Tutorial: hand drill basics

The hand drill is a primitive method of creating fire by friction. It has a much simpler construction than the bow drill (See Bow drill tutorial), but technique is much more important and difficult than with bow drill. Be sure to check out the hand drill videos which accompany this guide.

It took me many months of dedicated practice before I got my first hand drill coal. 

Furthermore, you lose the strength and coordination required to use hand drill fairly quickly if you stop practicing. Hand drill is therefore not the most practical survival skill unless you are in the desert, where low humidity makes hand drill an order of magnitude easier.

Yet if you develop and maintain the skill, it can get you fire in a survival situation much faster than any other primitive method.

Hand drill involves just 2 components.

Mullein spindle and pine fire board
The first is a straight, long stalk such as mullein, cattail, goldenrod, or even prickly lettuce. I have had the most success with mullein. The second component is the fire board. This is a flat, roughly 1/2 inch thick piece of wood wider than the stalk and a few inches long.

A circular depression the size of the bottom (thicker end) of the stalk is carved or abraded into the top of the fire board, 1/8th of an inch from the edge. The best way to go about this is to first press an outline of the spindle's diameter into the fire board by gently but firmly pressing and turning the spindle end on the fire board.

Press the outline of the spindle end into the fire board
Next, perforate the outside of the outline all the way around with the tip of your knife.

Perforate the outline with the tip of your knife
Finally, pop out the perforated circle with the tip of your knife.

Pop out the perforated circle
 A v-notch pie wedge about 1/6th of the circle is cut through the fire board from its edge to outside the center of the circle.

The notch does not have to go close to the center
Once the components are crafted, the stalk is positioned thicker-end-down in the circular depression. The foot is placed on the edge of the fire board to steady it, the body assuming a one-knee bow position. The stalk is placed at the heel of the left hand, bracing it with the tips of the fingers of the right hand. The stalk is then spun back and forth with the hands.

This is tough on the palms - build up to it!
Take it easy at first. You need to burn in the hole a bit before you have any hope of getting a coal, and there is no sense in losing all your energy or tearing up your palms during this stage. The center of the plant stalk is pithy. This pith must be compressed up into the stalk before it can contribute to the coal. The center of the hole in the fire board will begin to develop an upward-pointed divot, which is what compresses the stalk's pith.

The hole has been burned in, complete with the pith-compressing divot
Once you have that divot, you are ready to begin hand drilling in earnest, going for the coal now. Make sure your tinder bundle and tipi fire structure are ready to go. Get a piece of birch bark or something similar to place under your fire board to catch the coal.

Now you go to town on the spindle. With enough pressure and speed, hot wood and pith dust will collect in the notch and ignite as a coal. The coal is then placed in a bundle of fluffy dry tinder and blown into flame.

The trick is to maximize downward pressure while spinning the stalk. 


Carefully removing the fire board from the coal
Good sized coal!

No rush. Pour some unburned coal dust on your coal to build it.
Again, no rush. Let the coal build heat in the tinder. Don't blow it out!
Blow as gently as you can...
...and you will be rewarded.

At the beginner level, you just ferociously spin the stalk and your hands travel down it. When you get to the bottom, you reset at the top. A more advanced technique is to supply sufficient downward pressure while floating the hands at the top, without traveling down the stalk. This is accomplished by moving the hands in a vertical arc, so that when your right fingertips are at your left palm heel, your right fingertips are facing downward while your left ones are facing upward.

The most difficult technique is the “prayer” fire. You start at the bottom of the stalk and work your way to the top, all the while supplying sufficient downward pressure to ignite a coal.

While this has no immediate practical relevance, striving for the prayer fire technique will vastly improve your normal "psycho-blast" technique. 

When I first started experimenting with the hand drill, I tried to get a coal nearly every day for six months before finally succeeding. I was unable to get another coal for three months after that. It’s a skill involving technique, strength and endurance. It takes time to develop, and is perishable.

Fasting as a survival skill

I got the idea from reading Ori Hofmekler's The Warrior Diet. I then tweaked and fine-tuned the program after reading Jason Ferruggia's The Renegade Diet*.

In particular, I stopped eating after about 8PM and had nothing but black coffee and water until noon the next day. 

