That Night in The Woods with COPA

By George Farringron

Originally published in the March/April 2024 issue of COPA Flight Magazine

Last year, I had the pleasure of joining COPA Flight 130 – Innisfail Flying Club and COPA Flight 146 - Sundre’s, ‘That Night in the Woods’ survival training event. This annual interactive exercise is designed to demonstrate what it would be like to rely on your survival kit overnight in a remote area. The briefing was held at Sundre (CFN7) and the camp itself at Red Deer Forestry (CFR7).

It is a fear and reality that pilots should plan for – and so gaining experience in a safe, scenario-based environment for surviving a crash and working to be found by search and rescue as fast as possible became an invaluable lesson.

While I will break down some of my experiences, COPA encourages our COPA Flights to consider organizing their own similar events to create memorable, yet productive activities for its members.

What you can expect from an event like ‘That Night in the Woods’:

• Briefings from seasoned emergency response experts like Jim Thoreson, a CASARA volunteer.
• Discussion on the importance of carrying proper equipment, dressing appropriately for the environment, studying weather conditions for both in-flight and potential on ground experiences, and other key insights for being searchable among SAR professionals.
• Being hosted at a suitable training location, which in our case was at the Red Deer Forestry Airstrip. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, the airstrip provided the perfect location for such an event, with a suitably long well-kept runway, cabins, a camping area, and an outhouse! The airstrip also has proper road access, so the attendants and organizers were split between road vehicles and aircraft to make their way to the airstrip.
• Guidance on fire-starting, constructing “feather sticks”, making signal fires to aid in being spotted and even a demonstration in the use of flares.
• After a proper safety briefing, teams of pilots being created and sent off to find a suitable area to camp. Where the camps were located was crucial, and was discussed in depth in the initial briefing, taking into consideration wind direction, waterlogged ground, and other key factors in selecting a camp area.

One of the main points that the event and its organisers aimed to highlight was the importance of what is carried in the aircraft. The event hoped to provide awareness of what should and shouldn’t be carried, and the survival portion of the event aimed to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of what the attendee did (and didn’t) carry on their aircraft. For this reason, all attending the event were to attempt to “survive” a night with what they currently had in their aircraft’s survival kit.

​For some this was taken seriously, using the basic survival kit that would be found in their aircraft. Others had attended the event previously and had ‘enhanced’ their survival kit with basic camping equipment and even a Cornish game hen to simulate a Canadian goose that had been miraculously caught during the evening!

 

Another rule for camp for this event was to cause minimal disruption to the local habitat, with firewood pre-cut and provided and a limited supply of spruce boughs to use for constructing shelters. The teams were checked up on multiple times during the night to ensure that they were all warm and safe.

 

After a long night for some, the camps were inspected, and the teams debriefed on how the night went and what was learned from the experience. Camps were broken down to leave a minimal trace and a hearty breakfast was served before the teams departed.

‘That Night in The Woods’ is an event run each spring, with a limited attendance, and is an excellent learning experience for any pilot, to provide them with key knowledge and skills for a survival situation, and to be better prepared for one. This year’s ‘That Night in the Woods’ aviation training exercise was held on April 6 and 7, 2024.

Thank you to Rob Jaap, Glen Bradley, Dave McLean, Jim Thoreson, and the many other COPA Flight 130 organizersvolunteers for building such an invaluable resource for pilots in the area!