Korpijaakko

“Monthly highlights” is a series of post concentrating on a 10-month wilderness guide course I am taking this year at Niittylahden opisto near Joensuu in Eastern Finland. These posts try to summarize the best parts of each month and are naturally published at the end of each month (or in the beginning of the following month as it seems to be now). Hopefully you enjoy it!

Highlights of November: Advanced First Aid and Safety Management Courses!

Enjoying the sunset at Niittylahti instead of sitting in the class listening entrepreneurship lectures.

My November started with an additional week-off from the school that was spent packing stuff in my apartment and moving it to my parent’s place where I’ll be crashing for a while. During the week I missed some lectures about multi-culturalism and customer service but I don’t think those were especially crucial for my future professional skills. The second week of November was one of the best weeks of all the autumn period: Wildmed’s Wilderness Advanced First Aid course. The third week was filled with lectures and exercises about entrepreneurship which were quite familiar to me already. And the fourth week we spent in the woods on safety management & leading course.

Year's last morning swim in Niittylahti for me in snowfall at November 16th. It was cold.

The Wilderness Advanced First Aid (WAFA) was possibly the best course we’ve had in the school during the autumn period. It was a very intensive no-nonsense four-day first aid course specializing in wilderness context and held in English by Wildmed. There are two WAFA courses held in Finland annually in November. These are open to anyone interested and in addition to our guide student class there were four other people participating on the same course. In addition there is also an annual Bridge course to upgrade a WAFA certification into Wilderness First Responder certification, something I’m intending to do in the future. I won’t go too much into details about the course content as it is well presented on the Wildmed’s course description but I’ll write a few words about my personal experiences about the course.

Learning to inject epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis.

The course was very intensive: the days were filled with lectures and exercises from  08:30 until 18:00 or so and for the evenings we had 50-60 pages of reading to do. I believe that the intensity actually helped learning and enabled learning a huge amount of useful information and skills. Both the lectures and the hands-on exercices were good and in my opinion it all culminated to the often asked question “Makes sense, right?” And it made sense. Wildmed teaches a simple and effective assessment system for wilderness first aid and medicine that really makes sense, benefits learning and probably works very well also in real life situations. The teachers, Brad and Eric, were both experienced EMTs with outdoors, ski patrolling and SAR background meaning that they knew what they were teaching but in addition they were also good teachers and great dudes.

H cleaning a wound (on a chicken breast).

According to the teachers in USA the WAFA is seen as a good first aid skills level for someone doing trips to remote areas and I do agree. But for people taking customer groups to remote areas the Wilderness First Responder level is recommended and it sounds about right to me. Comparing this course to the first aid courses by Red Cross is somewhat pointless as in my opinion the WAFA is way superior. Mostly because it really makes sense. If you have the four days and about 400 euros to spare, go and do this course next year. You won’t regret it!

 

Yours truly assessing a patient with a TBI in a multi-patient exercise.

The safety management & leading (i.e. “Turvallisuusjohtaminen” in Finnish) was a lot discussed, rumored and anticipated course. There were some wild rumors concerning the six-day course but in the end it was a lot easier and more relaxed than I anticipated. I won’t be telling too much about the course so that the next years students can enjoy the uncertainty and intentional lack of information but in a nut shell: We spent six days in the woods with the Lumo11 course (a two-year vocational school program somewhat similar to our wilderness guide course) doing different tasks and exercises related to basic wilderness skills, first aid skills, leading and safety management.

Spending two minutes in the lake to get wet and cold...

We slept under tarps, we made a lot of fires. Sometimes we were cold, often we were wet. We didn’t get a full nights sleep every night, we didn’t always know where we were, neither did we always know what would happen next. Sometimes we walked longish distances, sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes someone got lost, lost motivation or got sick. Sometimes we had big multi-patient first aid cases. (Where the WAFA skills came very handy!) It was quite a good exercise though I see also a lot of room for improvement. For me it was relatively easy and in the beginning I was occasionally bored. But one gets what one wants. For example after deciding to make all the fires (We made a lot of them!) with a fire steel and without any special tinder instead of using matches and tinder carried with me, making fires started to be an interesting challenge. The weather was quite challenging as the course started with snow and temperatures below -5C but in the halfway the temperatures rose above freezing and occasionally it rained heavily. My kit worked out pretty well though it wasn’t the optimal kit for the conditions and tasks: over 2kg weighting serious winter down bag, Inov8 Rocklite 390s without gaiters, a traditional puukko (I want a big full tang blade now!) and so on.  But I wanted to use my typical hiking kit to see how it manages and a lot of my kit worked really well like the Haglöfs Flexable softshell, PHD Minimus down vest, Fenix Hp10 headlamp, Evernew Pasta Pot (Btw. it’s also great for coffee as the holes in the lid act as a filter!) and so on. It was an interesting experience to camp and tarp almost a week in such conditions. Occasionally a bit miserable but mostly very enjoyable.

