Your version of a bad day
- Forty-five and raining. Nobody falls and nobody yells — the hiker at the shelter just goes quiet, fumbles her stove, and stops shivering. That last part is worse, not better, and it looks like a nap.
- The desert section bites. A rattlesnake tags a calf on the morning road-walk. Everything the movies taught makes it worse; the real protocol is a marked swelling line, an immobilized leg, and an evacuation that starts now.
- The solo stretch. An ankle rolls fourteen miles from pavement and the next hiker through is tomorrow. What saves you was decided back in town: who knows your plan, and when they’d start wondering.
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Cold Injuries — wet-cold on a 50-degree day drops more hikers than blizzards do
- Bites & Stings — you walk past more snakes than you see — until you don’t
- Medical Emergencies — five months is long enough for anybody’s body to file a complaint
- Evacuation — solo math — who knows where you are, and how help finds a trail name
- Kits & Preparation — a kit that survives your own shakedown and restocks at gas stations
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Sharpie on the Leg — the rattlesnake, minus the movie medicine
- The Burrito — turning a wet, cold hiker back around
- Two Go, One Stays — getting word out when the phone is a brick
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. Nobody checks cards at a trailhead register, and this course doesn’t issue one — just a record of completion. If you want hands-on practice before a long walk, a weekend WFA class from NOLS or SOLO is money well spent; this gets you to that weekend ready to practice instead of memorize, and keeps the doctrine warm around mile 1,200. 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.