I'm a WOOFER!

        Ha. I know, Justin made fun of me a lot for saying that. And i'm not actually a "woofer" but I am a "WFR" a.k.a. Wilderness First Responder! It's like an EMT, but one step below, and everything applied to a wilderness context, when you're hours from emergency medical care. It's something I've wanted to do my whole life and I finally got the opportunity to do it! It was a 7 day class and it was held at Snowbird in Sandy.

        Basically, we learned how to identify whether or not the patient has a life threatening (or limb threatening) medical emergency or if they were gonna be ok. Then we have to decide what kind of evacuation is necessary and how to do it. The hardest part though is being thorough and figuring out what's really going on. There's SO many things that can be happening and it's hard to catch every little detail. It's also hard sometimes to distinguish between 2 things that look the same. We were told to always assume the worst because if you think it's less serious than it is, you could have some one die! And that would be terrible. ha. Anyway, it was a super fun class and I'm so glad I got to do it!

        Here are a few photos with a little bit of explanation. :)

This is the whole group. From left to right... Joe, Kendra, Sam, Happe, Brad, David, ME! and Sam. They were all great ppl with great stories. Most are outdoor adventure guides, (lucky!) and some just wanted to learn some cool stuff. (like me :) )

 

This is where we did one of our simulations. We would have a couple ppl from the group pretend to be patients out in the wilderness and our teacher would give them a set of signs and symptoms and we'd have to figure out what was wrong and what to do about it. This onw was WAY far away. If you can see it, the Tram that goes to Hidden Peak at Snowbird and we're half mile away up and down this ridge.

If you can see this pic at all... It's Happe (yes, that's his name. Very fitting for him. ha) and Brad. They were patients for a crazy sim that we did on the top of the mountain. Happe ended up dying and I was in charge. Oops! ha. He had a Traumatic Brain Injury, was suffering from Volume Shock and had been impaled by a branch that went all the way through his back and out his stomach. It was bad. ha.

This is Sam, Sam, Kendra and Brad carrying the stokes litter back from our sim. It was a PAIN carrying all the stuff in and out. Luckily they didn't make us carry our patient in there! We did other times, just not up that gosh darn hill. Ha.

View from afar... ha. This is halfway back from out sim.

This is me getting wrapped up in a hypothermia wrap. It was freezing up there! Ha. I didn't really have hypothermia (duh!) but we were practicing. It really worked! I was toasty. :)

Wrapping up the hypo wrap. They ended carrying me all around the summit. ha. It was fun but felt really weird! ha.

 

At the summit, getting ready to do something really cool I'm sure. ha.

Having a little lecture by the warming hut.

Another lecture, but this time in the Ski Patrol hut. The other teacher we had is on the Snowbird Ski Patrol.

We're trying to figure out how to get this guy untangled from these poles without comprimising his spine. Not as easy as it looks!

So our teacher really liked that I was an Athletic Trainer so she asked me to teach a few tape jobs. We were talking about dislocated patellas (knee caps) so I taught them a tape job to keep it in place once it had popped out. I also taught them finger buddy tapes, and an ankle tape job. It was fun!

This is EMMA!! She's Mark, the ski patrol guy's dog. She's one of 5 of Snowbird's rescue dogs and she's so cute! It was so fun to have her in class. I love Emma! :)

This is the view from the top of Snowbird! How lucky am I that I got to take a class there!!