Try not to over think it... We are required to carry a minimal 24-hour pack and have a 3-day pack/duffel that will be ferried to base camp for us if the base camp is off the road system. The 24 hour pack is what you need to survive for one day if you get caught out way away from base camp. That doesn't happen very often. Usually the search area is confined to a small zone around the last point seen, or possibly the known point of entry or suspected point of exit. Most hasty teams are kept supported by air or by 4-wheeler or snow machine. It would be very unusual for a search team to actually stay in the field, in the same search area, for a full day. Weather might be a factor requiring a team to hunker down, otherwise the goal is to get search teams out of the search area at night if at all possible. Or at least have a base camp or forward staging area set up.

One thing that I carry in my 24-hour pack is a tyvek painter's coverall. I also have an Adventure Medical bivy which is lightweight and folds to almost nothing. My shelter is a BA Seedhouse. Stove depends on the weather. But truth be told, 1 person on our team does the vast majority of the rescues because he flies in on the helo as a "spotter" and they usually come out with the lost person pretty quickly. Few of our searches last longer than one operational period. Only one in recent memory lasted more than 6 hours. You train to be out for long periods of time, but the ICS team will always strive to get you out of the field within a reasonable time frame. Exhausted searchers are not very effective. Also, SAR is safety-first... they aren't going to send teams into the wilderness in dangerous conditions. Many a search has been delayed or halted due to hazardous conditions.

I'm more into the ICS end of things these days, and much less involved overall in the last year or so. I have limited time on my hands now and with almost no missions requiring ground searches there isn't a great deal of incentive to keep going. I envy the search teams in the lower 48 who actually get to go on missions!


Enjoy it!

MNS