April 2019

Sometime in the morning of a bluebird August day, a Seattle woman picked up a pencil and wrote her name on the register at a trailhead off the Mountain Loop Highway. The paper is there to log the hikers on Sunrise Mine Trail #707, a route that winds to the top of Vesper Peak. Her scrawl is the last concrete sign of the 27-year-old day hiker whose disappearance launched one of the biggest search and rescue operations in the state’s history.

TIME IS GROWING SHORT – SIGN UP NOW! If you have not signed up for any of the pre-conference classes, please contact the instructors to check on space to attend. K-9 Pre-Conference Classes K-9 HRD Land and Water – Contact – Roy Pesc rspescador@gmail.com K-9 Trailing – Contact –  Jennifer Hall searchdog-iz@comcast.net K-9 Air Scent – Contact – Chris Terpstra cpt@treefrog.org SAR Management Pre-Conference Classes SAR Management – Contact – Long, Chris (MIL) chris.long@mil.wa.gov) We have a great list of classes we are planning to offer.  Our SAR Management, Medical, K-9, and Volunteer Management and Leadership tracks are excellent with many new classes that we have not offered before.  Take a few minutes to go to WASARCON.org and check out the list of potential classes. This year’s Washington State SAR Conference is fast approaching. It’s being held June 17-23, 2019 at Central Washington University (CWU) and the Kittitas Valley Events Center (KVEC) in Ellensburg. The conference web site is http://www.wasarcon.org/. There is an excellent line up of both pre-conference courses and conference classes focused on SAR incident management, search planning, and SAR leadership. See the conference web site for full descriptions, more class offerings, and registration.