From Moscow to Salt Lake City: team Evpator to defend its Petzl RopeTrip title

"Evpator" ("Евпатор"), a Russian work-at–height company, is a name everyone at the Petzl RopeTrip knows well. Based in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Evpator’s rope access teams have demonstrated their extraordinary skills challenge after challenge across several events. In 2012, Evpator sent two teams to participate in the Petzl RopeTrip in France. After facing off against each other in the semi-finals, one of the teams took first place. In 2014, two teams once again participated in the Petzl RopeTrip in Sweden, taking second and fourth place! For the 2016 event in the USA, Evpator has put together a new team with members from both the Moscow and Saint Petersburg offices. Before they arrive in Salt Lake City, learn what makes these unique individuals so passionate about their chosen career.

In 2016, Evpator will put together a team with members from the Moscow and Saint Petersburg offices: Vladimir Akimov (Moscow), Tatyana Ahmetchin (Moscow), and Daniil Cheredichenko (Leningrad – Saint Petersburg). Ilya Ahmetchin (Moscow) will attend as a substitute, since the Ahmetchin family is traveling to the USA with their new baby…

For the entire team, working at heights offers several appealing attributes: the romantic side (for the Ahmetchin family;)), personal development and growth through solving technical problems, the chance to stay in great physical condition, flexible hours…

"It's difficult to say which part of the competition we like the most. We really like every aspect. We like the challenges that require precise equipment handling, as well as those that require ingenuity and an original approach to solve the problem. The organizing committee has impressed us time and again with their inventiveness. It really is too bad that there are not more events, but that's understandable. For us, the most difficult task to complete is lowering a heavy mass onto a target with precision. This is really something we need to work on."

"In reality, we don't have the time to specifically train for competitions. We all have families, work, and other projects."

"The work at height that we really enjoy is tree care. We just love trees. This type of work is extremely satisfying, especially being able to do something useful for nature (and in a small way for the entire planet)."

"One of our current projects at Evpator is a studying tree care best practices in other countries. Every time we travel, we observe the technical solutions and methods used by local tree care specialists, as well as how they organize their work. Last year, we had the opportunity to observe Canadian tree care specialists in action. In the future, we would like to study (and try) the tree care techniques used in the United States."

"With regard to caving, we spend a lot of time, energy, and resources with the Russian Union of Caving Rescue Volunteers, and Vladimir Akimov is president. We created a system for cave rescue that we continue to develop and improve. Today, new technologies allow cavers to push further and deeper when exploring caves. For any problem or accident, rescues have become increasingly complicated endeavors. The Russian official search and rescue service is neither trained nor equipped for this type of specialized rescue, so in general cavers rely on the caving community to organize rescues. The largest recent underground rescue operation was saving a cavern-diver in the Ilyuhin cave. Rescuers had to descend 980 meters underground, pass through a sump, continue another 200 meters in a very narrow passageway to a second sump, and then evacuate the victim. Vladimir Akimov was part of the team of rescue cavern-divers. Daniil Cheredichenko supervised the evacuation in one of the sections of the cave. Tatyana and Ilya Ahmetchin coordinated the effort to find skilled rescuers, equipment, and financing (which came from all across the country), and they also participated in the cave rescue itself. Ivan Ilyin (who was on team Alpex for the event in Sweden) also participated in the rescue. In this small community, we all know each other.

"We don't just help cavers. In one instance, we were contacted to help find a young Russian man named Oufa who went missing in India (the Goa region). He had disappeared not far from Dudhsagar Falls and the local authorities did not have the equipment or the necessary means to explore the cliffs. We traveled to the search area and found the young man, who had unfortunately already died. This is one of many examples of why we really appreciate working with Petzl. When we called Petzl's distributor in Russia to see if they knew anyone in India, they immediately helped us to find local contacts. Understanding that we could not bring much gear with us on the plane, they were ready to travel 500km to bring us the equipment we needed (in the end this was not necessary since we found the young man during the first day of the search).
This is a great example of solidarity, devotion, and the humanity of people from different countries ready to help each other out. The entire episode made a huge impact on me."

Vladimir Akimov, Daniil Cheredichenko, Tatiana Ahmetchin