Course Info
Backcountry Rope Rescue
Backcountry Rope Rescue
This course is specifically designed with the Wilderness Emergency Responder in mind. We teach how to use simple, lightweight, inexpensive rope systems to perform technical rescue. With the SAR team in mind we stepped away from the heavy, expensive systems that are being taught by most rescue companies and fire academies. We set out to create a 4 day course (spread over 2 weekends) that allows our instructors to share skills using safe, efficient, and effective access and rescue techniques using rope.
We have a required equipment list that is mandatory for each student. This allows the student to perform skills using the actual gear they'll have when performing a rescue in the field. This course is 80% hands on and allows for numerous repetitions under the watchful eyes of skills professional instructors. This is NOT A CERTIFIED COURSE, which allows us the latitude to create a course that is regionally specific. This course has no written test at the end to worry about allowing our students and instructors the freedom to focus on the lifesaving skills shared during the program. We feel this maximizes the time available for discussion and more reps.
Skills shared during training will include, but are not limited to:
- Hardware and Software types and capabilities
- Rope assisted access (rappelling/abseiling)
- Simple haul systems
- Patient packaging and carry out techniques
- SRT, DRT, TTRS and M/B systems
- Angles, Vectors, and Force Multipliers
- Pike & Pivot
- Artificial High Directionals
Typically our course is scheduled for the 1st weekend of October and 1st weekend of November. Each day the skills shared will build upon each other, so it's highly recommended that the student participate all four days.
This is a highly physical course and requires students to carry heavy gear and daily hikes of around 2 miles each way. Add to that multiple trips up the steep slope to reset your rappel and you'll definitely be tired and sore and the end of the day.
