Chelan Co. Sheriff’s Office Performs High-Angle Rope Training Inside Town Toyota Center

The confines of the Town Toyota Center appeared more like a filming location for the next Mission: Impossible movie than the staging grounds for a hockey game or a musical concert on Tuesday, when several members of the Chelan County Sheriff's Office Search & Rescue Team were conducting high-angle rope training.

Sheriff's Chief Ryan Moody says his agency has been using the arena for such exercises for about the past 10 years.

Get our free mobile app

"We train quarterly and do it inside the Town Toyota Center at least once a year. This time of year we like to stage it in there because, for one, it helps us control the environment and work on the basics. And two, the elements outside right now really aren't conducive to doing the training. So, once a year we try and get it there and work on simulations where we'd be lowering down to reach someone who required rescue on the side of a hill or something like that, and also working their way from the bottom up if a similar situation required it."

Moody says it's about 80 to 90 feet from the floor of Town Toyota Center to its rafters, but conditions in the wild during actual rescues can find the team climbing or descending to much steeper heights.

"Some of the rescues we perform involve us doing these kinds of things to well over a hundred feet, but it always depends on where a patient is at and how we might be able to access them. So, there really is no such as thing as a typical rescue, but even though most of our rescues happen below a hundred feet, some take us higher than that."

About eight or nine members of the Sheriff's Search & Rescue Team participated in this week's training, which Moody said was specific to those who perform missions requiring such efforts.

"This training was specific to our Search-and-Rescue High-Angle Rope Rescue Team. So, within our search-and-rescue program, we have deputies who are specifically trained for doing this kind of rescue."

Moody says Tuesday's exercises were the first this year for the Sheriff's Search & Rescue Team, and their next training will take place sometime in April or May, when it typically moves outside.