This past weekend Crested Butte Mountain Guides successfully ran another completely full WMI of NOLS Wilderness First Responder (WFR) Recertification Course under beautiful sunny skies and warm weather. WMI of NOLS Instructors and CBMG Guides Jayson Simons-Jones (WEMT-Basic) & Billy Rankin (WEMT-Basic), had a typical mix of 29 folks for this course, that came from around CO, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona to enjoy a beautiful late summer weekend in Crested Butte, CO, and brush up on their wilderness medicine skills.

The WFR Certification is the standard medical training to be had in anyone working in the outdoor industry as a professional, be it a guide, outdoor educator, scientist, or gov’t field officer.  The original WFR Training Course is a 9 or 10-day affair covering the entire spectrum of emergency medicine in a wilderness scenario. Students learn to assess a variety of injured patients from major trauma related injuries, to more subtle environmental and medical injuries. They learn how to improvise splinting materials, shelters, and litters based on the limited amount of gear available to them on a wilderness excursion, dealing with various environmental challenges to injured folks from cold, rain, darkness, and altitutde, and how to stabilize seriously injured patients and organize and carry out an evacuation.

This training is intensive but thorough and neccessary and any outdoor career oriented individual worth their weight in professionalism will have this certification at the least.  Every 2-3 years this certifictaion must be re-tested and re-taught so individuals stay fresh and up to speed on the latest in wilderness emergency medicine techniques and skills.

Both Billy & I have been teaching these courses and various others for WMI of NOLS for many years, and always have a ton of fun, as the curriculum is interesting and fun to teach and being in a  room with 29 other outdoor professionals for 3 days is always inspiring and enjoyable. Thanks everyone for a fun course in an incredible setting, and congrats on all 29 folks successfully gaining a recertifictaion for another 3 years on their Wilderness First Responder Training. 

–Jayson (CBMG Owner/Guide & WMI Instructor)

CB Mountain Guides

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 11:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.