Dominik-swift water rescue training

Hi there this is Dominik. Today we had swift water resque traning. We started the day off with learning how to use our throw bags. i thought throwing the ropes would be easy until I tried it; I kept missing my partner.I later learned that you also need a backup person to hold you down and very good foot placement so you don't fall in when your swimmer grabs the rope. We then went to the death slot  to practice getting over a strainer.

Practicing Boofing over strainer

To get over a strainer in the river such as a fallen tree then you want to slow your self down a little bit and then put your arms in front of you , push up onto the log and simply climb over. We then practiced a rescue for if someone was stuck on a log. The way we did this was we had a total of five people helping. There was one person strapped onto a rope being lowered down the river. two people were holding onto the rope. One person was yelling commands and one helped the person get out of the water onto shore. The person on the rope grabbed the person stuck on the rope and brought him towards shore and then the one person on shore helped them get out. then we practiced foot entrapments and equipment entrapments. Those were much harder to do. We practiced this by being tied onto a rope on a peace of equipment and take it off. this took me many tries to do. the foot entrapment drill we did was you were tied by your foot in the water and you had to find a way to take the pressure off your foot. You do this by swimming to the bottom pushing off the rocks. This one i got first try.

See you next week! Dominik