I'm right in the middle of my Colorado visit and
WFR training so I've not had time to do much of anything else -- barely time to squeeze in some exercise out here, even! In a nutshell, a Wilderness First Responder is a like an EMT except for EMTs focus on "urban pre-hospital" care where as the WFR doesn't have a hospital to hand patients off to. In the words of the instructor, a WFR is "the entire chain of treatment from initial evaluation on through." Many of the protocols I'm learning are the same as for an EMT, but there are some key differences (like, there is isn't a hospital 10 minutes away to evacuate a patient to or a giant van to ride in with all sorts of equipment). It's 80 hours of training, so my brain is pretty sore right now.
It's been a good time, despite the work load, and there is an interesting bunch of students in the class. There's a whitewater guide, a forest fire-fighter, some more medical oriented folks, a couple outfitters, etc. Oh yeah, there's also some
no-name guy who has raced every Eco-challenge ever run . . . won the
Badwater ultra marathon a record 4 times . . . done the
7 summits including must recently
Aconcagua -- that one has had a special appeal to me for some reason . . . and the list just goes on and on. Yah, so legendary
Marshall Ulrich and his wife are sitting in front of me during this whole WFR thing. He's a very nice -- and humble guy -- for example, when introducing himself to the class he said something like, "I'm kind of into ultra endurance events..."
Kind of.
If only the instructor would stop talking for a while so I could pick Marshall's brain a bit more...