Caving in Canada

 I had the opportunity to travel to the Canadian Rockies to teach a cave rescue class. I jumped at the chance, as I had never been to the Canadian Rockies before.

Eddy Cartaya organized the class with the help of Canadian Christian Stenner. We held our short classroom session in a hotel room in Canmore. These small party assisted rescue classes are purposefully kept small.

Then our indoor rope afternoon was at Canmore's amazing climbing gym.

I wanted to stay and climb!

The second day we went out on some cliffs near Rat's Nest Cave, a commercial cave.

Later in the evening we hung around a tree. Literally.

On the third day we had a variety of learning stations in Rat's Nest Cave. I helped supervise the climbing and rappelling counterweight station, which is a very fun station as the concept is sort of like an elevator. Weight on one side of the rope that goes through a pulley means the person on the other side of the rope goes up.

And on the fourth day we presented the students with scenarios that they had to figure out how to solve, including packaging the patient and coming up with an extrication plan.

I was an "angel" or supervisor for this, so I had my hands free to take some photos.

The station I was at was multi-pitch, so it was fun seeing how the students solved it. Rebecca, being rescued, eyes the solution below with a bit of concern. Fortunately they worked it out and got her to the next section of rope.

The class was successful, and all the American instructors were impressed with the level of skills of the Canadian students. I'd love to go take a Canadian rescue class sometime, as they have different things they emphasize. Plus Canadians are just a lot of fun!

We had great weather for the class, and then the day after it rained. That meant a good day for Upper Banff hot springs! We (the instructors who could stay a little later) also checked out the Whyte Museum of the Rockies in Banff and ate a delicious dinner.

Then we drove several hours south and stayed in some cabins to prepare for an epic cave trip the next day. I woke up early and found this beautiful sight behind the cabins.

We met up with Christian, who had agreed to take us to Booming Ice Chasm, the biggest ice cave in North America. It required a hike with a 700m (2200 ft.) elevation gain and big packs to carry 250 m (750 ft.) of rope, ice screws, crampons, and warm gear for the ice cave.

I took photos as a good excuse to catch my breath! Here's a Pasque flower.

We kept heading up.

Finally we made it to the thin rock ledge where the cave is located. Some of it is exposed, so it took awhile to get our whole group across. While I was waiting, I found this packrat in another cave entrance. He wasn't at all timid, and one of the problems cavers have in this area is packrats gnawing through their ropes. Yikes!

We're getting close now!

Finally we're at the entrance!

It was time to suit up and have the first couple of people go down to start rigging.

I was very excited when it was my turn to go down. I descended the snow to the first rebelay station.

From there I could look down under the hoar frost to where the snow turned to ice just before the next station.

A bit further into the cave and I could look down several pitches, admiring the giant frozen blue waterfall we were descending. The slopes average about 70 degrees, so even though we needed 250 meters of rope, the actual depth is about 140 meters. The cave is a cold trap, cold enough that meltwater refreezes each year on this frozen waterfall, leaving it look pristine each season. The name Booming Ice Chasm comes from the sound made if something is dropped. The cave echoes a lot, so it was hard to communicate.

Side waterfalls came in from side passages. This one was quite wet and made cool tinkling sounds as water dripped.

Looking back up, I could still see the entrance. But we weren't even half way down yet.

At the one level spot in the cave, we found some calcite speleothems. They were covered with frost.

Finally we made it to the bottom, where the floor was coated with ice. Woohoo! Now we just had to climb back out, using our crampons quite a bit. Once we climbed up the inside of the mountain, we had to descend back down the outside of the mountain.

Christian Stenner snapped this photo of me coming out. I had a great time! The cave was gorgeous, and I felt plenty safe going with seven other cave rescue instructors! You can see some great photos of the cave here. And here's an interesting account of filming inside the cave.

Thanks to all who made this trip possible. It was quite an experience, and I hope to return to Canada to do some more caving.

