Avalanche Review
"Do hard things. Hard things are rites of passage, hard things ground you, hard things heal you." —Jessica A.
Overview
The Project Avalanche was a 3-day training evolution and assessment of current skills in the “Austere Environment” series of training produced by Lodestone Training and Consulting (course web page found here). This course was run at the Ben Franklin Range, an 1,100 acre plot of land with thick vegetation, significant elevation changes, lots of natural resources, and no cellular reception. This course provided an incredible opportunity to test each category of your austere environment skills in many ways, as follows:
• Wilderness Survival – we had several tasks which demanded that we use several of the skills in the Wilderness Survival course, such as procuring and sanitizing water, starting a discreet fire, and discreet shelter construction.
• Land Navigation – we were provided a topographic map of the area and we were given several checkpoints on the map which we needed to hit inside certain time windows, requiring you to not just know how to find the grid, but also know how to find yourself and plot logical routes using terrain association. Additionally, knowing how to move through heavily-populated areas while not using main access roads is an incredibly important skill for this course.
• Urban Evasion – Yes – this course was in the woods; however, several of the skills taught in the Urban Evasion course were integrated into this skills assessment, such as how to properly link up with partners, how to use challenge / pass phrases, how to establish an overwatch on your link-up location, and how to NOT get found by an oppositional force.
• Small Unit Tactics – I have not taken the LTAC SUT course, but I do have some Small Unit Tactics training stored in the recesses of my mind that I dusted off for this course. On day 2 you linked up and moved with a single partner and then on day 3 you linked up with your whole group (for this event, we had ****). You must continue to operate undetected and with good security and you must be able to work as a team – you must be good at leading and at following.
• Single-man and Team Room-Clearing Tactics – the final phase of Project Avalanche was to take back your family home from a foreign invading force. This force has occupied the Sim Shoot House at BFR. You and your team must establish an LP/OP to determine behavior patterns, create a plan to retake your home, and execute said plan as a team. Room-clearing is important.
• Other Skills – how to use terrain to camouflage and hide yourself, night vision applications if you have it, radio skills (although not required, it comes in handy).
Weather:
The weather during this event a good challenge. The days were in the 70's or 80's and the nights dropped into the low/mid 60's. It rained CONSTANTLY, almost without respite, over the first 2 days; day 2 had absolute torrential downpours.
Review
**** of the ***** attendees have had several LTAC courses under their belt, but there was one student who attended the Avalanche Project and it was literally his first EVER structured “course of instruction” on anything tactical / survival; he came with a pack and a good attitude. The instructors told him to reach out to them on his radio if he needed any guidance, was truly stuck on a skill, truly got lost, or was unable to pull himself out of a bad spot. One student was 73 years old but was in incredible physical condition (he is a former Pittsburgh Steeler who never let himself go). More than one student was overweight, and a couple students were in good condition. The Instructor Cadre did a beautiful job of planning routes, checkpoints, and challenges that would challenge each student where they were with their current skills and condition; this was not geared to the lowest common denominator nor was it all geared toward the toughest dude in the woods; the instructors very clearly put in significant time to customize the routes for each student. This would not have been practical for a large class and I’m very happy it was limited to *****. The Instructor Cadre, AND the Cadre’s families, poured their hearts into making this an incredible course for each student. The cadre and their family established an around-the-clock radio watch at the command post to listen for students who might need a hand, suffer an injury, or otherwise need attention.
I cannot recommend this enough! If you are 73 and in good shape or young, fat, and unskilled, this course is for you. Who should hesitate to take this course? If you are injured or recovering from an injury, you should seriously consider the following: The terrain is very uneven, you are carrying your loaded ruck with you everywhere, managing a rifle, and moving very dynamically with these loads on unstable terrain. One student attended this with an old knee injury that was not quite healed, and he had to stop his portion of the assessment early; however, the instructor Cadre still included him as a part of the course as a part of the Opposition force after he was injured (aka, “captured”), so he STILL got a great experience as he was able to see some things from an opposing perspective.
