Following on from the excellent article on avalanches from Henry in the Telegraph, there is a nice one also in the Telegraph on first aid for skiers:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/snowandski/gap-year-ski-instructor/7164357/The-40-something-ski-bum-blog-nine.html

Also brings to mind that we talk a lot about avalanches and rescue, but how many folk know the Swiss staging of Hypothermia as a descriptive process to the rescue services when asking for help for an avalanche victim, or how to carry out basic resuscitation of the non breathing - no sign of circulation victim? Post rescue resuscitation and trauma care is also important as in crap conditions the kerosene budgie cannot always fly to the scene, and it’s the group that might be providing the care.

you can probably add, “or carry any sort of first aid kit” to that as well.

ise - 09 February 2010 05:53 PM

you can probably add, “or carry any sort of first aid kit” to that as well.

Yep, quite agree this is also neglected.

I couldn’t agree more…

This has been another of my previous topics of complaint.

At the moment we focus far too much on just extricating the victim from the avalanche, not much use if you are then unable to offer even basic life support mechanisms such as resuscitation and warming.

Think of it like running into a burning building and rescuing somebody but stopping at that point…

Autonomous search and rescue requires at least basic first aid training with some special emphasis placed upon the mountain / wilderness winter environment, specifically hypothermia.