and I asked DJ, the lead for the event, what he thought about teaching some SPAR skills to instructors. He said yes, and that was how MicroSPAR was born. I spent the next two days giving a one-day version to instructors. We started with about half an hour lecture, half an hour of Frog System optimization, an hour+ of convert to lower and an hour+ of traveling haul. It was great to repeat some of these things over and over and see the tweaks to make them even better. 

In the afternoon we went out to a cave and practiced various rescue techniques like traveling hauls and diminishing loop, climbing, and rappelling counterweight systems and compared them all. MicroSPAR was a blast, I hope to teach it again. This version was aimed at instructors and specialists, all who had been through at least Level 3. Some had taken SPAR before, others were new to it.

The next day I took the instructor written test. We have to take it every so often to stay current as an NCRC instructor. (I passed.) Then I helped out with the mock walkthrough, which is basically a smaller version of the mock rescue with several repeats so that students can learn how a cave rescue is launched and how the Incident Command System works. For one of the evolutions, I volunteered to be a patient in the SKED, a burrito-type rescue litter, to go out a tiny entrance. My nose almost touched, but not quite. The students got me out successfully, and I reminded them not to stop in the really tight spots, just keep moving steadily and slowly. (Yes, I can get claustrophobic, especially when I'm tied up in a litter and the cave wall is right in front of my face. How do I deal with it? Close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else.)

With a recent reminder of how much I don't like to be in the litter, when the mock scenario was presented that night, I did not volunteer to be a patient, but rather an "angel" for my friend Les. We went into a cave we had never been in before, so we weren't sure how the rescue would go. The temperatures had plummeted into the 20s at night, so we were thinking that being in a 65-degree cave would be nice and cozy. It turned out we were under a skylight, and it started snowing on us in the cave! Time to go a little deeper!

Here's Les waiting to be rescued. He even brought his own lantern.

Eventually he was packaged up and they started moving him towards the entrance. 

Here's one of the tight spots he went through. It wasn't even the tightest! They eventually got him out, although with some modifications to the original plan.

You learn something from every mock rescue and training. I'm very thankful I could be part of the Texas training. Thanks to DJ for putting on another successful training and inviting me to come be part of it. Thanks to all the students who choose to attend--you're the reason we can have the trainings. Thanks to all the other instructors, it's always inspiring to be with you. And thanks so much to Megan and the food crew--the amazing food is a huge part of why I came back!

Small Party Cave Rescue Class 2014

As a precursor to the upcoming epic Zion adventure post, I thought I better do this post.

 At the end of September I spent a long weekend in Garden City, Utah to help teach a Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) class, sponsored by the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC). My friend Andy had asked if I would be a part of it, and since I enjoyed the previous one we had taught together so much, I said yes. Andy had found a huge vacation cabin that slept 26, so we had 20 students, 5 instructors, and 1 very awesome Bonny who did everything under the sun (or clouds) to keep us going.

It turned out the cabin had some great rigging opportunities, which we took advantage of for the Thursday night check-ins and Friday exercises.

Friday we also had a half-day of classroom activities, including learning about pre-planning, what to take in your cave pack, using your vehicle as your mini rescue cache (even if it's a horizontal cave, you can keep some vertical gear in your car just in case), hypothermia, improvised splinting (see below), suspension trauma, and a review of haul systems.

Then the afternoon was time to get on rope. The students rotated through different stations, such as the diminishing loop counterbalance (a super small party rescue technique).

 We also taught how to get a person stuck on rope down to the ground quickly by converting to a lower. Of course, the best way to make this quick is to rig a contingency anchor (for example a munter tied off), so if someone gets stuck, it takes about five seconds to start lowering them.

Students (and instructors) loved doing the rebelay course, a rope course that included switching to different ropes, a deviation, and a J-hang. You really learn to tune your system so you don't expend too much energy.

In the evening we enjoyed a good rigging/bad rigging lecture. You need to know your gear. And test your anchors. Every time.

The next day we headed to a nearby cave under the threat of massive rains. The rains did come, but we went anyway. It's not always good weather for rescues, after all. The cave was ten minutes away by car and then a ten minute hike. The 30-foot pit provided us a variety of scenarios, expanding on what we had taught the day before, like how to use a diminishing loop counterbalance when you have to dangle it over the edge. We also did some in-cave movement and traveling hauls, where the haul system moves up the rope with the patient instead of being at the top (or bottom).

Here's the rigging for a contingency anchor, along with a canyoneer rappelling down on his piranha. We had a bunch of canyoneers in the class, and it was fun trading techniques.

By lunchtime everyone was soaked, so we headed back to the cabin to practice some other techniques, like how to get a patient through a rebelay (below).

