Climbing instruction emphasizes strategies for preventing and mitigating accidents. However, even the best-prepared climbers may eventually encounter a situation requiring first aid and rescue skills. Life and death are closely linked in the mountain world. Most experienced climbers have had a few close calls, and know that saving a life on a climb is of much greater importance than summiting a peak. So trained volunteers are must in any emergency to complete a safe rescue. With outside assistance hours or days away, a climbing party needs to be able to perform first aid and to initiate search and rescue efforts. First aid and alpine rescue are the two components of responding to an accident or serious illness. The first aid skills taught in most urban and work places classes are designed to help a severely injured subject survive for the short time. Alpine rescue describes action a party can take to rescue an injured climber from difficult terrain and evacuate an ill or injured climber from the mountain environment.
However, despite the popularity of high-altitude trekking, mountaineering and climbing in India, only one out of six government-run mountaineering institutes open to civilians in the country teaches critical high-altitude search and rescue skills. It is an exhaustive program that teaches rescue techniques on rock face, cliff face, snow field, post-avalanche, ice, crevasse as well as map reading, GPS handling and more outdoor survival skills. The institutes organize corporate training with the emphasis on outdoor exercises having extremely powerful medium for training in new and technical training. The participants are made to practically do rock climbing, abseiling, river crossing, confidence course, artificial climbing, target shooting mixed with fun filled activities like trust fall, treasure hunt, bathing in mountain stream pools and crossing the challenging rope course etc. This brings out the team building spirit, accepting challenging assignments, improving risk taking capacities, confidence building and motivation for achieving the desired targets. These training programs help understand volunteers each other, which is necessary for a rescue on the actual situations to act as a team. Leaders should watch for signs of cold stress and allow volunteers to interrupt their work if they are extremely uncomfortable. Search And Rescue Leaders should also ensure that work schedules allow appropriate rest periods and ensure liquids are available. They should use appropriate engineering controls work practices to reduce the risk of cold stress.
We at Himalayan Adventure Trips organize 7 to 10 days rescue search and rescue training based programme. If you are interested to join in one of our rescues courses program you can check our website: www.himalayanadventuretrips.com, or mail us at:info@himalayanadventuretrips.com