Moab

Day 14- Salt Lake City, UT; Moab, UT

Hike: Balanced Rock (0.5 miles)

Finally it was time for our weekend in Moab. We invited Janae to join us since Dr. Ingebretson opened the outing to friends and family. This will complete our practical skills portion of our wilderness medicine course. We met up with Janae and headed out to purchase some groceries and Provo Girl Pilsner (since Janae lives in Provo). We  had lunch at Café Rio (a Tostada and a Burrito) before driving down to Moab which is 4 hours south of Salt Lake City. Still full from lunch we got a dozen donuts near Provo. Of course most of them were Maple donuts (the best!), one apple fritter, and one of them was called a Bear Claw which was about 4 times the size of a normal donut and filled with raspberry.

When we reached Arches National Park we did a quick drive through and hiked the quick half mile loop around Balanced Rock.  

Balanced Rock in Moab

We were supposed to be camping at Goose Island according to Dr. Ingebretson so we drove down to the campsite only to find that there was a problem with the reservation and our site had been moved to some place deep in a canyon called Ledge. As we drove out to the site we realized why it’s called Ledge. You’re basically driving on the edge of a huge cliff in the dark with only the moonlight shining on the path. We drove over 5 miles and stopped. The directions, written by Dr. Ingebretson on a piece of paper and tacked to the Goose island campsite went something like this: drive into town make a right at the McDonalds, drive down path (5 miles?) and hit the dirt path and you are there. Let me tell you that this was in fact not true. We hit the dirt path and kept driving without finding the site. We eventually ran into our fellow classmates who were also lost. We waited for some of them to obtain some more information as we all stood outside our cars and ate the remaining donuts. We followed each other 8 more miles down that road. And we finally arrived at the worst campsite ever. It had no wind barriers, the ground was rock hard so that we couldn’t properly stake our tent and there were no showers. And so we enjoyed an evening of windy sandstorms in the desert as the wind whipped our tent around making it difficult to get any sleep.

Moab

 

Day 15 – Moab, UT

Hike: Negro Bill Canyon (3.5  miles)

Let me tell you about sleeping in desert sandstorms, you don’t. We woke up and headed out of the Canyon to our  9am Practical skills session, which was actualy pretty great. We learned about creating a litter with rope and a sleeping bag and various methods to carry injured companions out of the wilderness. We also learned about using sam splints/backpacks/outdoor gear and clothes to create splints and slings.  We even learned about putting a femur fracture into traction using a tree as an anchor. The instructor shared some pretty sad stories of inappropriate rescue attempts by lay people. One man attempted to get his wife out of a canyon that she had slipped into in Denali. She had bilateral femur fractures but she was otherwise okay. He attempted to lift her out of the Canyon himself. So they roped her up and he pulled her out, but on the way up she slammed against a rock and died. There are many more stories like this one and most of them end poorly.

Then we had our first outdoor climbing experience at Wall street in Moab. We did a couple of 5.8 grade climbs, a 5.9, and climbed a crack. The 5.10 was pretty difficult actually.

 

 

 

 

From there we headed out to Negro Bill Canyon for a hike and skills session led by Dr. Ingebretson. The scenario was that 2 hikers had falled – one off a cliff and another out of a tree. We had to decide on their condition, if they needed to be evacuated, if so then whether to evacuate by helicopter or hiking. We then began our hike in the canyon to the arch when a couple of hikers came toward us limping out of the canyon. One of them had a gash on his eyebrow and blood around his ear, along with a bloody knee. We were confused as to whether this was a surprise scenario. This could be real. So we decided to start our evaluation of the patient and stabilize his cervical spine with a sam splint. Dr. Ingebretson came running up to help and the other students brought us more supplies. We decided we would need to evacuate by helicopter and then Dr. Ingebretson told us it was a surprise scenario. We continued our hike through the beautiful canyon which we decided looked like something from a Neverending Story and as we reached the Arch Jeremy walked through what I had identified as Poison Ivy. We yelled out to him but he didn’t hear us. Janae and I looked at each other. Oh well, maybe it wasn’t poison ivy. In hindsight we should have told him to wash his legs.

Negro Bill Canyon

 

We had a cookout back at a park and headed back to the campsite with some watered down PBR (3% alcohol). Janae had us drop her off at a hotel so that she could shower and sleep in a bed. And we sat by the fire as our fellow classmates played camp games such as pass the ember and chicken fights. We were in for more sandstorms, but we had a better nights sleep.

Day 16- Moab, UT; Salt Lake City, UT

After 3.5 days we needed to shower. So we used Janae’s hotel room. We offered to take two of our classmates back to Salt Lake City so we grabbed Vinay and Vijay and headed out to the rafting trip together. We headed down toward the Colorado river in Moab. Dr. Ingebretson supplied the rafts and we began a windy river run. Mike was leaping in and out of the water, splashing the other rafts with cannon balls and  screaming “I think I just ate Giardia”.  We started chanting Ruffio for some odd reason. And thus we came to the conclusion that we definitely had the best raft. About halfway down the river we realized there weren’t many rapids so about half of us decided to stop off at a winery and wait for the trucks to pick us up. At the winery we consumed a smooth Merlot, some delicious Cajun flavored cheese curds and jalapeno flavored jelly.

We loaded up the rafts and headed out to Moab Brewery for some fairly good brews and dinner. And then it was a long ride back, full of  conversations about movies, 3 truths and lie, And we learned a lot about Vinay and Vijay.