Knots, Ropes, and Rescue

Aerie instructor Ben working with students to set up safe rescue systems

Our last two days were spent with Aerie instructors Josh and Ben who taught us about rope rescue. These two instructors have worked as guides on McKinley, Rainier and Aconcagua.

We were able to incorporate these new skills into medical and trauma scenarios where patients are in less than desirable locations.

Because we have so many wonderful pictures from the past two days, I thought I would share a little of what we learned through our photos.

Blake

Des

Aerie instructor Josh showing some belay techniques

Ascending ropes 

Demonstration on transferring a patient to a different rescue rope for lowering  

Patient care

Setting up a rescue system to rescue patients 

Don't mess with Dara

Scene size-up/scene safety

Bren rappelling to patients

Lauren

Nice airway check Kyle!

Lizzy

Do you know what this is called?

Ask Des, I bet she can tell you!

Ascending with patient

Missoula Day

Today started at Missoula Emergency Services, Missoula's only ambulance service, for a review of ambulance operations.  Most students have completed their ambulance ride-alongs, but often we don't have time during their rides to answer all of the questions that arise during calls.

We then headed over to the Missoula County Search and Rescue equipment cache and learned about their SAR team.  We will be interacting with this group quite a bit in the coming weeks.

After that, we met at the University of Montana cadaver lab for a continuation human anatomy instruction.  There is no better way to learn anatomy than in a cadaver lab with experienced instructors.

After lunch, we headed over for vehicle extrication practice with Missoula Rural Fire Department.  Students had the opportunity to learn from professional firefighters and then donned turn-out gear, getting their hands on equipment while tearing apart some vehicles.  Our goal here is to give our students a sense of the challenges, dangers and opportunities present when dealing with patients entrapped in vehicles.   

Tonight we are back up to Seeley for a full week of class.  

Avalanche course at Morrell Mountain

Students just returned from a week in the mountains having finished up their Level 1 Avalanche course.   Our route initially took us from the Rich Ranch up past Cottonwood Lakes, then off-trail to a one-night tent campsite.  The next day we continued cross-country up to our base camp for the rest of the course: the Morrell Mountain yurts operated by Missoula-based Yurtski.The snow didn't quit for most of the trip, and during our first day out, the rain poured continuously until we gained enough elevation for the precip to turn to snow. So everybody earned their winter/spring camping merit badges for outstanding attitude and work ethic in the face of challenging weather and terrain.

At this point in the trip, we had gained most of our elevation, so everyone was feeling rather ecstatic.                                         

Once we arrived at the yurt, everybody took a short lunch break before setting up camp again: we slept in tents and cooked on snow platforms while reserving the yurt for dining table and gear drying space.

A portion of the avalanche course occurred in terrain well above our yurt basecamp, so there was still an uphill climb to get to class.

Yurtski's 20 foot yurt offered a warm and dry respite from the storms - a place to hang out, eat, and dry gear.

New this year on the mountain is an additional 10-foot yurt offering extra space to dry gear.  With the wood stove cranked, the place is a veritable sauna. It's the third week of March, but there's still almost 9 feet of snow on the ground.

The outhouse seat might be a bit chilly, but the views are lovely and the serenity is unparalleled.

Dudley Improta of the West Central Montana Avalanche Center instructs students in isolating a test snow column prior to performing a compression test to look for snowpack instability.

Students practiced searching for buried victims with beacons, shovels and probe poles.

Clinical Time in Missoula

On their first "weekend" of the MT portion of the Semester, a number of students are completing emergency room observations and ambulance ride-alongs.  These are amazing opportunities to see patients and watch healthcare professionals do their jobs.  It also adds to the experiences gained at the clinic in Costa Rica.

Everyone is meeting back up at the Rich Ranch tonight.  This week will be huge.  We are snowshoeing 10 miles up to a backcountry yurt on Morrell Mountain.  This is an incredible site where the snowpack is still upwards of 10 feet deep.  On the way, we'll be route-finding, practicing safe travel in the winter backcountry, and finally convincing our bodies that we are no longer in the tropics.  Once at the yurt, we will have three days of avalanche rescue training provided by Aerie instructor Darcy Chenoweth and Dudley Improta and Steve Karkanen from the West Central Montana Avalanche Center.  Students will learn the basics of avalanche forecasting with all focus on avoiding avalanche dangers.  We will also practice with avalanche beacons and learn how to extricate patients from snow burials.  Finally, we'll put the importance of prevention in perspective as we learn how to care for people buried in avalanches.

Then we'll pack up and head back down to the ranch, sending more students off for their clinical time and otherwise getting ready for the next week.

Recap of the first week at Rich Ranch

We’ve survived our first week at Rich Ranch. Luckily the weather has been reasonably kind to us in transitioning from the heat of Mastatal. We’ve experienced sun and rain with temps reaching the fifties during the day! Good thing we’ve been allowed to acclimatize because next week we head out for some winter camping near Morrell Mountain in the Swan Mountain range. There students will learn about safe travel on winter backcountry trips such as avalanche safety and rescue, cooking in cold weather, travel on the snow, and preparing camp in the snow. 

OK, back to how we’ve filled our time and heads this week! Since our last check-in on Saturday the students have continued preparing for becoming nationally certified as EMTs. This includes working on skills such as bleeding control, musculoskeletal splinting, AED (automated external defibrillator) and CPR, oxygen administration, airway management, trauma assessments, traction splinting, seated backboarding using a KED (Kendrick Extrication Device), and medical assessments. Are you tired yet? 

Focusing more on the cold weather aspect of EMT skills, we discussed prevention and care for hypothermia and cold injures. These topics all came to a climax with the instructors sacrificing themselves in the name of learning by jumping into the snowy-banked creek near the ranch. The students then had to care for mildly hypothermic patients who also had a lower leg fracture (don’t worry, the instructors didn’t really get hypothermic, just satisfyingly wet). That’s all for now folks!

Backcountry clothing options (perhaps a little overkill in the layering...)

Heidi beat Trenton in number of backcountry layers!

Playing some games to stay warm!

Students rescuing patient from creek

Students caring for their patient during hypothermic scenario. Nice hypowraps guys!