Training does work! (Names withheld on request)

I don't know if you will remember me, I am one of the members of the
group who went out to the Arctic this summer on a mountaineering
trip. We came on your first aid course last spring.

Eight of us headed out to a totally remote part of East Greenland and spent
a month making first ascents. It was a fantastic trip, but on the
penultimate day my climbing partner fell. We were moving together at the
time, and she fell a good 15m before the rope caught her, scraping her shin
quite badly, exposing several inches of bone. Certainly the worst surface
wound I've ever seen. We were about 4 hours along a ridge so there was no
going back, and we were out of sight/hearing of our other team members, who
weren't expecting us back for another 12hours at least. I was able to treat
her firstly for shock, then clean and patch up her leg and pad/immobilise
it as best as possible (using a rucksack back, my fleece, triangular
bandages). Then supervise her in 6 abseils, getting us down off the ridge,
over the Bergschrund, down the snow slope to the relative safety of the
glacier. I then walked back to where we'd left our skis and pulks (narrowly
avoiding falling in several crevasses), ski'd back and pulked
(plastic sledges we tranported our stuff in) my friend back to base camp.

I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for your first aid course. My
first thoughts when I was trying to get to my partner were 'Assess', and aware of
my own ridiculously shaky state I made myself super-careful in climbing
down and around to her, a fall then would have been so easy and fatal. And
in seeing so much blood and gore (the rock all around and my partner were soaked
in it), of course it was horrible and scary, but SO much more manageable
just because of the accident scenario we did with you at the end of the
course. My partner did get the dummy's 'casualty' treatment, but
responded well to it. Again thanks to the course, when I reached her and
found she was conscious and crying and responsive to humour, I was
incredibly thankful for that, and not so bothered by the gore - you tought
us the priorities.

Overall I was able to maintain a cool head whilst carrying out the
necessary first aid and rescue, and your course and the rescue scenario you
put on at the end played a significant part in that. Thank you so much!

My Partner is doing absolutely fine now - we cleaned her up properly when we got
back to base camp and got picked up a day early by ski-plane. The surgeon
in Iceland was able to somehow stretch the skin back across the wound, and
stitch it. She may still need a skin graft, but overall everything ended
well.

As you said at the end of the course, it is awful when these situations
arise and better to never put our first aid skills to the test, but the
situation did arise and I was so much more able to deal with it because of
your course. I wish you many more years of teaching!!