Training

On a cold, blustery day the team received the WhatsApp callout for a training mission. The first clue of the adventure we were heading into was on the way to Incident Base. A large Ponderosa Pine tree had blown over and was partially blocking the road. Los Alamos police, including one of own members, was […]

January 29th eleven Brigade members participated in what has become an annual tradition – Climb the Pajarito Mountain Ski Hill at night. The climb gains about 1,000 feet over about a mile. The training session is a good way for members to test out winter gear, endurance and traveling at night.

Every quarter the Brigade holds a large training session, or mock search, where we attempt to duplicate the conditions of a real mission. Quarterly gives us the opportunity to practice in all four seasons. For our summer training the callout text came in at 19:09 September 30th 2023 requesting members to report to Incident Base

At 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, February 26th the text message arrived saying ground pounders were needed for a missing backcountry skier and an extraction was a possibility. Ten of us arrived at incident base and learned that the subject’s friend and our subject had been snowboarding together when they decided to take different runs and

Matt Holmes has started a yearly tradition for the Brigade where we do a nighttime climb up Pajarito Ski Hill. The climb is approximately 1,000 feet up over a mile or so. This year we did the climb on February 2nd. Ten members came out to climb using snowshoes, skinned skis, micro spikes and even

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

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

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

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

Many years ago when current Brigade member Tom Houlton was President of the Los Alamos Mobile Emergency Services Association (LAMESA) they acquired an ATV. Zia Credit Union had repossessed the vehicle and was going to auction it off. Tom managed to get Zia Credit Union to donate the ATV to LAMESA. When, in 2001, LAMESA