I would break the 16 hour fast at noon with a fairly light lunch with balanced macronutrients (4-6 Zone blocks with no starchy carbs at all). Nothing again until about 6PM (after working out), when I would down a blender full of protein shake followed by a massive dinner in which I obtained about 80% of the day's calories.

I immediately realized and continue to realize many benefits:
  • My mind is sharper than it has ever been during the day, especially before lunch. I got more productive and less grumpy (as long as I get my caffeine fix).
  • I can be much, much more flexible with my diet. I can go out for a big dinner or night out and not worry about it because I'm SUPPOSED to eat a huge meal at night anyway. At the same time, my body weight is much more stable.
  • I've seen strength gains, possibly related to the huge calorie influx immediately post-workout.
  • OK, this one is actually related to survival: I can go a day without eating and not think much of it.
I'll stick to the last point. I used to eat carefully timed and calibrated meals and snacks 6 times a day (following Zone protocols). 

If I missed a meal or snack by a half-hour, I was cranky, panicky, and mentally foggy and useless. Since fasting for 16 hours every single day, I'm not sensitive to blood sugar drops like I used to be. 

I remember going out on mini-survival expeditions back then and just DYING after one night without much food. In particular, my buddy Josh Wood (who wrote a guest post) and I went out to build a debris shelter and set some traps one night. We bought some potatoes and other food, but somehow left them back at the house, so we didn't have much of a dinner. Bear in mind, I'd had breakfast and lunch. But not dinner. And my brain was totally foggy. 

I had to fight a mild panic and lack of motivation until we got back home the next day. That is not an acceptable state of affairs.

My recent shelter expedition (Modified debris shelter: success) was totally different. I ate almost nothing that day, just 3 skinny slices of deli meat and 2 skinny slices of cheese at a meeting for work. And guess what? I was completely fine. 

I was happy to have a few edible plants to nibble on, but I was focused the whole time and into the next morning, when I hiked out. 

No drop in motivation, no crankiness or panic. Without intermittent fasting as a daily practice, I would have a much larger mental battle on my hands in any survival situation. 

If survival is mostly mental, you need all the help you can get, and you don't want to be freaking out about not eating for a night or a day or two.

* These are not advertisements; I do not advertise on this site. I am just giving credit where it is due.

Tutorial: bow drill basics

The bow drill has a complicated construction but is fairly easy to use compared to other primitive fire making techniques. Note: there is a video tutorial to accompany this written guide.

There are four components to the bow drill: the bow, the spindle, the fire board, and the handhold. 

The bow should be a bent or flexible branch about the length of your forearm. A piece of cordage (cheat and use paracord at the beginner level) is strung between the ends with some slack.

The bow: line needs to be slack so it can wrap around the spindle
The spindle is a piece of poplar or basswood (these are the easiest wood types for the beginner) the thickness of your thumb and the length of the distance between your extended thumb and pinky finger. The top is carved to a sharp point – a 30 degree cone – while the bottom is carved to a 120 degree cone.

The fire board is at least 6 inches long, the thickness of your thumb, and wider than your thumb. A depression is carved out of the right top side using the tip of your knife, centered at a point such that the spindle, when put in the depression, is about 1/8th of an inch from the edge.

The depression in the fire board

The notch can be cut in now, as long as you take care to avoid getting it too close to the center of the depression. 

The notch is best cut out by whacking a stick against the knife edge, rather than whittling
The handhold is a piece of hardwood  (or stone or deer bone) that fits comfortably in the hand. On the bottom of it is carved a depression similar to the one for the fire board.

The handhold with depression
To begin the technique, kneel down as with the hand drill. Place the fire board under the arch of the left foot such that the depression is immediately adjacent to the middle of the foot. Place the spindle, bottom (shallow cone) end up, in the left hand. The bow is held at the base by the right hand. Put the spindle on the inside of the string. Flip the spindle over such that the cordage wraps once around it, and the shallow cone is facing down. The cordage should be fairly tight. Taking care not to lose the wrap, place the bottom of the spindle in the fire board depression and the top into the hand hold. The handhold is held in place with the left hand while the bow is operated by the right. The left hand and wrist should be solidly braced against the left shin. The inside of the elbow should be braced against the knee.

