Last weekend saw our station complete a Search and Rescue (SAR) practice drill, responding to a pair of heroes who found themselves lost and confused in the Antarctic wilderness having become injured in a light fall. The “Heroes” I speak of were Darron and myself, Darron being the injured party. The scenario involved a complete rescue, as well as misdirection to the search and rescue parties due to my scripted confusion about our whereabouts.
The main takeaway lessons I took from this exercise were:
- Two person bothys are tight, very tight. So tight that I had the injured party laying on my lap for over two hours.
- The more fun you have giving your workmates cryptic clues about your whereabouts, the more you time you have to sit in a tiny bothy staring into your workmate’s eyes.
- In high winds with an injured partner a bothy bag is near on impossible to get correctly setup.
All in all we had a very successful exercise and I was happy to get back to station for a hot meal.
Adam Schiefelbein