I will ABSOLUTELY be signing up for the next one with my wife.
After Action
Day one started at 09:00 at the Ben Franklin Range (BFR) Bunk House where we met the Training Cadre and the fellow teammates for the event. After an introduction, we did a bag-dump to ensure that no live ammo or contraband was brought to the training, our rifle bolt carrier groups and cell phones were secured and exchanged for UTM bolt carriers. The instructors wisely provided very little input on each student's load out, following "big boy rules." You don't want a shelter? Ok, you do you. I really respected that as it forces each student to think for themselves and determine if and why they bring certain things out into the field. Overall, I feel good about what I packed but I could have made a few adjustments, noted below.
Following the gear dump and safety check, we all met in the kitchen of the bunk house and discussed the scenario for the evolution, were provided our minimum daily tasks we were required to complete and went over questions and concerns. The scenario essentially consisted of a "Red Dawn" type of event / invasion. Day one we are entirely on our own, surviving and evading a force actively hunting for you; day 2 is a link-up with a single friend, and day 3 is a link-up with a group, at which time we work our way back to our "home" where we realize that our home has been taken over by a hostile force and we must retake it.
Before pushing out into the wild, we weighed our kits. My pack with water plus my chest rig (with 4 empty magazines) came in right at 46 lbs.
Day 1: Drop
When it was my turn to be put into the field, the Cadre drove me out to my drop off location and provided me a note that included my link-up time and grid, to include my challenge / pass phrases. I was dropped off in ********************************and was told to find a location nearby to establish my Day 1 Rest Over Night (RON) location.
The area I was dropped was relatively inhospitable with very little opportunity for concealment, but I did discover ************************** embankment that had a fallen tree across it. I used this flat spot as defilade from the natural and manmade trails below. I used the "rapid ridgeline" shelter system shown by Joshua Enyart, Grey Bearded Green Beret, and strung my ridgeline along the under-side of the fallen tree, set up my poncho as a waterproof shelter, then wove my camo netting between the poncho and the tree, then covered that with local foliage so that anyone looking DOWN the steep incline from above would have a very hard time noting that there was a shelter there at all. You would have had to get within 10 feet of my shelter to even notice there was anything there.
One of our required tasks was to ********************* As I was working my way ************, I was interrupted by an opposition force on foot patrol, so I bunkered down in my shelter / hide-site until I was confident the immediate threat had passed. I eventually procured *********** and enough fuel for a couple fires. My Silky Gomboy handsaw made fast, easy work of gathering the wood, which was important; the longer it takes to gather resources, the more risk I have of getting caught. Using a hatchet would have created a percussive sound that would carry far and give away my location. I gathered enough wood, dry kindling, and fuel sticks for 2 fires and stored it in a plastic Under Armor shopping bag I brought with me as my "fire haversack" as I didn't know if I would be in a location the next day with adequate fire resources. I dug a modified Dakota Fire Pit; the Dakota Fire Pit was more of a trench because the ground at my location was very wet and soft. I ended up using a cotton ball with Vaseline as my tinder because all of the natural tinder around me was soaked from a couple days of steady rain. I built a raft of dry wood on which to get the fire going because the ground was so wet that the moisture from the dirt was extinguishing the flame. This is how fire building on each day turned out.
Once I had my water to a boil, I used it to make my one-and-only full meal during these 3 days; a Mountain House teriyaki chicken 2-serving meal. During the remainder of the event, I had very little time to stop and eat, so I mostly consumed a few Clif bars, protein bars, and Clif "Blocks," a glucose, caffeine, and electrolyte gummy snack. I estimate that I burned roughly 8000 - 9000 calories per day given the routes I had to move, the pack weight, and the reading on my Garmin watch, but I only consumed about 1000 calories per day; my entire body, all of my clothes, and all of my gear smelled strongly of ammonia by the end of day 2. This happens when your body is breaking down your muscles and proteins for fuel instead of fats and carbs, resulting in urea being processed in your kidneys. When you produce urea at a faster rate than can be processed by the kidneys, it comes out in your sweat as an ammonia smell. I got roughly 2 hours of sleep on Day 1.
