[trip] NCRC Orientation to Cave Rescue Class

This weekend I attended the Orientation to Cave Rescue class which was offered by the Eastern Region of the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC) at Laurel Caverns, PA.

We met at 8:00AM on Saturday morning at Laurel Caverns. The morning was spent in a classroom over a powerpoint presentation on the basics of cave rescue - command hierarchy, responsibilities, goals, etc. Several search-and-rescue teams were conducting a mock-search during our training. After a brief non-vegetarian lunch, we broke out into smaller groups and did some more hands-on training. One session showed us how to use military field telephones (fun!); one gave an extremely high-level wilderness first-aid lesson - too basic to help those with actual EMS training, too vague to help those without. A third session taught us how to package a patient in a SKED and a Ferno stretcher. We had a nice vegetarian dinner, then broke into two teams and did a rescue "obstacle course", where we would package a patient and then maneuver them (gently!) over, under, around, and through all sorts of constrictions, drop-offs, tunnels, and other brutal obstacles that simulated cave terrain. This was a lot of fun, but was extremely exhausting after 2.5 hours. We finished up around 8:00PM.

Again, we met at 8:00AM at Laurel Caverns, but Sunday was much different than the previous day's course. We arrived and were incorporated into the previous day's mock-search, which had now turned into a mock-rescue. In conjunction with the search-and-rescue teams, we reported to Barton Cave, where three cavers were suspected as being "lost". Since I am familiar with Barton, I was put on the initial search team as a guide. Our team went in to the back of the cave, where we quickly found the first "lost" patient (who really enjoyed playing the part of a lost old caver). After getting our patient out, we were sent back in to help extract an injured patient who was currently being packaged. It took about 4 hours to extract him, even though he was only a few hundred feet from the cave entrance, and it looked like quite an unpleasant ride.

I learned a great deal about how cave rescues operate and about how I can most effectively and efficiently help out. The most striking lesson of the weekend is how long it takes and how much effort is involved in extracting an injured caver - it will make me re-evaluate the sorts of risks that I take underground for sure! I had a great time taking the course, and I highly recommend it to all cavers.

[trip] Barton Cave Beginner Trip

Doug McCarty, Brian Masney, John Tudek, John ?, and myself met at the Exxon on route 857 at 6pm for a beginner's trip into Barton Cave. We waited for half an hour, but the beginners never showed. We drove to the cave, geared up, and headed in. The cave takes about 45 minutes to get to from Morgantown, and is a 10 minute hike from the parking area. It's a very easy cave, horizontal, not too crawly, and mostly dry. It's formed in very sandy limestone or limey sandstone. We were back in Morgantown in time to get Mexican for dinner.