 That evening we had a presentation from a local caver who had shattered his scapula (shoulder blade) in a caving accident this past summer and how he had self-rescued out of the cave. It was a great story and a good lesson for us all.

Then on Sunday it was time for the mock scenarios. We drove in the rain up to Paris Ice Cave, a place we had visited previously. This time I saw it with very different eyes as we set up three scenarios for the students. They did great.

It was a super weekend despite the unfavorable weather, and I had a super time. I learned a few new things, which I greatly value, and met and got to know some folks a lot better. In fact, I met up with one of the students a couple weeks later for our epic Zion adventure. 

If you go caving and have a chance to take a cave rescue class, by all means take it! I have become a much safer caver knowing what would happen if I get hurt deep in a cave--or even not so far into a cave. You can find a list of upcoming classes on the NCRC website.

Cave safely and softly!

Canyoneering North Wash Area

 Some friends from Colorado (that I know from National Cave Rescue Commission activities) invited me to go canyoneering with them in the North Wash area south of Hanksville, Utah. It had been some time since I had gone canyoneering and I didn't have any plans for the weekend. My husband and kids were fine if I took off, so I gladly did so. The weather forecast was perfect, 0% chance of precipitation and temperatures in the 60s in the days and 40s at night.

I pulled into camp Friday night and met the rest of the group. They knew each other from being part of the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, a volunteer organization that does mountain rescues near Boulder, Colorado. The next morning we separated into two groups, with two folks doing an ultra-hard canyon and the rest of us doing easier, more mellow canyons.

As we hiked to our canyon we enjoyed the beautiful red rock. Then, all of a sudden, the canyon appeared, a little crack in the earth. That's where we were headed! I was so excited. I felt like a kid again.

It had rained a couple days earlier, lots of rain, and even though our canyon was supposed to be dry, it had puddles.

So the challenge became staying out of the puddles. 

It made for some fun expressions.

 Andrew made all of it look easy.

It was fun trying some extra stemming when we didn't really have to. None of the water was over knee deep.

One of the things I like best about canyons is their light. The shadows are always changing, highlighting different parts of the rock. 

We had a few short rappels on this route through Leprechaun Left fork.

Another fun "avoid the water" problem.

The canyon had some long, skinny parts.

 Here are Becca and her brother, a herpetologist who was excited to see some lizards out sunning themselves.

 The canyon opened up a lot more at the bottom.

And an artsy shot, just for fun. When we finished the canyon, we went back to camp and had lunch. 

Then we took off for our second canyon, Blarney Left Fork. 

It had a fun entrance rappel.

 It was cool seeing the bands of cliffs.

Once again, we were diving into the crack. This one had a cave-like entrance, scooting under a big chockstone.

We all really enjoyed this canyon. It had some fun obstacles and was very pretty.

When we got back to camp, it was dark, and our friends in the extra-hard canyon weren't back. That wasn't good. They had told us that if they weren't back, we should come look for them. We ate dinner first, then took off with extra rope and rescue gear. We couldn't hear them when we yelled and whistled to them at the exit of the canyon, so we contacted the local sheriff's department with a Delorme Inreach (there wasn't any cell service). They said they couldn't come out until the next morning. So we continued searching by going up along the rim of the canyon. That wasn't easy at all, but fortunately Becca had the Road Trip Ryan app on her phone, which gave a track, and we could follow that. Eventually we heard their voices and sighed in relief when they said they weren't hurt, just stuck.

We found an anchor on the edge and Andrew went to the edge to check on them. Too far downstream, they couldn't get to that rope. So we found another anchor upstream and tried again. Too far upstream. Third time was the charm. We had brought 600 feet of rope, split into three sections, and we weren't sure if that was enough. We also had assorted gear to do hauls if needed, but what they wanted was mechanical ascenders so they could get out faster than with their prussiks. I was glad I had my frog system (an efficient rope-climbing system) and sent that down. While we waited for them to climb out, we enjoyed a magnificent dark sky, full of stars and the Milky Way. We heard coyotes howl, and echoes bounced off the canyon walls, sounding eerie. The wind came up and was cold, but we had brought layers and blankets.

The rescue group also had a couple radios, which helped us a bunch. We told the sheriff's office we had made contact and there were no injuries. They said don't attempt a vertical rescue, but we assured them that with a mountain rescue group and cave rescue experience, we were fine doing so. I was very glad of all the small party rescue techniques I had in my mind. Even though the two weren't hurt, I was going over options in my mind, playing the "What if" game. 

