Mantracking with Fernando Moreira is a privilege in the search and rescue world. He's worked with Military, Police, SWAT and various other agencies. He trains teams all over the US and belongs to 19 SAR teams. He is an asset to any team he is called out to work with and has saved the lives of many.
The morning of the search, Fernando arrives early Friday to get set up for the day of training. He sends me a message, "Good morning. I found the campsite, but the forestry service is doing lots of work inside and the camp is very bad. Trucks are carting out downed trees and there are bulldozers coming in and out." I am awaiting instructions for a new location.
WHAT?
UGH. I am at work and really unable to find an alternate location while 1.5 hours away. I frantically make a few phone calls and try to figure out where else to put 12 people and 3 days of training. I finally come to the conclusion that this is SAR. We are adaptable. We have to be prepared for anything, so we will just disperse camp somewhere nearby and wing it. Fernando is fine with that plan and we just go from there. I should arrive around 4, after instruction is set to begin at 2 and will figure it out when I get there.
I had my car full of car camping gear. Now I have to also gear up for dispersed camping. So, a quick trip home from work and I throw in all of my backpacking gear as well. I'm pretty much set for just about anything that could possibly happen and can probably house and feed about 8 people. This is what happens when I have to pack in a hurry... I can't even see out the back of my car. But I'm on my way!!!
I call Crystal Basin Information Station on the way and get a few other nearby fire roads that may work. When I get close to Tells Creek Horse Camp, I go down a couple of them and find that we can make those work if need be.
I arrive around 4:15 and find that the Forest Service has completed their work for the day and the camp is all quiet and cleaned up. YIPPEE!!!
We spend a few minutes of introductions from the team and learning a little about Fernando's vast experience and extensive background in Search and Rescue and his lifelong dedication to mantracking. It's very impressive to say the least. He's dedicated his life to mantracking so that others may live. (link to his website and Facebook)
One of the first things Fernando had us do was fill out a tracking card. On this card we will take measurements of the tracks and also draw the print. We all quickly discovered that this is way harder than you would think it is. My first drawing of my own tracks. Yikes. Let's hope these are never needed in order to try to locate me....
We also take 5 measurements as you can see on the left of the card.
As a rule, we also learned that a 12" long footprint typically translates to a 6' tall person. Cool.
As we begin learning about tracks. He starts showing up how different tracks look with weight disbursement. An injured person walks different, pregnant woman, man carrying injured friend, etc.
Justyn was asked to take a ride on Fernando's back.
He also showed us how people tend to get lost in the dark and will veer completely off course when blindfolded. The dominant hand dictates which way you will go. A lefty like Justyn will tend to go towards the right and so on.
Tracks on gravel? Wow, these are hard to see. But we are learning how to find them. Steve is on the move and we need to track him. We follow his tracks down the gravel road. Where will they lead?
His tracks lead us to the trail. We find that lighting them up with the flashlight makes them pop out.
We continued to follow his tracks down the trail. He went off trail and down towards the river. We were able to follow his tracks and find him! Woohoo! End of training for day 1.
Fernando has an extensive list of campfire stories...
He's been on so many searches, worked on so many criminal cases, that he can talk for hours and hours about them. They are all very interesting. We spent some time telling stories, laughing, asking questions and so on. Campfire talk is a great way to end the first day of training.
Steve wasn't being successful with the fire situation, so Fernando pitched in to lend a hand.
Hanging around camp with Milena during a break.
Before we even leave camp, Fernando already starts talking about tracks. Passionate is an understatement. We start learning about how tracks look in soft dirt.
The bulldozers from the Forest Service did us a great service too by creating large areas of super soft dirt. Fernando raked these areas and walked down them using different strides, weight and gate. It was a great way to learn about stride and straddle.
We also learn more about the depth of tracks. He scrapes away part of the tracks with a piece of plexi-glass.
There are hidden footprints under these cones. Some have nothing underneath. We have to look at a toe print and determine a direction of travel. If you're right, you'll find the next print. If you're wrong and you lift the cone, it's blank. This was an awesome exercise. Amazing how much you can tell just from a toe dig.
Learning about rock displacement and debris. You can see here that the rock was moved and debris heads from the toe area in a certain direction, creating the direction of travel. Common Sense? :)
Shining a light down low on a track makes the texture of the print pop out in the shadow.
Tracing a print can be done by laying the plexi-glass on top and using a permanent marker trace it.
Using Kabob (aka Kababa) sticks with red tape to mark the heel of each print. Then setting up a trekking pole as a tracking stick with rubber bands to mark stride length.
We started tracking and ended up trying to find our subject in this type of terrain. WILD.
How does it look when someone is crawling with or without a rifle. Best way to show us is to get down and dirty. We ended Saturday with some tracking through the woods and trails to find Steve a couple of times. We also spent some time looking at the differences in the tracks from daytime to night. It's definitely easier to see tracks in the shadows and at night than during the sunny part of the day.
We had beautiful weather the entire weekend. This is my view from camp Sunday morning.
Happy Fernando after finally getting some coffee!
Justyn and Kristen tracking Steve through the woods. Can you see the tracks?
Fernando is demonstrating how to find a print under pine needles by picking them up carefully.
By the end of the day on Sunday, this is a perfect print. Not sure I would have seen it a few days ago.
We came across these crazy mushrooms too. We all got distracted by them and started walking all over tracks. OOPS! :-) Squirrel!!
We were actually tracking in this terrain. It's the toughest we had done all weekend. We did eventually find poor Steve who was sitting patiently waiting to be rescued. Slow going, but we did it. Learning how to read the clues in a skill that has to be nurtured. But once you start seeing them, they really start popping out.
Yep, the tracks lead over here...
Fernando was demonstrating how to do an initial search around a house to determine direction of travel for a child or elderly person that may have walked away. The 3 person team can really cover some ground and figure a lot out if they arrive on scene early on.
Throughout the weekend, there were 12 of us that trained with Fernando. However, the 4 of us (Bill, Kristen, Me and Justyn) completed the entire weekend and are now the newest EDSAR certified mantrackers.
I learned so much over the weekend. It's always a puzzle to try to figure out where people go when they wander off and I love puzzles. I am super interested in taking this to the next level. Will be looking into more advanced training with Fernando in the future. What a great weekend.
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