May '24

Musings

May was largely consumed by 10-12 hours daily of studying, classroom education, and field training as we completed the first 3 weeks of our month long Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician training. The fully immersive training was highly enjoyable and beneficial, as we ate, slept, and breathed pathophysiology and medical terminology. Being surrounded by a small community of 25 other dedicated outdoor enthusiasts passionate about learning wilderness and front country pre-hospital medical skills made it easy and enjoyable to go beyond the class basics and to really dig into the content. 

However, before starting class, we still had a lot of road trip to cover. We made a few stops, notably at Mammoth Cave National Park and our old stomping grounds at the Red River Gorge. And we did manage to find a little time between clinical shadowing on the weekends to explore the White Mountains of New Hampshire, including Mt. Washington and some excellent granite rock climbing!

Unfortunately, all the classroom and study time left little time for advocacy and other education efforts. We did sneak in another session of text banking and trash cleanup in the Red, but then spent nearly every spare moment studying for the NREMT exam.

After 6 months on the road, we are starting to seriously consider what awaits us post-sabbatical. We're both thinking about jumping back into mission driven startups, but are considering alternatives as well. In particular, now that we've had so much time to relax and really immerse ourselves in outdoor activities for a year, it may be time to shift away from a "working for the weekend adventure" mentality to a "give back to the community" mindset, particularly now that we have useful pre-hospital medical training. We don't know exactly what that looks like, but it could be applying for volunteer SAR, part time EMS, or getting involved in Colorado Mountain Club or other non-profits working on outdoor education and advocacy.

Trip Report

We kicked off the month rounding out the cave National Parks with a quick stop at Mammoth Cave. While not quite as visually stunning as Wind Cave or Carlsbad Cavern, Mammoth has a unique history, including saltpeter extraction and as a tuberculosis "cure". From there, we headed to the Red River Gorge, one of our all time favorite climbing spots. It did not disappoint, with challenging sandstone climbing, beautiful arch hikes, and the obligatory stop at Miguel's for the best post-climb pizza around. From there, we finished our cross country trip up to New Hampshire with a quick, rainy stop at New River Gorge National Park. 

We then settled in for nearly a month in the White Mountains, which are surprisingly rugged. While they do not have the absolute elevation of the Rockies, they offer impressive prominence and no shortage of challenges. As we were warned by numerous people, New Hampshire prefers their trails to go straight up as opposed to switchbacks, making nearly everything more challenging than we expected. Our first run at the infamous Mt. Washington was an attempted snow climb up the Alpine Gardens. Unfortunately, we could not find a way through the melted out cliff bands due to near zero visibility, so retreated for a successful summit attempt the following weekend. We also got in a fair bit of rock climbing on beautiful granite rocks. The climbing ethics here are "old school", which is to say annoyingly petty and pedantic when it comes to bolting. A subset of the climbing community blatantly ignores safety in the name of tradition and chops bolts, leaving sketchy anchor situations and 30+ foot runouts. While there was still plenty of safe, fun climbing to be had, this type of climbing mentality is toxic and detracts from the climbing experience. Hopefully this mentality fades quickly before fatalities force land managers to intervene (usually by completely cutting off access).

While we obviously found time for some weekend adventures, the vast majority of the month was dedicated to our Wilderness EMT training. The format of our training was fairly unique, as it was effectively a live-in month long intensive training. Our instructors correctly explained from the get-go that the first two weeks (all wilderness components with some baseline medical education) would be a great time, low stress, and . For the WFR students, that was the end of their training, and our instructors warned us that those of us staying for the EMT portion "chose violence" and that we would all mentally breakdown in the second 2 weeks. This is because we would be learning what's typically taught in 2-3 classes a week over 4-5 months would be covered in effectively 2 weeks. That meant that every waking moment was spent studying, reading, reviewing, practicing, and generally immersed in medical terminology, physiology, and pathophysiology.

Although it was an intense 4 weeks, we both find it incredibly enjoyable to be 100% dedicated to learning. Working at start-ups involved a different type of on-the-fly learning than conventional classroom training, so having the time to fully commit and dedicate our mental bandwidth to learning an entirely new skill set was an outstanding opportunity, and we both hope to make time for more formal ongoing education going forward.

The month ended with us concluding our 3rd week of training and frantically preparing for the infamous NREMT exam, but we'll leave that for next months blog.