Your version of a bad day
- Field dressing, bad angle. The knife slips and a forearm opens up — more blood than seems reasonable. Direct pressure, held without peeking, is the whole game.
- November creek. Your partner goes in at the beaver dam. Ten minutes later he’s shivering like a paint mixer — and the truck is two drainages away.
- “It’s just the coffee.” Your buddy at the tailgate is sweaty, gray, and rubbing his chest. The most dangerous sentence in the woods is “I’m fine.”
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Bleeding & Wounds — pressure, packing, tourniquets — the sharp-object curriculum
- Cold Injuries — immersion, hypothermia, and the wrap
- Medical Emergencies — chest pain, denial, and aspirin
- Provider Safety — one patient must not become two
- Evacuation — getting help to a spot with no address
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Stop Peeking — hold pressure — the timer resets when you look
- The Burrito — cold-water immersion, wrapped right
- It’s Not Indigestion — the tailgate chest pain
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. If an outfitter or employer wants a provider’s card, take their class — this makes it easy. 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.