Day 2: Link-Up
I plotted my link-up location and route on the map on Day 1 and observed that, due to the terrain, I had several choke points where I would likely get caught along the route, so I moved early under the cover of dark. I set up an overwatch on my link-up location 3 hours prior to my link-up time. The link-up location was at the intersection of a highly trafficked waterway and a highly traveled trail, so I wanted to get there with enough time to establish a baseline of the area, to determine general animal behaviors in the area, and to determine oppositional force routines in the area. I was not wearing camouflage clothing (gunmetal grey KUIU Attack Pants, a brownish Eddie Bauer Flannel, and camouflage face paint and was using natural terrain and foliage to conceal my overwatch location. I apparently did a decent job because I was almost trampled by 3 deer that were at the water and were spooked by something behind them and they sprinted straight at me; I had to stand up and yell at them to not be trampled.... the deer subsequently screamed with some form of primal terror at this weird humanoid thing that just appeared out of the earth and missed me by just a couple feet.
My partner arrived with 5 minutes to spare, and we exchanged challenge/pass phrases successfully. I did not know ahead of time who my partner would be.
The info cards we were provided at the beginning of Day 1 that had our linkup location / time, we were also provided 1/2 of a grid coordinate for a cache that we had to retrieve as our next check point. My partner, Jason, and I put our grids together and located our Cache location a LONG distance away and over some horrendous terrain. I loved it :) While moving from our link-up location to our cache location, we were constantly harassed by oppositional forces, but we managed to use good discipline and made it to our cache without getting our cards punched. There was DEFINITELY one time that, if the OpFor had a weapon to shoot at us, I would have been tagged, but I was able to get away without them cornering or ID'ing me, but it was a very close call.
Once at our Cache, we were given a grid with our Rest Over Night (RON) location and deadline time for Night 2... this was on the other side of the map over rough terrain... and I loved it. The rain increased exponentially throughout Day 2. Due to the rain and constant harassment of OpFor, we were late for our RON deadline, but we made the general area at about 19:30 hrs. As we were working our way down a steep incline, my partner suffered a knee injury (a re-injury) and ultimately, we determined it was unsafe for him to continue without suffering significant or possibly irreversible damage. We called in a medevac for him, and he was "taken hostage" by the Cadre and he continued to participate in the event even though he couldn't walk. At this time, I was also picked up and relocated to join another team of two.
I linked up with my new team at approximately 21:00 hrs and set up my shelter area. It was apparent to me that this new team I was with didn't take the event as seriously as Jason and I did, and I immediately missed my first partner. While Jason didn't have a background conducive to this type of event, he took it to heart and took it seriously. This new team I was with was much less interested in "playing the game," so I set up my shelter a good distance from them as an overwatch as they smoked, joked, used red and white light without much care, and had shelters built in the open and unconcealed. I set my shelter up amongst a small grove of trees, stringing my ridgeline about knee-high, covering it with the camo netting and natural foliage, with one of the openings facing toward my two new partners so I could provide some form of security.
Day 3 - Team Link-Up and Take the House
The Cache we recovered on Day 2 had the linkup location and time hack for our Day 3 team linkup. I had previously plotted the route from my original Day 2 RON to the Day 3 linkup, then plotted it again from my new Day 2 RON. I was somewhat familiar with the route we would need to travel, and I knew there were several choke points as indicated by terrain features on the map. I suggested to my new team that we should go off-trail and walk through along the creek bed which handrails the route; my new team was adamantly against going off trail for some reason (again, perhaps some degree of variance of personal investment in the scenario). Being a team player, I was outnumbered 2-1 on the call, so I went their route and held rear security for the patrol to the link-up location, keeping overwatch and security with a healthy dispersion. This paid off because they were intercepted twice while bee-bopping down the trail and made no attempt to evade, so I took cover and took a security overwatch while they willingly walked into known ambushes.
