Senior Survival in Action

When you go through Pathfinders, standard first aid training or wilderness survival you might catch yourself yawning in the back of an info session thinking, "Yes, this is fun. But when am I ever going to use this?" Your instructors look at you knowingly and tell you that you will never know when the need will arise so to sit up and pay attention, so you do. You never know when you will need it...

It was Friday afternoon. Michael and I stood at the bottom of Olomana, a three tiered peek in Kailua, with five excited teenagers ready to climb. Michael had set up this outing for one of his classes who had expressed an interest in climbing the peek together. As it so happened, only two members of that particular class were in attendance but the remaining three were every bit as excited to be there. 

We would be climbing the tallest peek on the left.

After checking in with the guard at the gate, and being warned to watch out for wild boar and the fierce winds at the top of the peeks, out motley crew set out for adventure, our spirits high and feet determined. 

The hike up was hot yet steady. Michael hiked at the front and I at the back. We stopped periodically for water, rest and scenery breaks and before long we had made our way up to the top. The view was breathtaking. You could see everything from Waimanalo in the south to Chinaman's hat up north. The ocean in front of us was a vivid cerulean blue and the green of the Ko'olau mountain range at our backs made you feel as if you had stepped into the Emerald City in Oz. It was one of those places where you could close your eyes and imagine that you were in the garden of Eden. 

As we began our decent we made note of a few things. One was that it was 4 p.m. and we had told the parents we would be back by 4:30 p.m. Since it had taken us an hour and a half to get up and about 25 minutes to drive to the trailhead, we waved goodbye to our estimated return time, figuring that the parents would rather have their children back in once piece as opposed to not at all. (At least this was my train of thought.) The second thing we noted was that getting down the mountain could be just as challenging as going up. The grade was steep and numerous protruding roots made the trail uneven and somewhat treacherous. We all would need to be careful. 

Our group began its decent shortly after 4 and broke off into slightly scattered groups of twos and three. I took off in the lead with the student I had hiked up with figuring that the others would catch up soon and we would finish at about the same time. As time went on however and we continued to hike, there was no sign of other members of our group. Nearing the end of the trail, we stopped and waited for about 10 minutes but then continued on to the guard station when mosquitoes began their dinner with a vengeance. Again we waited but no one came. After awhile we saw two people coming and I noticed that they were the couple who had been behind our group while we were hiking. As they passed I asked them if they had seen anyone on their way down to which the woman replied, "Oh! Were you apart of the group with the girl that sprained her ankle?" Cold sweat. Deep breath. Action plan. Call Michael. 

"Hello, this is Michael." 

"Hey honey. What's going on?" 

What was going on was this. As my charge and I were racing down the mountain, somewhere a little over halfway up one of our girls had stepped wrong and turned her ankle. When Michael got to her, he assessed the situation and found that it was just a bad sprain, but sprains as we all know can be just as debilitating as breaks when you're on a mountain. Getting out his first aid kit he had gone to work trying to immobilize her ankle, but nothing seemed to be working. "Can you come up and set it for us?" he asked. 

"Sure," I said. "I'll be right up." Hanging up the phone, I looked at my charge. He was tuckered out. The first climb up had been challenge enough for him, say nothing of an encore. But knowing that I couldn't leave him alone with a complete stranger, the man at the guard station, I looked at him sympathetically and said, "I'm sorry man, but we've got to go." 

All I've got to say is that God is good. On our second trip up the mountain we both got a second wind. I was pushing hard, but knew that if I over did it, we would have two injured kids to deal with and not just one. But he just kept on going, one foot after another. Such a brave little soldier. 

As we walked I was racking my brain for ideas on how to set her ankle. At one point in college I had studied to be a physical therapist and one of the classes I took dealt with sports injuries. As I went over what needed to be done in my head I realized that I had none of the materials I needed to do the job properly. What was I going to do?  It was like I had been in a huge natural disaster and had nothing to work with... And that's when it hit me. Senior survival. Looking around I started searching for the materials that I would need. By the time we finally reached Michael I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do. 

Seeing that dusk was approaching, Michael had stopped waiting for us and started carrying the student down the mountain, taking care not to bump her foot along the way. The ankle had started to swell a little and she was in pain but all in all it didn't look too bad when I arrived. Checking the first aid kit to see if there was anything useful therein, (there wasn't), I found the two sturdiest branches I could and then looked around for something that I could use to lash them to her leg. When I saw it I grinned. "Honey, I'm sorry but you're going to lose your shirt." Michael laughed and dutifully peeled of his mud-stained ASWWU Tee. "It's ok. This one was ruined anyway." 

In a few short minutes we had reduced his shirt to strips and used them and the lengths of wood to splint her ankle. That done the boys joined wrists in a basket carry and we took her down to safety. 

Never let it be said that senior survival is a pointless exercise.