By Tomas Tabisola
If you've never been to Index, a little town on the Skykomish River, you'll have to visit it next time you want or need to take a short road trip, put in for a WW adventure, go fishing for salmon and/or steelhead, spend the night in a haunted hotel, or just have lunch at a rustic cafe on the river run by Bill and Karen Corson.
On Feb 13th we visited Index not for much of the above activities (although we did have lunch at the RH Cafe) but were there to take a First Aid/CPR Class offered by Bill Corson who was assisted by his son Blair and his wife Karen. This was a wonderful venue and we would have enjoyed its outdoor attractions more if not for the inclimate weather.
The class itself went very well with many positive comments from everyone. There were 22 WKC members in the class, including a white water paddler that Bill had invited. I daresay that there are some very good actors in the club. This was evidenced as one of the methods Bill incorporated at the beginning of the class was to have students train each other.The premise is that when one has to learn what he has to teach, the retention rate is much greater.
We were divided into groups with each group covering a set of topics to present to the rest of the class. Many of the groups resorted to skits and some were quite elaborate given the short time they had to prepare. The drawback, as one trainee commented, was it took a lot of time to cover just a few pages in the book we used. This resulted in a "rush" towards the end of the day to make up and cover all the topics necessary for the certification. By that time we had SAMPLE'd and did the DR ABC's until we had DOTS in our eyes -- these acronyms being a few of the helpful mnemonics to assist in remembering first aid steps: For a copy of see http://www.firstaidforfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/FirstAidMnemonics.pdf
A handful of us stayed for an additional half hour of instruction to qualify for the Infant and Child certification. Another handful signed up for Bill's upcoming two-day WFA-Wilderness First Aid class. Since the WFA consists of the basics on the first day, these individuals will attend at a discounted rate and have the option of skipping the first day. We will post this WFA class in the WKC Events Calendar and announce it in our Newsletter.