When the guys came out, they were very thirsty and hungry. It had taken them six hours to get to the crux of the canyon, and they spent two hours trying to get past it. It turned out that they were missing a critical piece of climbing gear and didn't want to risk their lives free climbing a very exposed chimney. So they hunkered down in a canyon that had no places to sit or stand. Instead, they were stemming across the canyon, with a 30-foot drop below them. They said that even though they knew their friends were going to come for them, they had plenty of time for scary thoughts to cross their minds, like what if they never got out of the canyon.

Andrew, the ever-smiling rescuer.

We made it back to camp at 2 am, about five hours after setting off. We stayed up for awhile, debriefing and joking and having a good time. Eventually it was time for me to get to sleep, although some of the others stayed up even longer. The wind had come up and was blowing 30mph, so it wasn't the best sleep, but it was something. We decided to skip our morning canyon and went out for a late breakfast (brunch) instead.

It was a fun and memorable weekend, and we all learned something from it. We were glad no one got hurt. And I guess one take-home message is that if you're going to get stuck in a canyon, it sure helps to have your own rescue team nearby!

Bloomington Cave, Utah

Back in March, our friends Andy and Bonnie asked if I could help reconnoiter Bloomington Cave in southern Utah with them for an upcoming cave rescue class. My calendar was clear, as long as I could bring the kids. That was fine with them, so we agreed on a meeting time. But the night before, it snowed! Snow in St. George isn't very common, and it was so beautiful I just had to stop and take a few photos!

We were worried about the road, but fortunately everything was frozen and travel was easy. I stopped again to snap a photo of this cool cave sign.

Bloomington Cave is managed by the BLM. They have a nice website page for the cave. It tells you how to get a permit, how to get to the cave, and maps of the cave.

Near the parking area is a covered kiosk with some really good caving info. One side shows what you should have to go into the cave, like a helmet, lights, kneepads, and depending on where you want to go, rappelling and climbing gear.

Another side shows some of the creatures that call Bloomington Cave their home.

It might surprise some people how many different cave dwellers are in the cave.

 

On the fourth side is a good map of the cave. Both it and the Cave Routes map on the website show different color routes through the cave. This is extremely helpful for navigating the 1.4-mile long tectonic cave, which is a bit mazy.

Properly equipped, we headed down to the south entrance.

We opened the gate with the code we had gotten. The cave gate is quite ingenious, as it can be opened from the inside without any code, so people can get out anytime. But to get in, you need the code, and they change it frequently.

The kids wanted to lead the way, and since the trail was marked with flagging, we let them.

Before long we came to the cave register, and Desert Girl and Bonnie checked it out.

I had been to Bloomington Cave over 15 years ago, and the thing I remembered most was how vertical it was. The majority of the cave is at a 60 degree angle. We went down to the Big Room, using the ropes we had brought with to assist us. We did a combination of rappelling and using the ropes as handlines. (I would recommend coming prepared to rappel, it makes it safer.) We were assessing the cave for where we could do some cave rescue practice in about a month under a special permit. We made our way around a loop and back to the cave register. 

Then we tried another route. (Be sure to check out the Routes page on the BLM website, which has a nice description of the different flagged routes.) We decided to give the green route a try, which is the shortest entrance-to-entrance route. It includes a squeezy part and some crawling. We even found some soda straws and flowstone.

After a break for lunch, we went back in the North Entrance and followed the pink route. It was a lot of fun seeing some of the cave, and their marked routes is a great idea. This is not really a beginner cave, it has some pretty tough sections.

A few weeks later I drove out to Gunlock State Park to help instruct at the Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) class for the National Cave Rescue Commission. I had never been there before, and was quickly impressed with the beauty!

The storm clouds did mean cold weather. Our classroom was in an unheated shed, and we did rope work outside. Plus we camped. That meant the cave was our warm place, and fortunately we spent two full days in it.

We rented this old hay barn to do vertical practice. Although I've taught this class a bunch of times (12 now, I think!), I always learn something new. This time it was Diminishing Loop with a knot pass (in case you didn't have a rope that was double the length of the drop). We discussed a good knot to use to tie two ropes together to make crossing the knot easy and then put it to the test. It worked very smoothly.

And then we had some pickoff demos and time to practice. These are so easy to mess up, so it's critical to practice frequently if you think you might ever need to use one.

I didn't manage to take any more photos at Bloomington Cave for the SPAR practices because I was pretty busy teaching, but the cave worked well. My favorite station was the pass a patient through two rebelays to get them down the 100-foot drop in the Big Room. Then we used a traveling haul to get the patient up through two rebelays. Since the drops weren't totally vertical, just steep angle, it made it a pretty good training area. And it was my first time having the opportunity to use two rebelays for teaching, it adds a little complexity.

One last photo: due to high water, the waterfalls at Gunlock State Park were running and were very pretty! If you're headed to Bloomington Cave, they're worth a detour.