We’re planning a winter rescue exercise on Burke Mountain this Saturday.
Do you know the difference between a scenario, an exercise and a drill?
- A scenario is designed to simulate a real event and is carried out in “real time”
- An exercise is designed to test capabilities and may no include a single specific goal.
- A drill is designed to test specific skills.
Saturday’s goals are to test the team’s capabilities at winter travel on Burke Mountain. We’re going to transport team members up the mountain using a variety of methods including snowmobile, ski, snowshoe and our Argo ATV with the winter tracks.
Our secondary goals are to use the team’s cabin as a command and communications centre, deploy our portable repeater, and set up our advanced base camp which consists of a 5 person single wall tent and associated survival gear. Several of our members will also do an avalanche rescue scenario at a chosen location.
It’s important for the team to do training like this. Burke Mountain is 1270m in elevation, which makes it just a few meters higher than Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver. However, there is no skyride to to the top of Burke, just a logging road that is not ploughed in the winter. Any response into this area requires significant time and resources; training with the team allows us to see what works and what doesn’t and makes our response time faster in the case of a real emergency.