Re: The Colorado BS thread
Yeah, it was snowing pretty good up there while we were there. We stayed at Hahn's Peak Roadhouse and did our training up the road from there. Great place, I highly recommend it. The staff is awesome there.
There were areas there that the snow was so deep we had no idea if we could even get to the ground. If you stepped out if the SUSV you'd sink in to your knees, if you jumped off the thing you would sink in up to your armpits and still not hit solid ground. Snow shoes made it easy to stay on top, but they are a bunch of work. We did a lot of search and rescue scenarios having to navigate different trails in the area to find rescue dummies that were placed in different spots. Get to the "Last known GPS" coordinates and then snow shoe it in a search pattern to find the "victim". Then we would bundle it up into a sleeping bag, secure it into the litter (a special plastic one that acts like a sled in the snow), and secure it back into the SUSV. Once back at the CP (command point)the OC's (observer/controllers) would use snow mobiles to reset the lane.
This went on Tues-Thurs, we travelled there Monday and travelled back Friday. I then spent Sat and Sun bed ridden with a 102+ fever. It was good times.