As I've gotten more and more into hiking and backpacking, I often find myself in a leadership position on the trail. It's not really something I try to obtain, but I do have some experience in the backcountry and I've worked in management in one form or another for must of my adult life. It seems I just fall into the role usually and I'm normally okay with that, but in the last few years, I've started thinking that I should get some formal training in the skills that would be most useful in wilderness situations. A couple of years ago, I took NOLS 16-hour Wilderness First Aid course in South Lake Tahoe. It was an excellent experience and it gave me a lot more confidence in dealing with emergency situations. As normally happens to me, once I get a taste of something, I tend to want to dig in even deeper. NOLS next level of training is their 80-hour Wilderness First Responder course. I had been watching their course listings for a while, looking for a course near my home. Finally, one was scheduled for January 2 through January 11 at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, only 45 minutes or so from home. I decided to take advantage of it and the timing worked out perfectly as I had just left one job and preparing to start a new one, which I simply delayed until the course completion date.
The course was taught by NOLS instructors, Vren and Annie, both of whom were very knowledgeable of the subject matter and excellent at keeping the group involved. The first day of the course was mostly lecture and discussion, but as the course progressed it became much more hands on, often doing 2-3 mock rescues a day. While I'm not a big fan of snow, many of the students were ski-enthusiasts and over the time of the course, Incline Village accumulated several feet of snow. (Update: Mt. Rose, which overlooks Incline Village would receive more precipitation this winter than any season on record, the most in North America, in fact). While this made for very realistic rescue scenarios, it did make the logistics of getting to and from class much more difficult. I had originally planned to commute from home each day, and most days I did, but with the blizzard conditions, avalanche-caused road closures, and just general need to take it slow up the winding mountain highway, class consumed my entire day. In fact, a couple of days I had to stay at a nearby hotel because all the roads out of Incline Village were closed. I've honestly never seen so much snow. I would go to class in the morning and come out in the early evening with 2-3 feet of snow on my jeep - not just one or two days, but most of the days of the class.
During the class, we covered all kinds of medical emergency situations, from broken bones, to collapsed lungs, to heart attacks, to snake bites. We performed countless scenarios, mostly out in the snow. The climax of the scenarios was a mock night rescue, which required us to be out in a blizzard for about three hours in the dark with only the shelter we could fashion from the packs on our backs, all the while caring for a mock patient. Finally on the last day, we were required to take a written exam and a practical demonstration of the skills we had learned. I passed both and earned my certification. Overall, it was a great experience, despite all the snow, and while I hope I never have to put the skills to use, I feel even more confident that I will know what to do should the occasion ever arise.
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