We made it to our link-up location with a few minutes to spare and met with the remainder of the team, now acting as a team of ****. The new members to join us had the time and grid to the shoot house. We moved from our link-up grid to the shoot house without issue. We ultimately set up an overwatch on the home, utilizing the terrain and tree line to establish opposing perspectives on the house such that we could observe as much of the house as possible. From our perspectives, we were able to determine some significant behavior patterns, observe several armed individuals, and a few unarmed individuals. It was not known to us whether the unarmed individuals were hostages or simply unarmed bad guys. The team linked back up, reviewed notes, created a plan, and then radioed into Cadre to go over the plan. Once our plan was approved, we donned our UTM face shields, loaded our rifles with UTM magazines, and conducted a re-take of the structure. Every time I conduct room-clearing with a team or partner, I haven't worked with before, it feels akin to eating a soup sammich. Of the ***** of us, some folks had limited room-clearing training, some had training years and years prior, and some had current training, but we were all able to work together and get the job done.
Following the end of exercise, we all went back to the bunk house and did a thorough after-action report and debrief, each of us going over our thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned. It was eye-opening.
Biggest lessons learned
- Room-Clearing: If you are going to clear rooms and you have a team, you must practice with that team. The more you can practice, the smoother you will be. You can "get it done" if each person has a lot of personal skill and is able to adapt to the environment, but it is not ideal.
- Rain Gear: I brought rain pants and a hard-shell jacket, but they were WAY too hot to move around in. My poncho was in my "shelter kit," and was not easily accessible. In my mind, it was my "shelter," so I didn't even think to put it on as a poncho. That would have been MUCH, MUCH better than just being soaked for 3 days and the open design of the Poncho would have breathed nicely. Lesson Learned.
- Footwear: I typically have an approach of never wearing waterproof footwear unless it is very cold outside, at or below freezing. When it is that cold, you are less likely to get your feet soaked, less likely to fill your boots with sweat, but the consequence of wet feet in the cold is very high. However, when it is hot, I tend to sweat a lot and when it is constantly raining, it's a matter of when, not if, your feet get submerged. I have found that once your feet are wet in waterproof shoes, they stay wet. This event reinforced that for me. For some reason, I went with waterproof shoes and my feet were perpetually wet for 3 days straight. I changed my socks on day 2 and attempted to dry them while I slept, but they would not dry out, so I put semi-wet socks into soaking wet boots on Day 3. Lesson reiterated.
- Team Work: Know when to lead, know when to follow. There were several points where I played both roles in this evolution.
- Pressure Test: You must pressure test your gear and pressure test your skills. The more skills you have, AND have confidence with, the less gear you need. The only way to gain true confidence in yourself is through trial, testing, pressure, failures, and successes. True confidence in self is greater than any piece of individual gear, but gear is important, and the gear must also be pressure tested and shaken out. This event was an awesome evolution to experiment with a couple items I have, to test them, and to vet them. Skills > Gear.
On gear, the following are some items of gear that I brought, things that worked, and some things I'm going to change:
Pack
• KUIU Icon Pro 5200, circa 2015. This pack is old yet reliable. One of the last times I washed my pack, I must not have secured a couple of the attachment points properly and the frame kept slipping from the pack body. This was frustrating but manageable. The pack was large enough, and larger than I needed, but that was ideal because the Cache we picked up was sizeable in volume and many folks had no way of carrying the Cache box. Some ditched the box, some carried it by hand, but I was able to just add it to my pack. I also had room to carry the dry tinder and fuel sticks from Day 1 to Day 2 on top of the rest of the gear that I had. The KUIU packs are bomb-proof and I'm sold on them. I've put hundreds, perhaps more than 1000, miles hiking with this pack in all terrains (Pikes Peak, Mt. Rainier, Yosemite, Grand Canyon x3, Zion, and hundreds of miles here in Western Pennsylvania).
