There’s a popular tendency to overvalue connectivity in the backcountry and undervalue the ability to avoid unnecessary risk and self-rescue. Connectivity can actually cause some people to take risks where they otherwise wouldn’t, thinking a helicopter will drop out of the sky 30 minutes after dialing 911. Many stories about rescues in the White Mountains of NH, for example, begin with a call for help with known coordinates (either by cell or PLB). The trouble comes in rallying resources from Fish & Game, State Police, volunteer groups, etc. then getting into the woods to carry out the rescue. We’re talking many hours for this. Then there’s the issue of actually reaching those coordinates and hoping they are accurate—there’s been teams bounced around multiple points through grueling terrain while they, themselves, are putting their lives at risk.
I used to be a volunteer SAR member in Colorado. You are correct that it takes many, many hours in a lot of cases. Helis were almost never used, and you’d get rolled down the mountain on a “big wheel” if you couldn’t walk. This was not fun for the subject or SAR members.
Not only that, but guess who mostly has time to volunteer? Retirees.
I wish SAR had better funding, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. I would urge everyone in the backcountry to do their best to be self sufficient and make good choices.
While we were camping on a lake in the Canadian shield, my friend rolled his ankle very badly in the night. We found a tiny bit of cell signal and called for help. I was trying to imagine some dramatic helicopter rescue as the various organizations negotiated who would do the rescue. But it turned out, he was extracted by two extremely tough rangers in a CANOE.
Find a SAR team in your area, they usually have a recruiting page. SAR is not a casual volunteer commitment they tend to train a lot. The process here (alameda county ~ bay area) is take orientation class, apply, pass fitness/skills test/oral interview/background check, attend meetings and basic training, then train more while waiting for a call out. They want 6+hrs/mo to stay active. This will be different for every jurisdiction so ymmv.
I don't personally do SAR, but am getting into some adjacent things like ski patrol that have many SAR members (SPART, Ski Patrol Rescue Team), and volunteer for large event medical along many SAR members. So don't take what I'm saying as gospel.
Looks like you'd fill out https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LP6lFpUFgm5LwD48BmfEiXHqjgP... or contact https://www.alaskasar.org/membership to find out more. Usually you do training to do one or more operational capabilities. There are many kinds of SAR, these are the capabilities. There's people who take 4x4s up fire roads, winter vehicle rescue, hiking, remains retrieval and search, drone people, alpine / ski rescue, avalanche, ropes, swift water, it goes on, think of ways people can get lost or stuck.
I don't live in Alaska but in Seattle, for one of the SARs you'd mainly learn how to do search, navigation, and camping (backpacking). Once you train you basically get a text when someone's missing and you reply if you can help. You then drive to a staging area with your kit and help out.
As the sister post said, there will be a re-occuring training and likely yearly BLS / CPR certification, and simulated missions. You need to practice this stuff, and practice being organized so you're ready to go and not just asking questions when someone is actually in danger. Ski Patrol was around 80 hours of just medical training, and another 40 hours of job training, and 50 hours of training to just use the toboggan to get someone off the hill. This training also serves to weed out the non-committed people.
There's some good photos on https://www.facebook.com/KC.SPART/ of a rescue exercise, you can see the number of people involved (there are instructors) and know they're possibly several miles up from the freeway irl, sometimes doing overnight rescues. It's a lot of work to haul someone out.
> Ski Patrol was around 80 hours of just medical training, and another 40 hours of job training, and 50 hours of training to just use the toboggan to get someone off the hill. This training also serves to weed out the non-committed people.
Is that actually a valuable goal for a short-staffed organization?
It doesn't really help a short staffed organization when people don't show up or show up randomly. You'll have 15 people one day and 0 another day. If it's ski patrol that'll highly correlate to 15 people on the blue bird powder day when you need 8, and almost no one will get hurt so you only need people to open and close the hill. And 0 on the skiied out icy day when you have 5x the injurys as you have staff on the hard conditions and you don't have time for lunch or bathroom brakes.
Also do you want someone binding up your kids broken arm or dislocated shoulder who doesn't know what they're doing, then taking them down a mogul covered black that they couldn't handle themselves with their weight and the toboggans weight with no practice? edit: removed worse injuries I've seen, I think I made my point.
The rest of the thread explicitly states that (1) SAR is badly short-staffed; and (2) they have similar training requirements. (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42997100 )
You're presenting ski patrol as an example of how SAR operates, and the other comments seem to agree. Is it desirable to run SAR that way?
Yes. Search and rescue is not an employment agency. A search and rescue organization without the necessary training to perform search and rescue doesn't help anyone.
I'm more thinking of times when I've been driving through areas with spotty cell service, rather then the actual backcountry. The sort of thing where you could drive to it, but still haven no service.
Eh, their lives aren't at risk at the rates of actual blue collar professions like logging, roofing etc. and these jobs have lower prestige and benefits as well.
A little tax-payer funded training in the form of practice runs doesn't sound like a bad thing either.
SAR groups are often unpaid volunteers and at a minimum will be eating some of their weekend off to respond… unless those loggers are unpaid prison labor what you say is false.