Downward pressure is going to come from your body weight leaning into the handhold.

Stringing the spindle
At this point, start moving the bow back and forth, utilizing its full length. As the motion smooths out, apply more pressure with the left hand and spin faster. The kit should start smoking.

Burning in the holes

Once you’ve burned the full diameter of the spindle into the fire board, stop. Grease or soap the burned depression in the handhold, or at least use some pine pitch or a green leaf.

The grease will make the burning in the fire board more efficient, because you won't be wasting energy burning the handhold. 

If you have not yet cut the notch, do it now.

Take care not to drop grease or soap into the fire board
Start the bowing technique again. When you get lots of white billowing smoke, pump out 20 more strokes with as much downward pressure and speed as you can manage. You should have a coal.

Carefully remove the fire board from the coal and let it breathe for a bit
You need to have a carefully prepared tinder bundle ahead of time. This can be any dry, fluffy material. Practice by taking apart small strips of jute string and fluffing the fibers. You can use very dry pine needles and grasses, dry-rotted basswood bark, and many other materials. It can be a mix of materials; I have found that cattail fluff does not catch a flame, but works very well to extend the coal.

Arrange your tinder into a bird's nest shape. You will drop the coal into the middle of the bird's nest.

Once you've done that, it is time blow it into flame.

You may be tempted to blow hard because you are so excited about having a coal - you don't want to lose it! But be very patient and blow as slowly as you can. 

Let it rest and build heat periodically. It can take 5 minutes for the tinder bundle to catch.

Slow and steady wins the race
Flame about 1 minute after putting the coal in the tinder bundle
Put the flaming bundle inside your tipi fire structure

I was able to get my first bow drill coal within a week of learning the technique. My first hand drill coal required about 9 months of dedicated practice. Bow drill requires less coordination and strength than the hand drill. Plus, it makes bigger coals that are easier to blow into flame.

But the real difficulty lies in learning how to make a bow with natural cordage. 

The best way to make natural cordage work is to use something called the Egyptian bow drill technique. I will post a tutorial for that soon.

Survival for Kids

I recently volunteered to teach a handful of inner-city kids ages 9-10 some wilderness survival skills during their summer day camp program. I was given 1-2 hour slots for five days - not a lot of time to get deep into survival topics, but enough to get kids excited about the woods. Here's a recap of that experience.

I was nervous going into the program because, having volunteered at this establishment during the school year, I know the crowd can be tough. I so desperately wanted to impart a bit of the passion I've felt for the woods that I was overthinking it. I was trying to design the perfect program in my head, a foolproof plan to draw the kids in. I eventually realized that I just needed to set up a fun week, without getting caught up in my usual perfectionism.

My ideas of how to teach survival were heavily influenced by negative example from the wilderness survival school (Tracker School) where I once worked. That place could definitely be inspiring, and I owe much of the skills I possess to that school. But the way they teach survival there is personality- and spirituality-based. The founder of the school, Tom Brown, has cult status among many of his students. Brown, in turn, teaches that all his skills came from an Apache named Grandfather, who Brown has blown up into nothing short of a demigod. Brown teaches with fire and brimstone-type affect that society is evil, and its collapse is immanent. He teaches that the only path to happiness lies in emulating Grandfather, that we must strive for his tracking and survival skills. These skills allegedly included the ability to tell from a fox track in dry leaves whether or not the animal's bladder is full, to walk into the woods without so much as a knife and thrive, to spiritually sense people's or predators' bad intentions from miles away, and even to bend fire or move a hanging feather with one's mind. I witnessed a live webcast wherein he "unveiled" a new spiritual skill that would be, and I quote, "the difference between moving a feather....and stopping a truck".

I'll admit I once believed all these things were possible and did in fact strive to emulate Grandfather. I've had to force myself to get a grip on reality, to be able to enjoy a walk in the woods without stressing out that I wasn't seeing every track and sensing every animal within a 30 meter radius.

And so, after silently freaking out for a few weeks about this program, I realized that I should relax and just make the program fun. No need to worry about getting the kids to try to be Grandfather or some crap. No need to go all Tom Brown on anyone. Just. Get. Outside. And. Have. Fun. And teach some of the more important survival lessons along the way.

