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.