December 13, 2004

This weekend I attended the San Bernardino Sheriffs Search and Rescue Basic Mountaineering Course. This course covered all the skills necessary for an alpine search and rescue mission in the San Bernardino mountains.  The course actually started a month ago with 16 hours of classroom time. This weekend was the field exercises where we got a chance to apply the skills we learned about in the classroom. It was important to know the skills at a level known as unconscious competence, which means you can execute the task correctly without having to think about it. * Here are some of the skills we covered: * Ice Axe Self Arrest * 2 and 3 Person Roped Travel * Snow Anchors + Picket + Ice Axe + Deadman + Bollard * Crampon Travel * Ice Axe Travel * Snowshoe Travel * Snow Shelters * Belaying * Avalanche Beacons All in all it was a great training and I had a great time and learned many valuable skills. I plan on attending the next two trainings. Here are [the pictures I took](http://eecue.com/gallery/887-basic_mountaineering_course "pictures from BMC").