Day 1: It's All in Your Head

I gathered my group of kids and after introductions, asked them a dozen or so questions about where their food and water comes from, how they take shelter and sleep at night, and related inquiries about how they stay alive in the city. The kids were sharp for 9-10 year old city dwellers. They all knew that chickens have to be raised and killed, and that potatoes must be grown and harvested. When asked what he would do if he didn't have shelter at night, one kid said he knew where there was a homeless shelter and he'd just go there. Another said they would have to sleep in caves. Most of them had had some exposure to fishing and/or camping.

I then asked them to imagine they went camping with their families, in the deep woods of Maine, with no roads or houses for 100 miles. They get separated from the family and get lost. Panicking, they rush around yelling and searching, but to no avail. They wander for hours, getting hungry, thirsty and tired. It's getting dark. What do they do?

When asked what they thought the most important survival tool in that situation might be, answers ranged from guns and bow-and-arrows to knives. They seemed a little skeptical when I pointed to my head and said "You're all wrong. Your most important survival tool is in your skull."

I proceeded to lecture that a positive, confident attitude can be the difference between life and death in any survival situation. Surprisingly, the kids seemed to understand this concept right away. They were tuned in, not goofing off for the most part. They seemed to absorb and appreciate the idea.

The next part of the "brain" lesson was paying attention to detail. I had passed out some materials for later, including new bandanas still in the packaging. On the packaging for each bandana, I wrote the following three phrases with bold black permanent marker: "3 fingers", "29 years", and "41 dollars". After I'd passed them out and had the kids take out their bandanas and throw away the packaging, I told them I was going to ask three trick questions for which I'd already given the answers. First, I asked how many fingers I was holding up behind my back. Second, I asked them if they knew how old I was. Finally, I had them guess how much cash was in my wallet. Two kids had seen and questioned the "3 fingers" inscription, so they got the first answer. None of the kids got the second or third, but a volunteer did. I told them the lesson was that they should try to question and scrutinize their world as much as possible. In a survival situation, this too can be the difference between life and death.

Next up was another lesson visual awareness. I taught the difference between peripheral and tunnel vision: you need tunnel vision to focus on details, but you need peripheral vision to catch movement and keep things in perspective. I tried to demonstrate this with an exercise using colored index cards. The kids paired off and each got four different colors of index cards. The idea was to have the partner write a sentence on a card and have the other try to read it from peripheral vision. Not possible, of course, but they could tell what color it was! As it turns out I sort of botched the exercise because I accidentally had them read it with tunnel vision first. But, I think they got the idea.

Next I wanted to get them thinking about their four senses besides vision. I had the kids pair up. One would wear a blindfold (the bandana) while the other would make sure his partner didn't crash into anything or hurt himself. We then did a blindfolded walk down two city blocks and back. The kids loved it, but in retrospect I would have trained the other volunteers ahead of time to do the leading, and have all the kids blindfolded at once. That's because the non-blindfolded partner did a lot of hand-holding and leading when the point was for the blindfolded kid to find his way more or less independently. To make matters worse, we had a panicky older volunteer who barked orders at the kids to "Hold hands, don't let go of your partner! This is about team work!" Still, the kids were sharp and I think they got the idea. One kid, unsolicited, talked about how he could navigate by listening to the steady sounds of machinery coming from a couple blocks away. Another said he could tell by the feel of the ground that he was still on the sidewalk and going the right way. I could have cried from joy.

The real highlight of the day, of course, was that the kids got to keep their camouflage bandanas.

Day 2: Shelter

The first thing you need to do in any survival situation, after checking your attitude and plugging into your surroundings, is find shelter. Barring a cave or other natural protection, the debris shelter is often the best way to go. It takes the shape of a 1-man tent: You find a sturdy limb as long as you are tall plus arms length and lean it against something around knee height or brace it with Y-shaped branches. Then you "rib" it with sturdy branches, put some smaller lattice of twigs on that, and cover it with massive amounts of leaves, grass, or other insulation. You stuff the inside with the same. Then you build a small square door frame in front of the open end, just big enough to crawl through. Do this by pounding a couple Y-sticks into the ground and putting cross beams into the debris. Finally, you stuff a shirt or tarp full of insulation and after you crawl inside, you plug the door with the shirt.

