Well, I think we've just about beaten the whole SAR turf wars thread tangent to death, LOL... it's pretty clear that SAR varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and it sounds like the team Lori is training with is pretty well established. I'm interested in hearing more as her story develops, especially the introduction of lighter gear to the SAR kit.

As a side note, most SAR teams have, or are adopting, SAR TECH II certification as a minimum requirement for operation-level members. SAR TECH II is a standard curriculum taught by NASAR. Part of their requirement is to carry a kit as they specify in the training (including 2 quarters to use in that payphone that you'll find on top of the mountain or in the middle of the wilderness), so the lightweight mantra may still take a few years to integrate.

Lori: any more training experiences?

MNS