Travel Tips

This weird looking contraption is not from the Marqi de Sade, but rather a rescue device called a Larkin. What it does is by putting the lower point on the ground it allows you to use the two upper points, by tilting between its two extreams to pivot a rescuer away from the cliff wall.

The lower point in front (where the two on the right are holding the Larkin) will be put near the cliff face. Then the point on the left will be anchored. The upper point will have the rescuers rope attached and then the lower left hand anchored point will be lifted in a controled manner, swinging the rescuer attached to the other end away from the cliff wall, making the rescue technically easier.

One of the main tools that we use for getting to and for searching our area is the 4 wheel drive vehicle or "Jeep". The mountainous desert area we operate in is very difficult terrain. The initial arrival at points where we may begin our search and rescue operation are usually reached by driving over a series of difficult tracks.

You can get an idea of the obstacles we need to surmount to arrive at our objective from this picture. Many of the trails are cut by deep fissures or a need to go down into a gully and exit the other side. Not every driver reaches the required skills, there are periodic training sessions for this purpose.

This sort of gives you an idea of the sort of terrain we operate in. Dry, mountainous, treeless and for many that means featureless. The area we operate in is bordered by Jerusalem in the north, Beersheva in the West, the Dead Sea on the East and all the way to the Arava Desert in the South. There are two other teams that border on our area and we sometimes work in collaboration when the rescue overlaps into two adjoining areas or is a large operation.

Exercise, exercise, train, train, train. It takes a lot of that to properly prepare people for the reality of rescue. Here you can see me carrying an injured (only an exercise) person on my back after having given first aid and attached him with a harness to my ropes to be pulled up to the top of the cliff 35 meters above me.

This is a rescue that we performed in conjunction with an army unit that specilizes in "air" rescue. We physically did the search and then removed the injured person from the confines of the narrow canyon, bringing him up onto the plateau. From that point we mad contact with a helicopter that we had previously called in to evacuate him to a hospital.