What about day 4? I’m glad you would ask.
Today started of student presentations. Each of us is required to give a presentation on a certain topic related to wilderness medicine. Today we had about 10 individuals give their presentations. All were quite refreshing without power points. I’m trying to figure out how to give mine without any slides.
I have one illustration I’d really like to show for my topic. It is a poster showing the spectrum of light – from infrared to ultraviolet and everything between. It really gives a good idea of how the bandwidth is partitioned and where our electronics are functioning. The other problem I have is I don’t have my visual aids (i.e. Radio and license.)
After the morning round of presentations, we were given about 2 hours off to explore the camp and prepare ourselves for the coming scenarios. All our instruction is done whatever the weather, just like any rescue. No, it isn’t fun in the rain, ice, snow or water but it must be done. A person’s life is at stake and a rescue doesn’t wait on good weather.
After taking my GPS, marking several trail heads and tracking the trails I hiked, we had lunch. Once I download the trails I might upload them into my computer. However, I can say is we hiked from about ~1100 ft to ~1700 ft on our max ascent, covered 3.13 miles and circled ~0.25 acres. It had great vistas and also had cell reception on the ridge-tops. Once back, we ate lunch, had a long PowerPoint lecture and then had a great afternoon.
The afternoon consisted of a ropes course with a challenge and a giant swing. The challenge was crossing a suspended ~24 ft wire ~30 ft in the air. A parallel wire was suspended above crossing wire with ropes dangling from it at increasing intervals (each was further apart). The objective was simple, ascend the tree, cross the wire and descend the opposing tree to the “v-swing.” Once at the v-swing we were sent swinging.
After all this we ate a filling supper of Spaghetti and completed the night with 5 more student presentations. All in all a great day I’m sure to be followed by many others.
Hat-tip to John, Gabriel and David for the pictures.