I filled my truck with such materials so that the kids could build one in the yard of the building where the program operates. We built a decent shelter in about 45 minutes, me sawing limbs for them and they doing nearly all of the construction themselves. Of course, everyone had to get a turn cutting a limb for fun. The kids were weary of all the worms and bugs in the debris, but I think everyone took a shot at lying in the shelter. They ate it up! I don't think I would have changed a thing about Shelter Day.

Day 3: Traps

I have always been fascinated by the idea that you can use nothing more than raw materials from the woods to trap, kill and eat a wild animal. Since I was a boy, I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I wanted to share that fascination with the kids, without causing an epidemic of dead neighborhood cats. So I built a bunch of simple figure-4 deadfall traps just big enough to take out a mouse, with very light deadfalls so we wouldn't have any bruised knuckles.

I had just enough time to show them how to set up the traps, but I don't think anyone really got it. Those things are hard for me  to set up, so it may have been too ambitious for an hour long session. The kids thought the traps were cool, for sure. And they got to keep them, if they so desired. But in retrospect, I probably should have found a way to make it easier - perhaps by using the split-stick deadfall (easier to set up).

I also brought in some deer skin I had tanned myself, and a rabbit fur. The kids were much more fascinated by the skins than by the traps. Noted for next time.

Day 4: Field Trip

The other volunteers and I drove the group out to a hiking trail that follows a mountain ridge not too far away. My idea was to simply teach the kids how to follow the blazes to stay on the same trail, stay within hearing range of us volunteers, and do a head count any time I yelled for one. Beyond that, I just let them run wild. They absolutely GOBBLED UP their freedom, running ahead then back, yelling every time they found an interesting bug, animal or mushroom, and obliging my periodic calls for a head count with overwhelming enthusiasm. I showed them that pine cambium can be chewed for its sugar and vitamin content and that if you lack a knife, you can smash open a piece of quartz to get a blade sharp enough to harvest the bark. They all tried it. While no one really liked it, they all had a good time patting each other on the back for being so bold as to try it. We also chewed grass stems and ate blackberries. I can scarcely think of a hike I've enjoyed so much - their enthusiasm is contagious.

Day 5: Fire

I demonstrated primitive fire making via the bow drill and hand drill. Once I'd lit the first coal and blown it into flame, I had the kids help me build a tipi structure to catch the flames. Once the fire was roaring, anyone who wanted to took turns working on getting a bow drill or hand drill coal with my help. For the bow drill, I would assume the usual position and have them do the same, only opposite me. They would put their foot on the other side of the spindle on the fire board, hold the opposite side of the bow, and put their hand on top of mine over the hand hold.

I was anxious for this to work, so that they could achieve that unique feeling of creating fire. To that end, I roasted all my bow drill parts in the oven at low temperature the night before in order to cook the humidity out of them. It worked VERY well. I've never seen such an effective bow drill kit!

Once everyone had a go at fire-making, we brought out the real goods: hot dogs, marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. I carved a bunch of hot dog sticks and the kids feasted.

I was sad when it was all over. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Wilderness first aid certification

This weekend I took my first WFA course at an REI in New Jersey, put on by NOLS. My motivation was simple. Someone asked me how much first aid knowledge I'd gained during my year at the Tracker School. My humble response was "none whatsoever". Beyond a basic CPR course many years ago, I had no first aid training at all, let alone wilderness-specific first aid. 

I felt naked, knowing how ill-prepared for a wildnerness emergency I was.

Before I detail the basic WFA protocol, I want to caution the reader. This post is meant to start a conversation and/or be a review for others who have been through a WFA certification. If you have not been through one, DO NOT TAKE THIS AS ADVICE. It would be totally inadequate, and probably inaccurate, as a stand-alone "course". You could very easily die or kill someone by misunderstanding the information I am about to present. 

This post is a teaser, designed to inspire you to sign up for a REAL WFA certification course. It is not meant to help you navigate any type of emergency. 

OK, with that aside...

There is a fundamental distinction between "urban" first aid and WFA. 

