This past weekend, several Grand Canyon Whitewater guides and staff members, myself included, participated in the Wilderness First Responder (WFR) Re-Certification Program. Each of our guides, must be a certified Wilderness First Responder and keep up to date with their certification by attending these re-certification programs.
There are programs all over the world, but the one this past weekend was in Flagstaff, Arizona. Sponsored by the Flagstaff Field Institute, a partner of Wilderness Medical Institute of NOLS – National Outdoor Leadership School. Participants are taught about medical, trauma and environmental emergencies that could occur in any wilderness setting, as well as first-aid, CPR, and common illnesses.

The WFR and WFR Re-Cert classes are both classroom learning and scenario based. We typically spend half of our time inside learning and half of our time outside role-playing possible emergencies and situations.

Come rain or shine or snow (as was the case with this class – snow AND rain), we scamper around outside with fake blood and injuries in order to practice real-world type situations.

The following photos are from the past weekend’s WFR Re-cert class in Flagstaff.

Me and Kelly, a guide, fake broken femurs waiting on our classmates to ‘rescue’ us! Reminder, this is FAKE BLOOD and we were NOT hurt in real life!

In class learning, we learn about wilderness wound management.