Brian Johnson, a member of the Flathead Search and Rescue technical rescue team, gets lowered into Glacier Park’s Avalanche Gorge on Monday as part of an intense seven-day training. Twelve people, including local search-and-rescue volunteers and Glacier National Park rangers, took the 70-hour “Rigging for Rescue” course. The training in Avalanche Gorge focused on creating a high-line suspension system that would safely allow a rescuer to reach a victim. Karen Nichols/Daily Inter Lake

Animated suspension
Posted: Saturday, Sep 23, 2006 - 11:51:54 pm MDT
By CHERY SABOL
The Daily Inter Lake

Local rescue crews practice high-wire act

Cliff and ravine rescues in Flathead County are rare, but when they happen, crews need immediate expertise.

An intensive, weeklong course provided that for search-and-rescue volunteers and rangers in Glacier National Park.

“We don’t have a lot of high-angle rescue calls, but they’re complicated,” said sheriff’s deputy Tom Snyder, coordinator for search-and-rescue services in the county. “When you have one, it’s too late to figure it out then.”


“Rigging for Rescue” was the course taught by Mike Gibbs of Ouray, Colo. It is advanced training for rescuers who may wind up hanging from a rope, plucking an injured mountaineer from a cliff or crevasse.

“He’s as good as it gets,” Snyder said of Gibbs.

The course brought together the technical rescue team — composed of members of both North Valley Search and Rescue and Flathead Search and Rescue — and Glacier Park rangers.

It involved both classroom work and training in Glacier and on cliffs near Kila.

Rescuers learned which recovery systems work best under which circumstances, Snyder said. And the course got “all the players on the same page, using the same technology,” so they will be comfortable with each other and with terminology and rescue systems they will all know.

Because of the intensity of the training, there was space for only 12 people, Snyder said. They will take back to their organizations all that they learned.

The course is invaluable in an area like the Flathead and Glacier Park, where outdoor recreation can lead to injuries and tricky rescues, Snyder said.

“It’s been a long time in coming. We’ve been working to get this off the ground for a couple of years.”

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com