Urban first aid is defined as being able to get help (EMTs, ambulance, etc) in under 1 hour. With urban first aid, the focus is on getting help as soon as possible: call 911, then do your ABC's and do CPR if necessary.

Greater than an hour from help and you are in a WFA situation. The protocols and rules of thumb are very different for WFA. The basic premise of WFA is that, barring more advanced medical expertise, you need to focus on assessing the injured/sick person. There are basic treatments you can offer the wilderness patient for most emergencies, but the primary skill of the WFA certified individual is assessment.

The first thing the instructors had us do was memorize these 5 lines:
1. I'm number one.
2. What happened to you?
3. Not on me.
4. Any more?
5. Dead or alive?

They represent the first 5 steps you must follow in any WFA situation.

1. I'm number one:
You're hiking along in backcountry, and in the distance you see a crumpled body at the base of a small cliff. You DO NOT rush up to the person. From a distance, you assess the scene. Is it safe? Are rocks falling down the cliff side? Is there an angry bear or crazy person with a gun nearby? If you rush into a scene without assessing for ambient dangers, you could very easily create a more severe WFA situation by adding yourself to the list of injured people. You do not approach an injured or sick person in the back country until you are reasonably certain it is safe to do so.

2. What happened to you:
Try to figure out what the mechanism of injury (MOI) was. Did the person fall? From how high? Was the person burned? By what? What exactly caused that giant gash in her leg? Figure out what caused the injury if at all possible. This will be important for deciding whether or not there may have been a spinal injury.

3. Not on me:
Don't get someone's blood, spit, pus, vomit, piss, or shit on you. Hopefully you carry gloves in your medical kit. Rain jackets, plastic bags, and bandannas can be used. Take care of this before touching the injured person.

4. Any more:
At first you see only 1 injured person, but if you stop to look around for others, you might see the guy 10 feet away who is even more badly injured. The idea is to get to the person who is worst injured first. At the very least you need to know how many injured people there are.

5. Dead or alive:
This is essentially the CPR or not CPR decision node. CPR was not taught at the WFA course, but if you know it, and the person is dead, this is the time to use it.

The next piece of executing WFA is called the 3 C's:


The first is fairly obvious. You have implied consent if the person is unconscious or unresponsive. If they are conscious, you need to ask them if it's OK for your to help them out. If they say no, that would be sort of weird, but it is their right. "Control" refers to the head. For any injury, you should immediately stabilize the person's head and neck. If she has a spinal injury and you fail to secure the head and neck, they could go from a recoverable injury to paralyzed for life or even dead.

With that done, you can now move on to the WFA ABC's, which are similar to CPR ABC's.

A - airway
B - breathing
C - circulation
D - decision about 'da spine
E - environment, expose

If the person is conscious, you ask them to open their mouth and stick out their tongue. Have them spit out any gum. Remove any loose items such as broken teeth or other debris. These are "stop and fix" items, so if you find a problem, you don't move on to the next letter until it is solved. If no airway problems, move on to breathing.

Again, if the person is conscious, have them take a deep breath. Ask if they feel any pain or have other difficulty breathing. Listen for abnormalities. If the person is no longer breathing, this would be the time to give rescue breaths if you know CPR. If the person is having trouble breathing because they are in a crumpled position, this would be a good time to move them, taking care to stabilize the head and neck. Otherwise, move on to circulation.

Both inside and outside the body. If there is circulation inside the body, the person has a pulse. If not, the person does not have a pulse and you need to jump on her chest if you know CPR. If there is circulation outside the body, that person is bleeding and you need to stop the bleeding immediately. Do a quick full-body check, examining your gloved hands for blood after each time you touch different parts of the body. With no circulation problems, you can move on to decision about da spine.

Based on the MOI, decide whether or not to continue holding on to the head and neck. If the person fell from more than 3 feet, you automatically assume a spinal injury and maintain stabilization. If you don't know the MOI, you assume spinal injury. Better safe and awkward than sorry and paralyzed. Having made your decision, you move on to E.

What is the ambient temperature? If it's -20 F and the person obviously has hypothermia, it's time to wrap her in a hypo-wrap (more on that later). If it's 100 F and the person is badly dehydrated, get her in some shade. If it is sunny and the person is on his back, provide sunglasses or other protection. At this point you also need to expose any injuries the person is complaining about. "My shoulder really hurts". OK, you need to see the SKIN on that shoulder. "I got stabbed in the junk". You need to provide some privacy if possible, and examine the groin at skin level.

