Civil Air Patrol Cadets Embark On Winter Survival Weekend

The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) knows what to do to survive in the woods. For 72 hours cadets trained and prepared themselves in different winter survival scenarios at The Grant Creek Horse Camp.

“We have about 54 cadets and senior members out here practicing what it’s like to do search and rescue operations in Minnesota climate,” said CAP Incident Commander Rob Doar.

The staff does help them out by melting the snow so cadets can have water and building a campfire. After that cadets are on their own with food, clothing and other mission equipment.

“They’re getting an idea of what somebody who is out in the field might try to do in order to affect their survival, but also learning about the conditions and their limitations when they’re conducting operations,” said Doar.

“We have a nice bonfire so if you get cold you go over there other than that we had to build our own shelter,”Joshua Shumaker, cadet. “I say it was a pretty fun experience.”

The grounds branch director conducts grounds operations. The radio person communicates between the teams. William Morgan was inspired to join the Civil Air Patrol because of his passion and is on his first survival trip.

“I got really obsessed with airplanes for awhile in elementary school and I learned from one of my mom’s friends that the Civil Air Patrol was all about planes and stuff like that and they did search and rescue,” said cadet William Morgan.

The Emergency Locator Transmitter is a beacon that sounds off when a plane crashes and hikers or campers use a personal locator. Members worked as a team to find it.

“We’re waiting for our team and then we;re going to go on another mission,” said Timothy Volkov, cadet.

Cadets are divided into six teams to conduct tasks and are led by skilled people to help them advance in their qualifications.