Your version of a bad day
- The runner who isn’t sleeping. Face-down off the edge of the trail, making a noise like a bear. That snore is an airway, and it’s asking for help now — not after you find signal.
- Noon, exposed ridge. Your partner is weaving and answering questions from some other conversation. Heat stroke gets cooled where it happens, with what you have.
- The bonk that isn’t. Sweaty, confused, and swearing she’s fine — if she can still swallow, sugar now beats diagnosis later.
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Airway & Breathing — positioning saves lives with zero equipment
- Heat Illness — cool first — the walking decision kills
- Medical Emergencies — sugar, chest pain, and the ones with no mechanism
- Patient Assessment — a system that works in a race vest
- Evacuation — when to run for help and what to know before you go
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Snoring Isn’t Sleeping — the airway you can hear
- Cool First — heat stroke, cooled in place
- Sugar First — the closing window
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 a race requires medical volunteers to hold a provider’s card, take their class — this is the fluency underneath it. 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.