A few months back I discovered a great local outdoor blog called Oplopanax Horridus.
Oplopanax Horridus is authored by a Coquitlam SAR member and features many interesting posts on local SAR callouts, including detailed statistical analysis of data, as well as a variety of other outdoor related content.
…My avocation is Search and Rescue. In January 2000 I joined a SAR team. At the time I was frustrated with volunteering for various organizations and needed a simple way to feel useful, and to give back to society. SAR was that opportunity. My skills at backcountry travel were a good fit for the task of finding and helping lost and injured people in BC’s wilderness. In the years since I have joined, I have spent thousands of hours training and hundreds of hours searching, and it has been one of the most rewarding pursuits I have ever undertaken.
This blog is an expression of these three aspects of my life, as much as they are related. Being a software engineer, I design systems and workflows. I am sensitive to the patterns in life, in as much as they are expressed in software to accomplish a task. I believe my analytical experience gives me some insight into the activity of backcountry recreation, with it’s gadgets, gears, skills, and processes, and into SAR with it’s organized and systematic approach to finding and rescuing lost persons.
Some great recent posts I’d recommend you check out:
- Safe places to Snowshoe
- Frequency of SAR Incidents
- Distribution of SAR Incidents in BC
- How to Kill Yourself Snowshoeing
Be sure to throw this site into Google Reader. From what I’ve followed over the last little while there is a lot of great content posted frequently.
