[Image]  One of my hobbies is to teach cave rescue techniques with the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC). This year's weeklong seminar was in Mentone, Alabama. At first I wasn't going to go because May is always a crazy month, but Camp Skyline is such a nice location and I really wanted to see friends. So by shaving a day off at the beginning and end of the trip, I was able to make it work.

I arrived late the night before classes started and joined everyone in the cafeteria in the morning for the opening session. Then we split into our individual classes. This year I taught SPAR-X, or Extended Small Party Assisted Rescue. This was our pilot weeklong class. Our classroom was quite reminiscent of many shorter SPAR classes where we've rented out a house for a long weekend.
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We didn't spend much time in the classroom. We were soon out on the cliffs practicing techniques that didn't use much gear or many people.
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The cliff site worked really well for us, and we even had some rebelays to negotiate with a patient going both up and down.
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The extra time also allowed for practicing some more advanced skills, and stacking different techniques to solve different problems.
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We also had some gym time, and at one point we had all the students on rope at the same time!
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Many evenings involved the math and physics behind what we were doing. Students loved it, and they even enjoyed the homework!
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We also had some time in caves, which is always good for a cave rescue class. For our final scenario, we split into three groups, and each group had to rescue a person through multiple problems. This was a fun traverse--not your usual up/down haul.
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The groups did great with the rescue practice.
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At the last obstacle near the entrance, each group solved the problem a different way.
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The group I was with did a very simple haul that was super fast.
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A cave salamander watched us all go by.
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Here's a slightly blurry photo of our class. We were all smiles after six days of great SPAR-X fun. This is a super class, and if you ever want to learn how to do rescues with minimal people and gear, I highly recommend it.
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The only downside was that I brought a hitchhiker back with me from Alabama, a little deer tick. Fortunately I haven't had any symptoms of Lyme disease or other tick-borne diseases, but I'm still not out of the woods yet (even though I sort of am!). This tick identification website was really helpful.
[Image] At least I didn't get poison ivy! I just need to figure out a way to drop right into the caves, where there aren't so many things to look out for.