Recruitment & Training

Cal-ESAR is actively recruiting new members and training new and existing members throughout the year. Training is an ongoing process, both to maintain our existing skills and to develop new skills. The training cycle generally starts each September and runs through the spring. There is generally one weekend and two evening training sessions each month.

We also have a Summer Camp session in Yosemite each June, providing the entire training course in a compressed form. Anyone interested in joining the unit is encouraged to contact us - info@calesar.org. Please check the links for more information on the program, schedule, and locations.

The training programs are run by the general membership under the direction of the Training Director. The training is divided into five areas with a committee overseeing each area. The committees are:

The Cache Committee

The cache committee is responsible for all of the unit's gear. We make sure that everything is functioning properly and that all the gear is clean, sorted and ready for fast and east deployment. The cache committee is also responsible in making sure that all the gear makes it to and from the training site.

Committee director: Kelly Cash

Technical Operations Committee

Tech Ops. Committee is responsible for four things:

• Navigation Classes: Intro Nav., Adv. Nav., and summer camp navigation classes.
• Technical Classes: Rope Skills, summer camp Rope class, SWR awareness (taught during summer camp).
• Maintaining the unit's tech equipment.
• Developing new navigation and technical rescue classes.

Committee director: Matthew Buynoski

Operations Committee (OPS)

The Operations Committee is responsible for a large amount
of the training schedule, both during the Summer program
and the standard yearly training curriculum. In particular, general outdoor skills (fire, shelter, radio, clothing, camp setup, food prep, etc...) and search-specific skills (team structure, ICS, Types I, II, & III searches) all fall within the domain of the Operations Committee. In addition, the Operations Committee is responsible for the Skills Testing weekend and is likely to be heavily involved in any mock searches organized by the team.

Committee directors: Unstaffed

Medical Committee

The Medical Committee is responsible for coordinating the yearly required medical training, as well as ongoing continued education and refreshers.

One of our tasks is to contact instructors and arrange dates for CPR and First Responder classes. Additionally, we want to line up 'guest speakers' to teach various specialized topics relating to wilderness medicine and rescue. Researching topics which interest us and presenting them to the team is also one of our goals.

Committee director: Heather Dobriski