On four wheels: RCMP course helps cadets learn rough driving

In one day, how many people can say they drove over a log road, through a foot of water, across a handful of creek beds, and then with the vehicle hung up at a 45-degree angle?

Well, any of the cadets who went through RCMP Depot since last year can make that claim.

Those are just a few of the things spread across the relatively new 4×4 track behind the RCMP’s training academy at the western edge of Regina.

The track is quite a sight, and can even be spotted from planes flying over the city — hills rising high into the air, a pit filled with water, another filled with gravel and a dirt road winding through it all.

An RCMP training truck sits on the 4×4 track at the Depot training academy on June 27, 2019. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

It’s basically an obstacle course for trucks and is used to help get cadets used to driving roughly in the different kinds of terrain they could encounter in postings across the country.

“It’s an area that we felt it was important to address because you never really know, depending on where you’re working, what situation you’re going to have to respond to whether it’s a situation where it’s a logging road, or a situation where they have to drive to, it’s not on a regular road surface, search-and-rescue type event or such a thing as that,” explained RCMP Staff Sgt. Dwayne Bauer.

Bauer said more and more detachments are getting four-wheel-drive trucks, and this allows cadets to get some experience using them.

As part of their driver training, cadets will head onto the track, watching and learning while a facilitator takes them through and explains the proper way to go at it, then the cadets will be able to tackle it themselves.

Cpl. Shaun Leach is one of the facilitators. He’s been at Depot for three years, and before that he was posted in B.C.

Leach said when they get cadets on the track for the first time, they see all kinds of reactions, including people who spent most of their lives using public transit in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

“This is quite intimidating (for them) actually, because they’ve never sat in a vehicle this big, they’ve never maybe even been in a pickup truck, and then you put them on a gravel road and there’s different dynamics, and it’s quite an exposure for them,” said Leach.

Much of the instruction Leach gives as he drives around the track is focused around protecting the vehicle from as much harm as possible, things like taking obstacles at an angle, looking ahead to avoid large rocks, and getting used to deep gravel and snow.

“When you’re working in a rural area you could be miles and miles away from any help, so I think it is an important aspect of the training to look after your equipment and be able to make it back,” explained Leach.

It’s not uncommon for cadets to have a bit of trouble on the track, as shown by the scrapes on some of the obstacles and dents and scrapes across some of the trucks as well.

A signed scrape across the side of one of the RCMP’s training vehicles at the 4×4 training track in Regina on June 27, 2019. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

“That’s the cost of doing business unfortunately,” said Leach.

The RCMP developed the track with the help of some of its policing partners in the U.S., but it was adapted for Canadian weather.

Before the track was built, cadets were taken out into rural Saskatchewan to practise near Lumsden and Craven. Cadets still go out into the area around Regina, but now it’s for less time.