Your version of a bad day
- Off the top, between the pads. The gap between two pads finds an ankle from twelve feet. Now it’s a splint, a CSM check, and a talus-field decision about hopping, carrying, or calling.
- Flat on his back, asking what happened. He greased off the lip and landed square across the pad edge. He’s moving everything and wants to sit up — with that mechanism and that back pain, your job is to slow the room down.
- The highball wins. She hits from high and doesn’t bounce up — she’s out cold, and there’s a snore in it. That sound is an airway problem, and it outranks everything else at the boulder.
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Musculoskeletal Injuries — ankles and wrists, straight off the pad
- Spine Injuries — back-first landings earn conservative handling
- Airway & Breathing — the knocked-out landing, and the snore that isn’t sleep
- Patient Assessment — spotters saw the mechanism — turn that into an exam
- Evacuation — boulder fields sit close to the car and are terrible to cross
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Wiggle, Feel, Warm — splint it, then prove the fingers still work
- Snoring Isn’t Sleeping — the highball knockout, minute by minute
- Don’t Sit Him Up — everyone will want to sit him up — don’t
The certification question, honestly. “Wilderness First Aid” isn’t a regulated credential. No government body defines what a WFA card means — it means whatever the company that printed it says it means. What counts in front of a patient is whether you can do the work. This course teaches the work, free, and issues a record of completion — not a certificate, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Crag guides and instructors: the AMGA single pitch track and most employers expect a current WFA or WFR card alongside it, from a recognized provider — this record of completion isn’t that. It’s the free groundwork that makes the paid course stick. If nobody requires you to hold a card, what you need are the skills, not the laminate.
What this is
Fifteen lessons, a 40-question knowledge check, sixteen practice scenarios, a printable field reference card, and a kit checklist. Free, no account, nothing recorded about you, source on GitHub. It teaches decision-making, not hands-on skill — practice the hands-on parts on a real, padded, complaining friend.