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As the year comes to a close I decided I will be trying to post a daily picture from around camp.  The theme of today’s picture is “The North Pole,” or, alternatively, “Why is the weather in NH 60 degrees one day and 11 degrees with -5 wind chill the next?”

I ventured through last night’s fresh snow to snag some shots of our waterfront, below:

Freezing cold...literally

As you may be able to see, the water has come up about ten feet since the new dam was completed in August.  You can see better with Flag Rock as a point of reference:

Iceberg, straight ahead!

Flag Rock is an island again!  Seeing the water back to its former levels makes us at camp incredibly happy.  We definitely look forward to a summer of fun on the full lake again, which has been down since 2006.

Check back frequently for more camp pictures.  Want to have one of your pictures featured one day?  Send me shots of camp, campers, or Birch Hilly things with a short caption to summer@campbirchhill.com and I will post it!

Last week I successfully completed the WFR course through SOLO being held in Vermont.  Beyond what I previously wrote, we spent a lot of time figuring out ways to transport immobile patients out of the woods.  The culmination of these lessons was a mock nighttime rescue of multiple injured parties.

On Friday night we received an urgent call that there were reports of a group of men and women who had fallen off of the high ropes course and were in need of rescue.  As a group of 22 rescuers we donned our gear and trudged out into the woods.  Upon encountering the group we split up into teams, attended to each injured person’s life threatening wounds, and then worked on evacuating them to civilization.  It was great to put into use everything we had learned in the past week in the closest thing to a real life situation we had seen thus far.

At first we were dealing with only two patients but our instructors threw us what turned out to be a massive curve ball when a member of our team tripped, fell, and “broke his arm.”  The new patient really played up the part, insisting that it was not part of the exercise and we had to get him to the hospital immediately.  We took the turn of events in stride, however, and within about 40 minutes we had all of the patients back to the comfort of the heated main hall and effectively “rescued.”

This final test was amazingly fun and the course as a whole was totally worthwhile.  It will help me keep groups I am leading in the woods safe and healthy and, if the situation arises, have the ability to deal with more serious wounds, animal bites and stings, and illnesses.  Many thanks to the instructors from SOLO and staff at the Hulbert Outdoor Center.

The wilderness is defined as “a wild and uncultivated region, as of forest or desert, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals.”  Unless you consider our campers and staff wild animals, this would not really fit the description of Camp Birch Hill.  The skills I am learning in this course, however, extend to all locales far and near, and will be invaluable at camp.  The main idea behind all of the techniques we are learning is the stabilization of the patient for transfer to medical professionals.  While I will most likely never encounter 99% of the situations I have learned this week, it has been a fun and enriching experience nonetheless.

The key to staying healthy the back country, at camp, or anywhere really is prevention of ailments.  The most important theme of the week has been the maintenance of hydration in all cases.  Staying hydrated will allow our bodies to fend off many types and varieties of sicknesses so that we will not have to deal with them to begin with.  Beyond hydration, common sense takes care of many other factors.  That being said, there is still the chance of slips and falls, unexpected weather, falling branches, and many other possible hazards we may not see coming.

Some of the highlights of the class have been our occasions to feign illnesses so our classmates can put to practice what we have learned indoors.  Braving subzero temperatures I have had to lay on the snow pretending to be unconscious until my rescuers figured out what to do in that particular instance.  Sometimes it involved hiding fake bruises on my arms, legs, or stomach while other cases required the dousing of fake blood.  Today I laid prostrate on the crusty ice and snow and had to give the impression to my rescuer that I was suffering from heat stroke in the desert.  This could not have been further from the truth in reality, where I was on the verge of hypothermia.

All in all, if I am now confronted with a camper reporting any type of bodily issue I am confident that I will know what to do and how to assess what is going on.  On another note, today we covered how to assist in back country childbirth, something I know for sure I will not encounter at camp this or any summer!

It only took us five months but we finally have updated our online photo album. Check out all of the pictures from summer 2009 on our “photo gallery” page on the website!

Residents of New Hampshire choose to do varying things to deal with the winter weather.  Some embrace it, go skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating, make big cozy fires and work through their queue of books, etc.  Other people take the opposite approach and head due south to escape the cold.  Few people actively seek colder, snowier, and altogether more foreboding conditions.  I usually fit into the first category; I have been an avid snowboarder and cross-country skier since I was little and always celebrate when the first flakes of snow stick to the ground around wherever it is I am living that season.  This winter, however, I have driven three hours north of camp to participate in a challenge which, by itself, is already daunting.  I am pursuing a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certification, something most normal people would not attempt in the best of meteorological conditions, never mind two feet of snow and sub-zero wind chills; the things I do for the betterment of Camp Birch Hill.

The course was meant to start on Saturday morning, but in order to be here on time for class I planned to arrive the night before to move into my bunk and settle in.  Leaving New Durham, NH at about 4:00 PM, a steady blizzard materialized, strengthening as I made my way up Route 28.  I quickly pulled over to the side of the road, tossed on the 4WD on my ageing, but loved, Nissan Xterra, and kept on moving.  Upon arrival at the final location it was 7:30 PM and about 14 degrees Fahrenheit.  I followed signs indicating where WFR students should go, lugging my pack, clothes, and winter gear along, and found a quaint cabin situated partially in the woods, partially in a field.  There was one other guy there already so I threw my stuff on a bunk and we spent the next hour chatting about what to expect from the course.

From what I had heard from previous participants and read on the online description (http://www.soloschools.com/wfr.html) the 80 hour course would instruct me in the art of dealing with injuries and ailments of all sorts while in a wilderness setting.  Stories ranged from being torn from our bunks to help in mock rescues in the middle of the night, getting doused with fake blood to simulate cuts, and having to carry “injured” people multiple miles with improvised carts.  Of course we had no idea what our instructors would throw at us but a common sense of adventure and a love for the outdoors told us that we would be ready for it.  By later that evening the bunk had filled up with more people and we awaited the start of the course in the morning.

I will be posting from here in Fairlee, VT until the end of the WFR course.  Next post will be about the first few days of the course, the good stuff I have learned, and how it is going to make Birch Hill an even better place than it already is!