Wilderness Water Safety or Try to swim and freeze to death.

So as I've been up in the Northwoods the last couple of days I've been taking Wilderness Water Safety, which is a backcountry specific water safety/life guarding course. It was an intense two day course, that kicked my butt multiple times and ways.

Our first day was spent at a pool in Superior, Wisconsin working on strokes and saving techniques from 8 am until 5 pm that evening. Although I am still very sore from doing lots of laps and towes and surface dives. The high light of the first day were the pulling people off of the bottom of the pool, doing 5 minutes of continuous surface dives, and making a whirlpool at the very end. After class those of us staying at camp went back and had dinner and spent sometime exploring the area and catching up. After many hours of great conversation and time spent together we went for an early bedtime as we were all beat and the next day would be starting at 9 am.

The next morning I was up for 8 am breakfast of egg strata and baked oatmeal, which is by far the best way of having oatmeal that I have ever experienced. Then at nine when everyone finally arrived we started up with some dry land scenarios and lecture time then headed down to the river to do some sighting and rock finding.

It's not an easy skill to find a rock (in lieu of a body) in a completely murky and muddy river where you can't even see down an inch much less a few feet.

But with much practice and patience we recovered every single rock that was thrown.

Triumph!!

Then their was Lunch.

After lunch it was back out to the river for some more in river practice. This time for canoe over canoe rescues and neck and back injuries.

And after a long two days I'm now settling in to a little quieter time for the next two to three days with some camp shopping and then it's back down to KC for my sisters graduation.