Course Details
Course Duration: ~ 2.25 hours
Search and rescue (SAR) operations demand efficiency, endurance, and safety in environments where small margins often determine outcomes. Traditional approaches focus narrowly on gear or skills, but mission success emerges from the integration of multiple domains.
This course equips SAR volunteers and professionals with ultralight systems and field-tested strategies framed through the Wilderness Systems Framework (WSF). WSF organizes wilderness practice into four interdependent pillars – Body, Mind, Environment, and Gear – and emphasizes that readiness arises from their interactions rather than from any pillar in isolation.
By applying WSF principles to ultralight SAR systems, participants will improve performance, reduce fatigue, and enhance mission safety while sustaining endurance in demanding backcountry operations.
Audience: SAR team volunteer and professional members, wilderness responders, and tactical planners.
A volunteer-led nonprofit that unites backcountry search and rescue teams across Colorado to coordinate rescues, provide training, advocate for responders, and promote backcountry safety.
Sponsorship Information: Backpacking Light provides trusted education to highly-engaged user communities of backcountry enthusiasts, industry professionals, land management agency staff, trail advocacy groups, and more. If you are interested in sponsoring this online education and gaining access to these communities to increase your brand awareness or reach please complete our partnership intake form.
Course Curriculum
Module 1
Module 1 – Introduction / Wilderness Systems Framework
Module 2
Module 2- Adopting an Ultralight Mindset for Search and Rescue
Module 3
Module 3 – Ultralight Gear and Strategies for Technical Mountain Rescue
Module 4
Module 4 – Livestream Q&A
(Q&A session from the most recent live-streamed course)