In a summary it was a nice exercise though it could have been even better if it would have been more challenging and better planned regarding the first aid cases. It was a nice experience and I learned some new things, honed some old skills and it was very interesting to learn to know the Lumo people a bit better.

... before, once again, making a fire.

As I wrote earlier the autumn period in the school is now done from my part and I’ll be having few weeks of before starting my internship period in Husky Center Kolmiloukko. Because of this there might not be a post about the highlights of December but a summary post about the whole internship period later in January. And when school starts again, I’ll start again with the monthly posts at  the end of January.

At the moment temperatures are well above freezing and it’s been occasionally raining quite heavily. Seems like a depressing start for December with no sign of snow. I hope that the winter would set in soon so I could start skiing. Meanwhile, I might take my packraft and drysuit for a final paddle before the lakes freeze…

“Monthly highlights” is a series of post concentrating on a 10-month wilderness guide course I am taking this year at Niittylahden opisto near Joensuu in Eastern Finland. These posts try to summarize the best parts of each month and are naturally published at the end of each month (or in the beginning of the following month as it seems to be now). Hopefully you enjoy it!

Highlights of September: The Herajärven kierros trail, autumn hike, kayaking and passed exams!

As the regular readers recognize the highlights of the last month include some things that I have reported separately to give them more depth. But as a quick reminder:

Instead of attending to a fire drill at school, me and most of my classmates walked a 40km long Herajärven kierros trail at the Koli national park in one day, under 12 hours to be precise. A great trail with nice views, good infrastructure and service and surprisingly high total elevation gain for a Southern Finland trail. A longer trip report can be found here.

Views along the Herajärven kierros trail.

Another big highlight of the last month was the autumn hike to Muotkatunturit wilderness area in Lapland. This was a six-day trip with the class,  short in kilometers but quite rich in group experiences.  An in-depth trip report is also available.

In addition to these two trips we had a four-day course in white water (or more like quick water) paddling with kayaks and canoes and few days at the school, partly in a classroom and partly in the forest. Some of the days at school were spent for planning and preparing for the autumn hike and one day at the forest was dedicated solely to orienteering exercises. I will write more about orienteering in the next monthly highlight post as we had our orienteering tests in the beginning of October. (And for those interested: I passed, so from now on I don’t have to know anymore how to orienteer.)

The starting day of the course at the Pielisjoki in Joensuu.

One of the interesting things of the past month was the basic course in white water paddling. The course is continuation to the four-day basic course in (lake) paddling and later on we will have a course in advanced white water paddling and also bunch of other water related stuff. The course started with a brief theory session but very soon we moved into an easy quick water at the Pielisjoki in the city center. We trained the basic stuff like going into the moving water, taking out into an eddy, ferrying across the river, paddling upstream and so on. People were taking pictures of us from the bridge and Google might have caught us on their street view while driving by… Luckily we had only few swims this time.

Someone screwing his kayak with dancer group in the background. Please, don't ask. 😉

On the second day we moved to the Ruunaa rapids that are very well-known in Finland. On this course we didn’t go into the best known section called Neitikoski (known for the big stopper wave that is favoured by freestyle kayakers, but trained and played in four different white water sections: Haapavitja, Kattilakoski, Murrookoski and Siikakoski. These are all typically class II rapids and despite the lowish water level they were class II also this time.  We trained with kayaks and canoes doing different maneuvers, running different routes and then carrying the vessel back upstreams for new runs. The first day at Ruunaa was dedicated to the basics at Siikakoski, second day was spent running the Haapavitja several times learning to use different routes and on the third day we did a short river trip starting from the Ruunaan retkeilykeskus and running the Kattilakoski, Murrookoski and Siikakoski.

A happy student pushing through a wave. Our paddling teacher Pertti in the background.

We also trained with canoes.

