February 19th 2022 finds 13 Brigade members and trainees in the mountains practicing winter Search and Rescue skills. As you can see the weather is glorious! Our SAR Team Leader planned a fantastic mock search scenario. To start, we exercise our callout system with a text message to the team. The text says we have […]
Winter Training 2022 Read More »
It’s winter, it’s cold and there’s new snow on the ground. What’s a SAR team to do? How about a night climb up our local ski hill – Pajarito Mountain at 10,420 feet! Perfect way to check out new snowshoes and other gear as well as practice cooking dinner in the snow and generally staying
Cold Weather Training Read More »
The holiday season is usually very busy so I’m just now getting around to writing the blog post on the Brigade’s participation in the 2021 Los Alamos Winterfest. Los Alamos county hosted Winterfest the first weekend of December 2021. Part of Winterfest has traditionally included a Holiday Lights Parade. The 2021 theme was “TV and
Electric Light Parade Read More »
As Ordering Manager for this mission I received the call at 10:50 p.m. on October 31st 2021 requesting ground pounders and communications support for a 60 year old male who had gotten separated from his hunting buddies. By 12:13 a.m. on November 1st we decided more resources were needed and the Brigade was contacted. Seven
Missing Hunting Buddy in Pecos – Mission 102 Read More »
The last few missions for the Brigade in the Sandia Mountains were on the La Luz trail and the subjects were found deceased. Given the unfortunate history of missions on the La Luz one of our members thought it would be beneficial to hike the La Luz trail outside of mission space. Saturday October 23rd
La Luz Trail Hike Sandia Mountains Read More »
Around midnight on September 27 the Fire Brigade received calls to search for a lost camper among the piñon forests and oil fields surrounding the Navajo reservoir. While not exactly close the incident’s location, Fire Brigade was among the first teams able to respond with two brigade members on the road by 1:00 am to start the
Missing Camper Navajo Lake Area – Mission 92 Read More »
The Incident Commander for mission 87 was looking for canine teams on September 21st around 6:00 p.m. Thus, the Mountain Canine Corps received the first call. I volunteered to respond. Did you know I’m also a member of MCC? The Brigade went on standby for a possible second operational period about half an hour later.
Non Verbal Person Missing in Sandias – Mission 87 Read More »
The call for what would turn out to be a rather grueling mission came from the Ordering Manger at 12:48 p.m. Saturday August 21, 2021. We were to be plan B. Plan A was for the State Police helicopter ABLE-7 to use a hoist to extract the subject from his location. The hiker had called
Extricate Injured Hiker from Pecos Wilderness – Mission 78 Read More »
August 14th was the Fair and Rodeo Parade in Los Alamos. We had hoped to enter both our 1921 LaFrance, our 1942 GMC and Rescue. However, the LaFrance stalled 50 feet from CD-1. More on that later. However, we were able get the GMC downtown and into the parade. However, it died right in front
Fair and Rodeo Parade Read More »
June 26th three members of the Brigade joined Pajarito Canines in a joint training session. Brigade members learned about the capabilities of the PK9 search dogs as well as the basics of how they are trained. As we are sometimes called upon to help support the canine search teams anything we learn about search dogs
Joint Training – Pajarito Canines (PK9) Read More »
