ENTERPRISE — Search and Rescue team members from Wallowa, Union, Baker and Umatilla counties honed their skills in the Salt Creek Summit area of Wallowa County.

About 60 SAR volunteers and instructors from the four counties participated June 24-27 in the multi-day training, which was hosted by Wallowa County Search and Rescue volunteers.

“Our numbers were down a little from what we expected, but it’s a little late in the season,” Paige Sully, the event coordinator for Wallowa County SAR, said. “But all in all I think it was great.”

Training included swiftwater rescue, tactical fast tracking, advanced incident command, hasty-team and K-9 land searches, rescuing injured hikers from remote locations and coordination with Civil Air Patrol aircraft.

“It was a very good training,” said Jim Akenson, who serves as a WCSAR incident commander and participated in the incident command training. “It was fundamental and advanced all rolled into one. As an incident commander, it’s good to see more and more people coming on who can take leadership roles. Everybody I observed did really well.”

June 26 was devoted to classes, most with hands-on field experience.

Tactical tracking, taught by Clifford Pease and Leon Kershaw, proved one of the more popular classes. Both men track suspects and escaped prisoners for the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies. Their “fast tracking” techniques have allowed them to follow and apprehend escaped convicts more than 40 miles in three days.

“It’s important to pay attention to the small things that people leave along their path, including actual tracks as well as bent twigs, scuffs and other (sign),” Pease said. “It’s often possible to determining a general path and send a team ahead along that line to pick up (tracks) farther ahead and close the time-distance gap. You can find the lost person quicker that way.”

The trackers also worked with Wallowa County’s two tracking K-9 teams — Heather Howard and her dog Gracie, and Edward “Vern” Vernarsky and his dog Trooper.

“I really thought the tracking class was great,” said Holly Akenson, Wallowa County Search and Rescue K-9 team leader. “There were a lot of really good on-the-ground things.”

Swiftwater rescue training, led by a team of instructors from Wallowa County, took place in the pond near Salt Creek Summit. Volunteers fine-tuned skills that included accurately throwing rescue ropes.

Search and rescue hasty, medical and K-9 teams coordinated by incident command and SAR members from multiple counties spread out in a mock search and rescue exercise June 27 in the Salt Creek Summit area. Civil Air Patrol brought in two aircraft — one from Boise and another from Redmond — to aid in searching for several “lost hikers,” some of whom were “injured.” The search and rescue efforts all were successful within the three hours allotted for the exercise.

“Learning to work with and practicing with our neighboring counties for mutual aide just makes us more ready when we have a big search and we all need to work together,” Akenson said. “This way we all know each other, we’ve worked together, and I think that’s really beneficial.”