woofering

It’s early evening in the Tetons. The sun is setting over a hill to my left. A picturesque creek gurgles in front of me; I’m walking across the uneven rocks of its bed. The sky is azure and cloudless. Flecks of blood dot the pale stones. There is no wind. A woman to my right is on her knees, screaming uncontrollably. The temperature is dropping as the sun sets pleasantly. Blood flows down from her cheek from her eyeless socket.

The 10-day curriculum of the Wilderness First Responder (1) course - an intensive crash course in wilderness medicine - is packed with hands-on scenarios intended to simulate the actual stress and chaos of an emergency in the backcountry. The exercises are creative and, like the one above, use realistic makeup and props. It may sound hokey, but the theatrics work: I graduated from the program on Wednesday but can’t get some of the images out of my head, even if they were just training exercises. One of my other favorites was when, one cloudless morning, the instructors mentioned that it looked like it would rain and we should probably bring appropriate gear. I was puzzled but threw my jacket in my bag. During the exercise - a rescue of an unconscious patient at the bottom of a waterfall - they soaked us with hoses.

The course itself was terrific: the curriculum was practical, focused and thorough, and the instructors were top notch. I'd enthusiastically recommend it to anyone with an interest in leading groups in the backcountry.

The highlight may have been the nighttime rescue scenario. It was nearly dark as we were treating our patient's compound fracture when a bull moose popped out of the bushes 40 feet from us. Despite the very real danger - bull moose are actually the most irrational and dangerous wildlife in the Tetons this time of year - it was thrilling to watch from a distance (our patient was magically healed and we got out of the way) as it ambled through where we had been, lazily eating leaves. I didn't have a camera, but fortunately one of my teammates is a talented artist and captured the moment:
After roughly a month in residence at the Grand Teton Climbers' Ranch, I'm back in Seattle today. I'm flying up to Anchorage, AK tomorrow morning to meet up with my sister, and we'll be driving down through Alaska to Haines, AK and then taking a ferry through the Inside Passage to British Columbia. After a few days of river rafting in BC, it's back to Seattle by the end of August and then off to the Himalayas on Sept 2.

Your man in AK,
Jay

Note:
1 Wilderness First Responder = WFR, or "woofer" to those in the know