Pennsylvania hosts state's 1st national mountain rescue conference at Seven Springs
The national Mountain Rescue Association spring conference, in its 61st year, is making its first appearance in Pennsylvania this weekend — only its third venture east of the Mississippi River.
Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County welcomed about 200 guests from across the country and world for the three-day event, which featured helicopter demonstrations, ski-lift rescues, canine search sessions, educational speakers and the Search and Rescue Games, a series of field activities.
The all-volunteer Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group, or AMRG, hosted the event alongside the MRA. The Pittsburgh-based group is the only accredited search and rescue team in Pennsylvania.
“Hosting the conference really allows us to highlight what’s here in Western Pennsylvania,” said Chris Ruch, Allegheny Mountain chief and chair of the conference committee. “(It’s) an opportunity for everybody to come together, share knowledge, learn new techniques and take them back to their teams and help make their teams better and more capable in their area.”
Ruch said the AMRG is one of the MRA’s over 90 accredited member teams in the United States and Canada that go through a training and certification program to be readily responsive for missions.
There is no charge for rescue missions, MRA president Doug McCall said, because the national organization doesn’t want someone to delay calling for help because of the possibility of accrued cost.
Instead, funding for the various nonprofit teams primarily comes from their local communities, McCall said.
Missions can range from offering support to law enforcement, EMS and fire departments when they search for missing people to helping locate Alzheimer’s patients or people with autism who become lost, Ruch said.
“We get between 20 and 30 calls a year… and those calls come in at any time of the day or night, 365 days a year,” Ruch said.
His group’s approximately 40 members respond to missions based on availability, and Ruch said some are specialized for certain missions. For example, the AMRG has search dogs, trained ground searchers, cave rescue teams and support water rescue teams.
“Our primary response area is the 12 counties of southwestern (Pennsylvania),” Ruch said, “but then we will travel up to four hours away for mutual aid with other teams that need us.”
McCall said the Pennsylvania conference was originally scheduled for 2020 until the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“Everyone’s very excited to be in person again,” McCall said. “A lot of our teams are on the West Coast … (and they) will get an opportunity to see the mountainous region of Pennsylvania.”
The conference will follow coronavirus guidelines, but many rescuers attending have been vaccinated, McCall said.
“A lot of MRA teams were involved with helping with the vaccination effort,” McCall said. “MRAs in Los Angeles actually (administered) vaccination doses.”
McCall said he hopes holding the national conference at Seven Springs is an indication of more eastern expansion within the organization.
Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.
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