It's been years since we revised the Member Guide and it needs some updating. This important job requires a committee of active members interested in meeting over a few months, hashing out necessary changes and presenting the new guide to the team for a vote. I have volunteered myself to serve on it but we need 3-4 more dedicated souls, and especially a very dedicated Chairperson. If you don't want to do this stay tuned for your participation on a Training Standards Committee coming in a few months.

We also still need a Public Relations Committee Chair (and some committee members for that matter). The P.R. Committee handles community involvement, membership recruitment, and team promotion. I was chair for two years and really enjoyed a different aspect of Cibola in the Fireside Chats, UNM Days and especially talking to the kids about the outdoors. This committee is also very important to us, especially in the need to increase membership (see Steve's comments in this months Who's Who).

Finally, it's been a good start of the year of us. We've had some interesting missions, great trainings and I for one got in 2 evals already! I hope all of you feel the same. Let's all keep participating and helping out.

Boots and Blisters

by Aaron Hall, Training Officer

January was a great month for evaluations. Seven people passed their litter evaluation and 13 people passed their land navigation eval, and we trained one new evaluator, outstanding! Let's try to keep up this high level of participation at evaluations. February's evaluation will be land navigation on Sat. the 23rd (9:00 am, bear canyon trailhead). I want to see 14 people there! Please leave a message on the hotline if you plan to attend. Our annual winter bivy and winter skills training were last weekend. Reports are that the snow was deep, the snow shelters were warm, and the mission was a nice diversion. If you missed the winter bivy, or if you just didn't get enough of the snow, The New Mexico Emergency Services Council is sponsoring a winter skills training at Philmont Scout Ranch on Feb. 22, 23, & 24. There is a nominal fee to attend, and you must provide your own gear, but the training should be excellent. Contact me (Aaron Hall) for more information.

Our next training will be on Sunday, March 10th. The subject will be GPS skills. Plan to come even if you don't own a GPS, we will have some extras on hand so that everyone has a chance to use one. This training will teach you how to effectively use your GPS in a variety of SAR situations. We haven't had a hike of the month in a while. Would anyone like to lead a hike of the month? How about an evening snowshoe outing? If you would like to organize a hike of the month, let me know the date, time, and location, and I'll put the info on the hotline for you.

A PACE exam is being scheduled for March 23rd in Tijeras. For those of you who haven't taken the PACE exam, this would be a great time to do it. Your next chance won't be until Escape in May. If you would like to attend, please let me know and monitor the hotline for more information.

Monthly Plea for Help: I need all the help I can get with trainings and evaluations. If you would like to conduct a traing or an evaluation please let me know, I'll help you get all set up. Also if you would like to conduct a pre-meeting training let me know, there are plenty of open slots.

Who's Who and New

by Steven Buckley, Membership Officer

I would like to start out by congratulating two newest full members. Stephen Hochmann and Lili Ziesmann attended the litter evaluation and finished their training. Congratulations! Several prospective members are nearly finished with their training as well. I am looking forward to congratulating you guys too! For new prospective members, Mike Dugger will be supporting a PACE examination on 23 Mar 02 in Tijeras. Please see him for details.

I have been reflecting on the litter evacuation this team supported on 20 Jan 02. I have many observations on that mission but I will just focus on one in this article. Something like 43 rescuers responded to that mission. A mission like that---long haul in, extremely difficult terrain, mixed team (by necessity), mixed low and high angle operations, a gravely injured subject, and nasty weather---takes 40-50 people to do it right. Folks, Cibola could not field enough souls to do that mission right. AMRC probably couldn't either. It took both teams to make it happen. Now here's the punch line. In all of Albuquerque (over 500,000 people) we can just field enough folks to do that job! That works out to about one rescuer in 10,000 citizens. We need more peoplepower! If a mission like that happened during a holiday when lots of people were out of town, we would be seriously challenged to do a litter evacuation like that one properly. The same is true for multiple missions taking place on the same day or weekend. I am asking your assistance in recruiting new members. I know that there are plenty of "outdoor" folks out there. I see them frolicking in the foothills all the time. The challenge is to figure out how to attract the people we need to be ready for any challenge. I think we also need to strive to work well, for the good of the subjects, with other SAR teams in the northern New Mexico area. The bottom line is that gravely injured hikers in the Sandias are in great risk of death without dedicated professionals like you folks. We can save one soul on a weekend. How about three or four hurt hikers? Some of you may remember Thanks Giving weekend in 2000. We supported five missions in two days! We need people to support our service role to the Albuquerque community. If you have any ideas on how to attract more members, please call me.

Bronze Boot

by Steven Buckley

The Bronze Boot Award for February 2002 goes to prospective member David Chapek for his contributions to the litter exacuation on 20 Jan 02. David was one of the first Cibola members to show up at the base camp. He leaned in to the haul rope and helped the team drag the litter and gear up Three Gun trail to the crest of the ridge. He assisted in the effort to get the litter down the rocky and icy trail to the badly injured subject. He leaned in to the ropes again for the two high-angle hauls back to the crest of the ridge. He provided a lion's share of the labor getting the subject safely to base camp. Despite one of the most difficult evacuations that I have seen, his attitude was always cheerful and helpful. His behavior and contributions were an excellent example of Cibola at its best!

Web News

by Tom Russo

I have taken the first tentative steps towards completely rewriting all the programs that run the team website. This is long overdue, as the scripts that handle the database functions have grown well beyond what they were originally written to do, and resemble a Rube Goldberg device. It will take me a few months to get it all done, and I will try not to break anything that works even while completely changing the stuff that makes it work. I'll let you all know when I roll out the new version so we can smoke test it.
The team website can be accessed at http://www.cibolasar.org/

Disclaimer and Copyright notice

the Editors

The contents of this newsletter are copyright © 2001 by their respective authors or by Cibola Search and Rescue, Inc., and individual articles represent the opinions of the author. Cibola SAR makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in these articles, and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Articles contained in this newsletter may be reproduced, with attribution given to Cibola SAR and the author, by any member of the Search and Rescue community for use in other team's publications.