In case Arctic adventure turns real

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Imagine a landscape so huge you feel humbled, a pack of wolves tracking your trail for three days and the remaining tail section of crashed airplane frozen into the snow.

Imagine if you needed to be rescued from all this.

“It was awesome,” says Master Corporal Dan Bodden of 14 Wing Greenwood’s 413 Search and Rescue Squadron of the April training mission to Ellesmere Island.

He was one of six SARTechs who walked off from the base at Alert on a five-day survival and training exercise, carrying 60 pounds each on their back and sharing160-pound loads on three sleds in pairs.

”Scary? More humbling – it’s very big country. Once you get past the 24-hour daylight and the temperatures, it’s just huge.”

SARTechs train constantly, but Arctic exercises are less frequent. “Thumbing a ride” with the planes that supply Alert, 413’s crew planned and packed equipment for weeks before heading out. The day they left Alert, its staff dropped them 10 kilometres out on the trail, a 50-kilometre loop that would test their skills and equipment and bring home the importance of staying sharp.

“Hearing that transport drive off, you’re just looking around and thinking, ‘Man, a few wrong decisions and we could be in trouble’,” Bodden says. “You have to have a plan, think and be flexible.”

That proved its value within hours of their exercise: it took all day to get out of the 300-foot frozen river valley they’d been left in.

“The terrain was really tough going, and the snow was just soft enough to stop your momentum. We learned fast to be very conservative with how much ground we expected to cover – but you have to be optimistic,” thinking there could someday actually be a real rescue at the end of such a mission.

“The distance we gained, we earned.”

The good news: their freeze-dried rations were great, their “sleeping systems” were almost too hot in -25 or -30 degrees Celsius temperatures, their issue and a trial commercial tents were both good shelters, batteries for their communications gear stayed charged. Flare and smoke signal trials went well, camp set-up was under 15 minutes most days

The bad news: a new Zippo lighter Bodden bought specifically for this trip wouldn’t light their stoves.

“Matches work best.”

Compasses also don’t work north of “true north,” so the crew relied on GPS and topographical maps to get to their destination: the 1991 crash site of a Hercules aircraft that had been resupplying Alert. Five of its crew died.

“”When we got there, the goal we’d been talking about, we were amazed at the condition the plane was in,” Bodden says.”Then it got kind of quite, and you think about what we’d do if we were here on a rescue. We’ve all talked about it in training, what was learned from it.

“Whatever can get you in trouble could get you in trouble here.”

At the crash site, they talked about patient evacuation techniques, survival patterns they’d establish on a similar rescue.

“We were going to leave a geocache, but then thought, ‘What were we thinking?’”

The SarTechs left, heading back to Alert 30 kilometres away. Their geocache of squadron coins, flashes and other items is somewhere north of Alert, and Bodden says it’s “dot” is not on geocaching websites: they’d been thinking of establishing “the most remote “ site in the world.

Hiking back to Alert was a continued effort, and Bodden says he likely won’t live down piping up “it’s right there” as they crested a hill and could see the base’s tracked vehicles.

“They wanted to wave one down,and just get rid of our gear for the last distance. Well – three hours later, we made it in.

“We were tired.”

The experience was great, - for Bodden, not even a year-long SARTech, and for the team’s leader, heading to a desk job in the near future. They’ll remember a pizza delivery in their first camp from Alert crews checking up on them, catching three wolves around base buildings “triangulate” them as in a hunting pattern, before being scared off; and take the skills they tested away with confidence.

“But in this job, it’s ‘be careful what you wish for’,” Bodden says. SARTechs are very aware their training and drive to use those skills sometimes means very dangerous and tragic situations for people on their other end of a mission call.