Montana Tech Mine Rescue

Today marks our final practice before the Montana Tech Mine Rescue Team travels to Sudbury, Ontario to compete in the 2026 North American University Mine Rescue Competition.

This season has been built on more than drills and scenarios — it has been built on the generosity, expertise, and mentorship of industry professionals who stepped up to train our students.

A sincere thank you to the individuals and organizations who invested their time in preparing this team:

Jennmar – Tyler Lovato
The Peak Inc. – Rod Alne
Sibanye-Stillwater – Delroy Boese & NikKayla Simon
Butte-Silver Bow Fire Department – Captain Brant Bristol & Captain Chris Mjelde
Turnstone Industrial – Jeff White & Bryon Cerklefskie
Dräger – Darrel Lewis

From breathing apparatus maintenance and troubleshooting to rope systems, ventilation control, fire behavior, and medical responder training, your real-world expertise has strengthened this team’s preparation in ways that simply cannot be replicated in a classroom.

Our students are more confident, technically prepared, and disciplined because of your leadership. We are proud to represent Montana Tech next week — and proud to represent the industry partners who helped prepare us.

For those interested in supporting the team as we continue building this program, sponsorship information can be found here: https://mtechminerescue.givesmart.com

This weekend the team got together for some introductory rope rescue training with Rod down at The PEAK, Inc. Our team is looking forward to building our own rope rescue kit so we can continue to work on our technical rescue skills!

Since our team was supposed to be in Kellogg,Idaho this week competing at the Central Mine Rescue competition we wanted to share some pictures from last years competition!