2016 Cave Rescue Training

 Every year Lehman Caves holds a rescue training so if someone gets hurt or becomes ill on a tour, park staff can safely get the person out of the cave. This year we also invited local agencies and had BLM and the county search and rescue attend. After about 45 minutes of lectures, we practiced moving someone in a litter. We didn't want to have it so easy, so one of the obstacles was to take the litter through the tree. The patient seemed happy at first.

He didn't seem quite so enthusiastic part way through!

Fortunately all was well...until a call came in that an interpreter had fallen and gotten hurt in the cave and needed help. It was time to have someone at the big radio and get folks into the cave.

With paved trails, it's pretty easy to get into the cave with rescue equipment.

But the patient was off trail! That made for some problem solving, which everyone did well.

Walking with a litter over uneven cave floor isn't so easy.

Everyone was glad when we got to the paved part and we could put the SKED into a Stokes with a wheel.

Entrance control made sure everyone got out of the cave.

And then everyone was smiles.

Until it came time for the eternal struggle--stuffing the SKED back into its bag! Ha.

It was a really good training, with a lot covered in just four hours. Some folks had never done any cave rescue training before, so they got a little taste of it. Others have done this training for many years, but we always have a different scenario and a different location in the cave so they have to figure out what to do. Fortunately, the skills don't get put to the test very often.

Practicing Cave Rescue

Back in the Midwest, while Desert Boy got to have a vacation with his grandparents, I helped teach a cave rescue class. I started getting into cave rescue about 10 years ago and took a series of courses that led to me becoming an instructor for the National Cave Rescue Commission, which holds a national week-long seminar every year. 

This year we were in Indiana, which has thousands of caves in the southern part of the state. There are several different classes, and each spends time in the classroom and in caves practicing. I particularly like the in-cave exercises. There's nothing like a little mud, hard rocks, and tight spaces to make doing a rescue a little more challenging.

 
We practiced packaging a patient so that he wouldn't get hypothermic and then hauled him up.

There was also a team practicing doing lowers in case the patient needed to go down.

If gravity isn't in your favor, you need a haul team to pull the  person up, generally with some mechanical advantage because there aren't too many caves that have room for a huge number of people pulling!

Over the next few days I'll post some more photos of the seminar and a peek into a rarely-seen activity.

More Cave Rescue Practice

I've had time to sort through some of my cave rescue practice photos and here are some of the better ones. At the beginning of the week we practiced packaging a patient, something the students would repeat over and over in different exercises. The main difference of packaging a patient in a cave from a surface search and rescue is the extra insulation and vapor barrier that is usually used in caves to help warm the patient. Many caves in the U.S. tend to be on the chilly side, especially if you spend some time laying on wet rock.

Then we practiced some litter movement. Again, it isn't always as easy in a cave as on the surface. This technique is called pavement, when rescuers "pave" the cave bottom and send the litter over them. It can be used in wet, rocky passages where it wouldn't work to drag the litter.

After practicing some techniques, it was time to go to the obstacle course to practice some of the moves. 

I'm sure some people have never thought of a playground in these terms--and will never do so again.

The litter had to go through the monkey bars and out the other side.

Later in the week we went out to a cliff site to practice rope techniques. The hauling team looks like they're putting some effort into getting the litter up the cliff.

We used a variety of techniques and positions with the litter orientation and the litter attendant. Everyone agreed that having the litter attendant on a separate line makes the haul much simpler. In the photo above, the litter attendant (Wayne) is above the litter.

After the exercise, a couple instructors, Rebecca and Roy, posed for a photo.

And here are Scott and DJ, two more instructors.

Another day we went into a cave for some litter handling practice. Our first obstacle was the cave gate.

A salamander was hanging out below.

Then we walked down a narrow canyon passage.

In some parts of the cave, moving the litter was rather straightforward.

So the instructors (Bil and Jim) created an artificial wall to simulate a smaller passage.

Then it was time to try out the SKED litter in the canyon passage. It was a good workout for everyone.

In a couple days I'll have some photos up from the ten-hour mock rescue. Tomorrow is a more relaxing cave post.