The most critical parts of the assessment are over, so you can take a deep breath and relax a bit at this point (unless the person died or something).

Next up is a head-to-toe, full-body examination. Starting at the head, you gently but firmly check everywhere on the body for abnormalities. Anywhere you do find an abnormality, stop and examine the area at skin level.

Start with the skull and face, lightly pressing different areas and asking if it hurts (if the person is conscious). Same with the neck. Then you lightly press the length of both collarbones and squeeze each shoulder. Grasp the person's rib cage near the top and have them take a deep breath. You are assessing for rib/lung injuries. Do the same further down on the rib cage. Have the person locate their belly button with a finger and divide the abdomen into 4 quadrants. Lightly press each quadrant and check for pain or stiffness. Next place your hands on the hips, at the highest points of the pelvis. Lightly press down. Do the same, but on the sides, pressing in.

At this point, ask the delicate question of "is there any reason I should check your groin area?" If no (hopefully), continue the scan at the thigh. Go all the way down each leg, checking to see that the knee can bend normally. Stick your fingers inside the shoe, inside the sock of each foot to see if it is warm or cold. Next, have them push down on your hands with their feet as they would push a gas pedal. Have them pull their toes up against your hands. Check for differing ability to push or pull across the two legs. Now grasp a random toe on each foot and have them tell you, without looking, which toe you have.

It's time to move back up to the arms. Check them the same way as with the legs, making sure the elbows work. Have them squeeze your hands and wiggle their fingers, and grasp a random finger and ask them to verify which one it is.

Finally, you need to carefully roll the person on his side, preferably toward you and pulling at the shoulder and waist. You need to check the spine from neck to sacrum. Then you check to either side of the spine, again taking time to check every little area and asking if there is pain. This step can and should be done FIRST if you find the person on his back or side.

Now it is time to check vital signs - pulse, rate of respiration, and rough guess about body temperature. You should check these repeatedly, writing down each time and set of vitals.

The last step in this part of the pyramid is to ask relevant questions about the person's recent history, using SAMPLE:

S - Symptoms
A - Allergies
M - Medications
P - pertinent history
L - Last in/out
E - Events

Have they been experiencing any unusual symptoms, like abdominal pain, lately? Do they have any allergies? Take any meds? Had any drugs like alcohol, caffeine or other that day? Do they have any conditions like asthma or seizures? When was the last bowel movement and urination?What happened just before the accident? When was the last time they ate and/or drank? 

Now you must come up with a plan. 

Do you need to evacuate? Do you need to RAPIDLY evacuate (more on this later)? How are you going to get the person out? Maybe you need to leave her there, alone, while you go for help. In that case you need to leave all the info you acquired with the person in case someone else finds her. What is a longer term solution for stabilizing the head and neck, if that is what is needed? Maybe you don't need to leave at all. Maybe you just need to rehydrate the person or bandage a small cut (more on that later).

With your plan in place, you need to offer any treatment you can. This obviously depends totally on the injury or sickness (more on that later).

I am planning some injury-specific posts and videos for the near future. Please leave a comment for any specific requests, or points of clarification, or if you see any inaccuracies in what I have presented.

I am much more confident about my ability to handle an emergency in the woods after this course. The WFA course included many, many practice scenarios; I have written this post not from my notes, but from memory. After writing it out, I checked it against my notes and it matches. That is how well the WFA course drilled these steps.

I am a little confused about certain details, like: don't you have to do the ABC's to assess whether the person is dead or alive (5. Dead or alive?)? Why do you then do them again in steps A-E? But I feel much less vulnerable to bad decision making or freezing up in the event of an emergency. I think I will renew my CPR certification next, and am considering taking the 9 day wilderness first responder course.

The instructors gave us little fold-up waterproof booklets with a variety of potential injuries and sicknesses and how to treat them, whether evac should be rapid or not, etc. On the front is a pyramid to help us remember all the steps I outlined above. It doesn't match what they taught us 100%, but it is close. I altered it a bit to match what they taught us.