Summer 2018 Heat Safety from the Desert Mountain Region Spring Conference 2017 ICAR Reports Rescue on the Crestone Needle Summer 2018 2 MRA Leadership President Art Fortini Sierra Madre Search and Rescue [email protected] Vice President Summer 2018 Doug McCall Seattle Mountain Rescue [email protected] President’s Message…………………………………………………………………….4 Past President Bryan Enberg MRA Spring Conference Recap…………………………………………..………..5 New Jersey Search and Rescue Heat Safety Tips From the Desert Mountain Region…………….……...6 Secretary/Treasurer Rescuer Spotlight: Rev. Dr. Scott Beebe, Vail Mountain Rescue......8 Antonio Arizo Ventura County—East Valley SAR 2017 ICAR - Terrestrial Rescue Commission Report……………………10 Air Rescue Report - ICAR…………………………………………………………....20 At-Large Member Dr. Alison Sheets MRA MedCom 2018…….…………………………………………………………….26 Rocky Mountain Rescue Help Wanted……………………………………………………………………………...28 At-Large Member Glenn Henderson Dee Molenaar & Family Celebrate 100th Year Birthday at Mt. Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit Rainier………………………………………………………………………………………..29 Executive Secretary Save the Date: SARGIS10…………………………………………………………...30 Kayley Bell [email protected] Editor’s Notes…………………………………………………………………………….31 Meridian Staff Photo Gallery……………………………………………………………………………..32 Editor: Shelley Littin, Lois Grossman, Daniel Farrell MRA Small Store………………………………………………………………………..34 Graphic Designer: Carolanne Powers Submissions Cover Photo: CAMRA partnered with the Southern Arizona Rescue Send to [email protected] Association for a 2013 Grand Canyon cleanup project sponsored by the Arizona Mountaineering Club. Photo courtesy of CAMRA. Corporate correspondence Mountain Rescue Association PO Box 800868 San Diego, CA 92168-0868 ©2018 Mountain Rescue Association All rights reserved. All content ©MRA or as otherwise noted. Permission to reprint granted to MRA units in good standing with the MRA. Summer 2018 3 Support those who support the MRA! To learn more about our levels of sponsorship, click through to the MRA Sponsor page. Summer 2018 4 (Riverside Mountain Rescue) President’s Message was elected member at large for a 1-year term to fill in the vacancy created by Doug’s ad- Summer 2018 vancement to vice president. Antonio Arizo (Ventura County By Art Fortini, MRA President – Easy Valley SAR) continues on Since the last issue of the Meridian, some noteworthy events have as secretary/treasurer, and taken place. Perhaps the most significant of these was the national Kayley Bell continues on as the meeting, which was hosted by Rocky Mountain House SAR at the MRA’s executive secretary. Goldeye Center in Alberta, Canada. Two days of pre-conference Please join me in thanking training opportunities followed by two additional days of class- Mark Miraglia, Skeet Glatterer, room sessions gave the attendees ample amounts of information Joe Edmark, and Greg Foley and insights to bring back to their teams. Sharing information with who were ready, willing, and MRA President Art Fortini. each other and being able to learn from experts in various fields is able to step into roles on the (Image courtesy of Art Fortini.) one of the key values of being part of the MRA. Doing it with the officers’ committee. The fact majestic Canadian Rockies as the backdrop, well, it doesn’t get that we had so many strong much better than that! candidates willing to run for office underscores the strength of our Following the four days of field and classroom sessions was the organization. MRA business meeting on Sunday morning. One of the first orders Please also join me in thanking Bryan Enberg, the MRA’s outgoing of business was voting Appalachian Mountain Rescue (North Caro- president, for his two years of exemplary service as president and lina) into the MRA as an associate member team and Naval Air numerous years of service on the officers’ committee prior to that. Station Lemoore as an ex-officio team. Congratulations and wel- As the immediate past president, we’ll still be seeing a lot of him. come to the family! Being out of office in the MRA doesn’t mean being out of work! We then viewed two new videos created by Charley Shimanski and Although it happened prior to the meeting, another big event was the MRA Education committee. One was focused on Who we are going live with the MRA’s new Sharepoint site. Committees, re- and the other focused on What we do. Both of these videos will be gions, and individual teams can each create workspaces for sharing available to all MRA teams to use for fundraising, recruiting, PR documents and communicating with others in their group and with events, etc. Materials such as these are another one of the perks other groups. Hats off to Bryan Enberg for seeing this project of being part of the MRA. through from start to finish! The education committee announced that three training classes Looking toward the future, we have several exciting events coming are currently available on the MRA Online Education Basecamp up. First is the International Technical Rescue Symposium, of which (training.MRA.org): Helicopter Safety, Situational Awareness, and