The Summit County Rescue Group has put on an annual avalanche
seminar for 35 years now. The seminar is attended by rescue groups
from all over the Rocky Mountain region, and it consists of a
classroom day and a field day, over a weekend, focused on avalanche
rescue. Both a basic and advanced class are offered, and during the
field day participants rotate through stations including beacon
search, snow pits, probe lines and hasty team, followed by a full
avalanche rescue scenario.
This year, about three weeks before the seminar, we got a call
from an associate producer at the Today show. She said she
was working on a story about avalanche technology and whether it
caused backcountry recreationalists to take more risks. She also
wanted to lead into the nationally hot topic of charging for
rescue. The Summit County Rescue Group and the mountain rescue
group in general strongly oppose charging for rescue and we welcome
the opportunity to be heard on the topic, so we said come on over,
we'd love to have you!
On December 6th, in negative 15 degree temperatures and high
winds, we welcomed the producer, a correspondent and a camera crew
to our field session near the backside of Chalk Mountain. We were
impressed at how the crew toughed out the weather, despite two of
them being from Southern California! The correspondent interviewed
Charlie Shimanski, president of the Mountain Rescue Association;
avalanche expert Dale Atkins, formerly of the Colorado Avalanche
Information Center and also with Alpine Mountain Rescue and Recco;
and Seth Morrison, pro skier, who talked about what it's like to be
buried in an avalanche. The camera crew got some great footage of
all of the training stations and the final scenario, and then we
buried the correspondent in a snow cave with a camera to capture a
victim's point-of-view of being buried and then dug out by an
avalanche dog.
Stay tuned and we'll let you know when the spot is going to air on
NBC.
Photo: The Today Show camera crew filming an avalanche dog
demonstration. Photo by Tracy LeClair.
