You work at a summer camp? What do you do in the winter?

We often get this question and the answer is that we are carefully finding the 140 awesome folks that make up our outstanding staff. We are also busy planning the upcoming summer at Falling Creek to make sure it is the best experience for each of the campers, parents, and staff. For the 10 days just before Christmas, I enrolled in a Wilderness First Responder update course managed by SOLO and hosted at the Nantahala Outdoor Center.

During the 10 day course I learned some new skills, refreshed some old ones, and put it all into practice into several mock rescue scenarios. During the scenarios the instructors used actors, stage make-up and natural debris to create life like injuries for the class to treat. During my course, the instructors opted to do a rescue which started at roughly sunset and lasted several hours before all of the victims had been successfully evacuated and transferred to the local EMS. In that rescue I served in several different roles including SAR, patient transport, building and applying traction-in-line splits, and the treatment of several environmental injuries. As I start to plan an amazing summer of adventure trips, I will use the skills I learned to make sure each trip is designed to meet the following ideals….. FUN-LEARNING-SAFETY. I also insure the staff have the skills they need to run a trip in which boys of all skill levels and ages are challenged both mentally and physically!

Ben Williams
Outdoor Adventure Director