Sleeping and Shelter
• Poncho - I have a cheap, multi-cam poncho I bought on Amazon. It did its job, but I really wish it was a little longer, corner to corner. When I stretched it out in a modified A-frame, using opposing corners to get the most length out of it, it was barely long enough to provide enough cover for me (I am only 5'9", so it would definitely be too short for anyone taller than me). I ordered new one with a little larger dimension.
• Stakes - I brought stakes just in case all the wood was soaked, but I was able to find enough firm sticks to fashion stakes. I did realize that the stakes I have (MSR Groundhogs) still have the reflective strings on them; those are going to be cut off and replaced with bank line or 550 cord.
• Pad - I used my Z-fold Thermarest closed-cell sleeping pad. It worked great but would be insufficient in the winter months. Winter would require an insulated pad.
• Warming layers and emergency blanket - I brought a Kuhl merino wool beanie and my KUIU Kenai jacket. I used both on the second night when the temps dropped into the low 60's and all of my clothing was soaked. I ended up changing my shirt, stripping my socks, adding the warming layers, but then also added my emergency blanket because my legs were soaked and would not dry and the breeze through my shelter kept me cold. The ventilation was important to dry off, but also I COULDN'T close the shelter down as it was too short to provide adequate rain coverage in a plow point configuration.
Concealment
• Camouflage paint - The camouflage paint I ordered online was cheap and it showed its value when I put it on. One of the benefits of camo paint is that it cuts the shine on skin; this paint was MUCH shinier than my skin. But it did stay on relatively well during the rain and sweat.
• Camouflage netting - The camo netting I brought was a 10'x10' square of camo netting with something like a gill net on one side to help it stick to the environment. It DID stick. To everything. I brought this as a hasty concealment option as well to conceal my shelter, but I couldn't do anything hasty with it because it was always tangling on everything - sticks, the speed laces on my boots, I think it even got tangled on a mouse fart once... I ended up cutting the gill net portion off of the camo netting, so now I also have a 10'x10' gill net :)
Water
• I ultimately used my Platypus 4-Liter dirty bag and inline filter to purify water and I ended up using my 32 oz. Nalgene and my 40 oz. single-wall stainless steel Klean Canteen as water storage. My Source bladder is about 5 years old and I recently patched a leak in it a month or so ago. That leak reopened literally as I was packing my kit after our gear dump, so I bailed on it and just went with the 2 hard-side containers. This was sufficient for my needs for this trip. I did have my Sawyer in-line filter as a backup to my Platypus, which was nice. I got a debris clog in the Platypus filter and, due to the dynamic of being actively hunted, didn't take the time to properly disassemble and/or backflush the Platypus, I simply swapped it for the Sawyer and kept filtering. Worked great.
• The 4-Liter dirty bag allowed me to scoop-and-go for water collection in faster water and it allowed me to form the bag to the terrain where all I had was a trickle of water. It worked beautifully. It also allowed me to carry up to an extra 4 liters of water if I knew I wasn't going to be around a water source for a while.
Fire / Wood
• Fire kit - I mostly used locally-sourced fire fuel, except for tinder. All natural tinder was totally soaked so I used Vaseline-soaked cotton balls, a little piece of Gorilla tape, and a lighter to get the fire going. I brought some fat wood along as well. I learned how to harvest fat wood in the Wilderness Survival course, but I didn't want to take the time to expose myself to patrols to look for it when I had some in my kit.
• Digging tool - I have recently become a big fan of the Wilcox All-Pro garden tools. 100% made in the USA stainless steel tools. Used this to dig through shale, roots, and tough ground for my Dakota fire pits and my bathroom cat holes. I have a leather sheath for it that I had to re-oil after this event due to the weather.
• Knife - I just brought a simple Mora Garbarg bushcraft knife. Not huge, maybe a 5" blade, but it did want I needed it to do. Had to reoil the carbon steel blade and reoil the leather sheath after the event.
• Saw - the Silky Gomboy handsaw made fast, easy work of cutting down standing deadwood, processing it into short segments, and dusting my fatwood. It felt like I was cheating.
