Most SAR teams have a newsletter. Of course the writeups are carefully sanitized, because they go to agencies, other teams, donors, the media. But they are not widely distributed. If you know a team that was involved in a particular SAR, you should be able to check their website and read about it--but it usually won't be timely. (CLMRG puts "The Talus Pile" out every three months or so.)
As an aside, most of the mountain rescue teams in California (there are about 20) are gathering this weekend for our annual self-inspection. We call it a "recertification," wherein the host team creates a variety of realistic problems that are assigned to the visiting teams. There is a detailed grading process, so the teams are motivated to perform well. It's a big deal; I understand there will be about 300 people involved this time.
We do this every year, with the topics cycling between rock rescue, snow & ice rescue, and search & tracking. This time it's search and tracking.
-----
Being someone who likes to conserve his posts, I'll take this opportunity to go off-topic and mention a climb of Corkscrew Peak three of us made yesterday.
Pictures A member of our team took a fall on Corkscrew around noon two weeks ago. The fall was short, but limestone is sharp and unforgiving. Her thigh was gashed to the bone, with the flesh flayed to the side. Unbelievably for Death Valley, her 911 call got out. Two rangers reached her around 4:30, and the helo about 7:00. She is doing well, after three hours of surgery, with "only" soft tissue injuries.
Our goal yesterday was to navigate to the site and look around--sort of a practice in a small sense, in addition to the climb.
I think I have mentioned that Corkscrew is my favorite desert peak, and I appended at the end of the pictures a description of routes I have taken. In checking how it looked on Flickr, I zoomed to the largest size and discovered I have misdrawn some details. I'll fix it up when I get back.
-----
Fixed now.