the MRA is a proud and long-term sponsor. The symposium brings Risks in Mountain Rescue Operations. A certificate of completion is together technical rescue experts from the mountain rescue, cave available to anyone who takes these classes, and like the videos, rescue, fire rescue, and rope access communities. For three days, these training materials are all available to MRA members at no attendees get to share thoughts and ideas on how to do what we cost. Additional training materials – these geared toward the gen- do with increased efficiency, increased effectiveness, and in- eral public – are being developed with topics that will include ava- creased safety. This year’s symposium will be held in Portland, OR lanche, backcountry safety, and backcountry leadership. from November 1st – 4th. The MRA is the lead agency representing the United States at the The next big event is the MRA winter business meeting, which will International Commission for Alpine Rescue (ICAR), and every year, be held in West Valley City, UT, just outside Salt Lake City, from the MRA sends four delegate and four alternate delegates to the February 1st – 3rd, 2019. For those of you who want to see how the ICAR annual meeting. These delegates are elected each year by MRA functions as an organization and what goes on behind the the MRA membership at the June meeting. This year we had the scenes, this is the meeting for you. pleasure of electing Chris van Tilburg (Hood River Crag Rats – Med- ical), Mike Finger (Salt Lake City SAR –Avalanche), and Dale Wang For the next MRA Spring meeting, we’re going back to where it (Rocky Mountain Rescue – Terrestrial Rescue) as the MRA’s newest all began: Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood, OR. The th alternate delegates. They will be joining Alison Sheets, Tom Wood, 2019 meeting will celebrate the MRA’s 60 anniversary, and Oyvind Henningsen, Charley Shimanski, and Casey Ping as our rep- Portland Mountain Rescue is planning what promises to be an resentatives to ICAR. amazing event. The field and classroom sessions will be held June 7th and 8th, and the business meeting will be on June 9th. As happens every year, there was a changing of the guard. In even Save the dates and come join the celebration! numbered years we elect a member at large, the vice president, and the president, and in alternate years we elect the other mem- Yours in service, ber-at-large and the secretary/treasurer. In this year’s elections, Alison Sheets (Rocky Mountain Rescue) stayed on as member at Art Fortini large, Doug McCall (Seattle Mountain Rescue), former member at Art Fortini large, was elected vice president, and Art Fortini (Sierra Madre President, Mountain Rescue Association Search & Rescue) was elected president. Glenn Henderson [email protected] Summer 2018 5 MRA Spring Conference Recap By Shelley Littin, Eugene Mountain Rescue The MRA 2018 spring conference was held at the Goldeye Conference Center just outside of Nordegg, Alberta, hosted by Rocky Mountain House Search and Rescue team. Preconference activities included wilderness survival, beginning and advanced companion rescue, ad- vanced technical rope rescue, helicopter training, and glacier travel and crevasse rescue. A variety of sessions offered presentations on New Zealand SAR, trauma care, bleeding control, crisis leadership, situational awareness, radio discipline, risk assessment, and hypothermia, and more. Kirk Mauthner, creator of the MPD, gave a presentation and demonstration of dual capability two-tension rope systems, with the take- home that rigorous testing has determined that such systems afford less tension on each rope, resulting in reduced chance of breakage or failure in numerous edge transition, static and dynamic load, and rockfall scenarios. Outgoing president Bryan Enberg gave a “State of the MRA” presentation that highlighted recent MRA developments such as initiation of a Microsoft SharePoint program for all MRA members to easily and securely share and view files and collaborate on documentation. The MRA also commissioned two marketing and recruitment videos, one overview of what the MRA is and does, and one that takes viewers through an example mission: a search and rescue of a missing child. Both videos will soon be broadly available for use by individual MRA teams and can be customized with individual teams’ logos and names. Conference highlights included presentations on mountain rescue in Banff National Park, a HEC (human external cargo) demonstration by our hosts’ helitac team, and banquet speaker Canadian alpinist Barry Blanchard, who brought the audience through a compelling photo- graphic journey of his life of technical mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies and Himalayas, including first ascents and stunt doubling for films such as Vertical Limit, Cliffhanger, and K2. The annual conference enables the multinational MRA, associ- ate, and ex-officio team members to gather to share rescue stories, technical developments, and lessons learned, fostering technical, intellectual, and emotional support among our mountain rescue community.