• Haversack - I brought a plastic Under Armor shopping bag that crumples up into a little ball. I used this to gather my fire fuel and used it to store the extra fire fuel in an outer pocket of my pack. This bag kept the fire fuel dry during the big rains and kept it off of the rest of my gear (I didn't want wood chips, splinters, and debris all over the rest of my gear and I didn't want the wood to snag or damage anything delicate).
Watch
• My Garmin Fenix watch was AWESOME and I used it to confirm my exact grid when I called in the medevac for Jason. I have no problem locating myself on the map, but for something like that, I wanted to be absolutely certain. The only downside to it was the green LEDs on the underside of the watch occasionally shined outward and lit up my location. I now have an exercise sweat band that I'll wear over top of the watch to reduce glint, shine, and protect the face of the watch.
Signaling
• I brought along a bright orange Range Safety Officer vest with reflective strips on it for emergency signaling. This came in handy for the medevac where the Cadre was trying to locate our exact position at night.
Chest Rig
• I've never had a chest rig before this year, and after a lot of reviews, I went with the Velocity Systems Gen IV chest rig, paired with an abdominal pouch (with some creative means of attaching the two). This worked perfectly and will likely now be my new duty set-up for work.
Map / Nav kit
• Map Board: I got a cheap $2 plastic clip board and cut it in half (making it 8" wide, roughly 6" tall), got a 1-gal Ziplock bag, and a nice map protractor and put those in the admin-pouch of the chest rig. Additionally, I had my Suunto MG-2, pace beads, and Staedler map markers. They worked wonderfully.
Clothing
• Pants: KUIU Attack Pants - very comfortable and durable, but does not dry out fast.
• Shirts: KUIU Merino wool 145 1/4 zip hooded shirt, Eddie Bauer polyester adventure flannel. 10/10 would recommend again.
• Socks: Darn Tough merino wool socks. Worked awesome and kept my feet at a comfortable temperature, despite being so soaked with sweat I had to ring them out.
• Underwear: KUIU Merino wool boxers. Phenomenal.
• Beanie: KUHL Merino wool beanie. Wore it at night, worked perfectly. Love it.
Footwear
• As mentioned above, I wore my waterproof Gore-Tex Salomon shoes. I definitely should have worn my La Sportiva Bushido's or something like a Speedcross that drains. I would much rather have a shoe that drains in these temps.
Poncho
• Arceturus (sp?) poncho from Amazon. Nice, but too small. Should have ACTUALLY used it as a poncho instead of just a shelter option.
Rifle
• My tried and true 11.5" BCM rifle. I failed to bring my rifle cleaning kit (it was sitting on my kitchen table when I left...) so literally every part of my rifle that could possibly attract rust, did. I had to disassemble every item from the rifle, to include the handguard, to properly clean it afterward.
Overpacked and underpacked
• Shemag - I brought a Shemag that I never used. If I had to pre-filter water, I may have used this, but I could have just as easily used one of my shirts. Not sure I needed this.
• Socks - I should have brought 1 or 2 more pairs of socks. I underestimated how bad my feet would suffer. I only brought a total of 3 pairs of socks; I actually should have been changing my socks mid-day due to the lack of drainage in my shoes.
• Cleaning Gear - Shouldn't have left it on the table.
• Food - I brought a lot more food than I ate. I brought 2 Mountain Houses for each day as well has a hearty bag of grab-and-go snacks. I was not sure if my partner was going to under pack food, so I wanted to make sure I had enough to share. I ended up eating a bunch of my Clif bars and protein bars, but only ate 1 Mountain House due to my time constraints. I could have packed a lot less, but the Mountain Houses didn't add a ton of weight or take up too much space.
• Blanket - I didn't pack more than a mylar blanket for a blanket, and I ended up needing to use it on the 2nd night because of the wet clothing and temps that dropped. I will pack a woobie next time. It would have made sleeping a bit nicer. I got a total of 4 hours of sleep from Monday morning to Wednesday night. That sleep would have been a little better if I was warm.
—Smash