Montana Vacation - Day 9 - Wilderness Survival & Jeopardy

Alex had another class today, Wilderness First Aid for Kids.  Here he got to learn improvised first aid skills, and even how to transport and injured comrade to safety over flat ground (drag them on a tarp).  Alex came back with a red stripe painted on one arm as he got to play one of the injured kids.  We tried to meet for lunch after my morning lectures, but a storm blew in and disrupted our mountain picnic.  We still caught up at a table in the resort's coffee shop before I had to go back for my wilderness survival workshop.  One of the neat things about this entire conference, was that many of our lectures were taught by people who had written or edited my wilderness medicine textbooks that I bought last year.  Gary Kibbe was among the best teachers here.  I'll get some of his bio wrong if I attempt it, but I do remember that his is a former Navy SEAL instructor.  He taught them how to survive in the wild, now he had to do it for a bunch of doctors and nurses.  He showed us how to collect and find water, how to navigate using the sun's shadows.  We learned how to find food, including a log full of ant larvae that were packed with protein.  They don't taste like much, but the story was good for grossing Becky out.  We built improvised shelters and practiced lighting fires with flint and steel.  We even learned how to make our own twine by weaving together long blades of grass or other long fibers.  Easily my favorite course and one of the main reasons I wanted to come.  I hope I never have to use these skills, but I'll have them for life now.

We topped off the day and the week with a banquet that included a Wilderness Medicine Jeopardy challenge.  We were the giraffes, and Aaron volunteered to be our mascot for part of the evening.

The questions were pulled from topics from the weeks lectures, and a few random trivia facts thrown in.  Our team was victorious, thanks in no small part to me standing on stage and demonstrating how to move quickly from side to side when urinating in certain rainforest streams to avoid a having a parasite travel up my stream to lodge in a very bad place.
After the banquet we got to hear from Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest.  This was the first highlight of his career, but not the last.  He got to climb to the top of the newly named Mount Kennnedy in Canada with Bobby Kennedy to commemorate his brother John. He led a team of American, Russian, and Chinese climbers up to the top of Everest to show that if they could climb up to the top of the world's largest montain together, then their nations could come together to make peace.  It was an inspirational lecture and a great capstone to the week.
Tomorrow we have to pack up and fly back to Ohio, hopefully arriving with our luggage this time.