2018 National Cave Rescue Commission Weeklong Seminar, Alabama

 One of my hobbies is to teach cave rescue techniques with the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC). This year's weeklong seminar was in Mentone, Alabama. At first I wasn't going to go because May is always a crazy month, but Camp Skyline is such a nice location and I really wanted to see friends. So by shaving a day off at the beginning and end of the trip, I was able to make it work.

I arrived late the night before classes started and joined everyone in the cafeteria in the morning for the opening session. Then we split into our individual classes. This year I taught SPAR-X, or Extended Small Party Assisted Rescue. This was our pilot weeklong class. Our classroom was quite reminiscent of many shorter SPAR classes where we've rented out a house for a long weekend.

We didn't spend much time in the classroom. We were soon out on the cliffs practicing techniques that didn't use much gear or many people.

The cliff site worked really well for us, and we even had some rebelays to negotiate with a patient going both up and down.

The extra time also allowed for practicing some more advanced skills, and stacking different techniques to solve different problems.

We also had some gym time, and at one point we had all the students on rope at the same time!

Many evenings involved the math and physics behind what we were doing. Students loved it, and they even enjoyed the homework!

We also had some time in caves, which is always good for a cave rescue class. For our final scenario, we split into three groups, and each group had to rescue a person through multiple problems. This was a fun traverse--not your usual up/down haul.

The groups did great with the rescue practice.

At the last obstacle near the entrance, each group solved the problem a different way.

The group I was with did a very simple haul that was super fast.

A cave salamander watched us all go by.

Here's a slightly blurry photo of our class. We were all smiles after six days of great SPAR-X fun. This is a super class, and if you ever want to learn how to do rescues with minimal people and gear, I highly recommend it.

The only downside was that I brought a hitchhiker back with me from Alabama, a little deer tick. Fortunately I haven't had any symptoms of Lyme disease or other tick-borne diseases, but I'm still not out of the woods yet (even though I sort of am!). This tick identification website was really helpful.

At least I didn't get poison ivy! I just need to figure out a way to drop right into the caves, where there aren't so many things to look out for.

Mock Rescue-Sullivan's Cave

The last day of the cave rescue class is an all-day mock rescue. As an instructor, I had volunteered to tag along as a "bat" with the communications task force. That meant I would follow along and remain in the background unless any safety issues arose, and then I could squeak and offer a suggestion. 

I arrived at Sullivan's Cave soon after the mock rescue was announced and watched the first group arrive with their personal gear and some group gear.

They also brought the reporting party, Don, who said he had been caving with three friends and one had gotten hurt and he had come out to get help. He offered to take the rescuers into the cave, but instead he was offered a chair and was repeatedly questioned by Marty to get every ounce of information out of him that she could.

Meanwhile, a gear cache was being assembled with ropes, wedding, communications wire, a cable ladder, an IRT pack, a litter, and more.

A tent was set up over the Incident Command Post.

And then the comm team was sent into the cave as the second team and I started following them. They did an excellent job laying the wire quickly and keeping it out of the way of subsequent teams. Usually later teams that enter the cave are told to follow the comm wire. The biggest compliment this team got was one team got lost because they couldn't find the wire, it was camouflaged so well!

The comm wire allows military field phones to be hooked up and communications between the cave and surface to occur. It saves a lot of time and energy than having someone going in and out of the cave to pass notes, especially with difficult passage.

As the comm team waited for more wire after running two spools in, we watched one of the "original cavers" exit the cave. He had hypothermia and made it difficult for his rescuers, but they persisted and did an excellent job of moving him out of the cave.

Meanwhile, another member of the "original cave team" had gotten lost while trying to find the entrance, but a search party found him in short order and got him out of the cave. That left just the injured caver, Jess, to get out.

Jess had a tib/fib fracture (broken leg), so she had to be packaged in a litter. Part of the cave was steep, so a rigging team prepared it for her exit.

Jess was moving before I got to see her. She was in a cave passage with waist-high water, and some of the rescuers were starting to get cold. So I traded places with another "bat" and followed some of the cold rescuers out of the cave.

On the way I managed to snap a photo of the great placement of this comm wire spool--on the ceiling out of everyone's way.

The entrance area was rigged with three different haul systems.

Jeff and Ellen patiently waiting for the patient to arrive at their part of the cave.

The area right outside the cave was also rigged.

The Incident Command Post had many more nametags hanging down from the awning, signifying who was doing what on the incident.

Finally a group arrived carrying Jess from the cave entrance to the parking area. Hurray!

She was unpackaged and a real medical doctor made sure she was okay. She was a bit on the cold side despite a wetsuit and blankets, but after a few minutes she seemed to be warming up just fine in the thick Indiana heat.

The rescue wasn't over just because Jess was out. There was still lots of gear to be washed!

And then the final step--Billy and Harold loading it into the big U-Haul truck and storing it until needed for a cave rescue--or next year's class.

It was a great 2009 class. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped make it happen.

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!