We stayed in small huts at Ruunaan retkeilykeskus next to Neitikoski (And I would have wanted to run the Neitikoski with a packraft but there were no volunteers to provide safety for the run…) and had sauna on both evenings. Very nice facilities for a paddling course as we have many other occasions to learn camping in the woods and in thus could concentrate solely on the paddling. After some swims at the first day at Siikakoski no-one capsized even though we had couple of very interesting runs with canoes that filled up with water and bumped into rocks… And all the unintended swims of the first day were related to playing in stopper waves and fooling around not really running down the rapid. I think it is very good achievement and big thanks goes to our visiting paddling teacher Pertti. There was another group of Wilderness Guide students from another school at Ruunaan retkeilykeskus at the same time and all but  their teacher ended up swimming in Murrookoski when they were supposed to run it down with canoes…

Carrying a kayak back upstream. A packraft is so much easier to carry!

I also had my packraft with me and run the Haapavitja couple of times in it and let one classmate to test it. He had never paddled a packraft before and had paddled a kayak only at the school courses but after couple of spins in the still water he headed down the class II Haapavitja with some advice from me. And he didn’t flip and liked the packraft a lot! Packrafts are just cheer joy to use and easy to learn.

Notice the differences between the loads. There is a right way and there is a wrong way to do it.

Another important thing were the exams. To qualify as a wilderness guide you have to pass several exams measuring the skills and knowledges required. The last month we had an exam about insects, about plants and about mushrooms. To pass an exam you have to get at least 80% right. In the insect exam we had to name bugs from dead samples and I blew this because of couple hard ones. Well, I’ll be having another try at the end of October and it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m more afraid about identifying birds and their voices in the spring! In the plants and mushroom exams we went out into the woods and had to name living samples pointed by one our teachers. I passed both with pretty good scores (19/20 and 18/20). I really liked the exams being held out in the woods in “real life situation” instead of using dried samples or photos in classroom.

Mushrooms at a trip. In the exam we didn't pick them up.

At the moment we are having a very tasty open fire cooking course and the next interesting thing will be likely the “Kaksnelonen” at the end of the week. It is a voluntary 24 hour challenge were one can test how far one can walk or run in 24 hours. Well, not exactly how far but how long distance one can cover, as we will have two loops (a 15km and 30km loops) to choose from and a service point in between.  I’m hoping to cover over 100km but I’ll have to see how things turn out. I haven’t been running nearly as much as I should have so I might be walking all the way. There might be a separate report about it coming later on.

“Monthly highlights” is a series of post concentrating on a 10-month wilderness guide course I am taking this year at Niittylahden opisto near Joensuu in Eastern Finland. These posts try to summarize the best parts of each month and are naturally published at the end of each month. This is the first post of  the series. Hopefully you enjoy it!

Highlights of August: a saimaa ringed seal, first aid courses and the best tent-sauna ever!

Even though the line above tries to sum up the individual highlights of the past month, the most interesting thing has been a more abstract experience of getting to know the people on my class and getting used to the life at the school. I will write more about the life at the school later on when I don’t have other highlights to share with you.

Canoeing at Kolovesi National Park

When the school started a bit over four weeks ago we went straight into business and headed to the Kolovesi National Park for a five days canoeing trip. The trip itself was really relaxed with not much daily mileage but a lot of time together sitting by a fire, doing different tasks and getting to know each others. With the great weather we had it was very nice trip even though I would have liked some more canoeing.  As there were only few bugs and the views were awesome it was great to sleep under the stars without a bivy or a tarp. Because of the views I slept the second night next to a rock cliff and it was pretty cold place to sleep without the shelter of forest. Still, that night was one the greatest nights outside I’ve had this summer.

Maybe the nicest place I've slept in this summer.

The second highlight of the trip took place on the last evening when we were at Kirkkoranta making food and packing gear to the car. I think it was our teacher Pasi who spotted a saimaa ringed seal swimming next to the opposite shore a few hundred meters away. Saimaa ringed seal is very rare and endangered species – only some 270 individuals exist. The seal surfaced three times swimming back and forth probably looking for some fish to eat (or lurking to steal our coffee and pancakes?) I have never seen one before, and neither had our teacher Pasi even though he has spent some time especially looking for the seals… Lucky us!

The Saimaa ringed seal swimming to left. Use your imagination if necessary. 😉

The second week we spent at the school, mostly sitting in the class but also going occasionally outside for some orienteering or to learn nature lore as we are required to identify a lot of plants, birds, bugs and stuff to become wilderness guides. But there was not much interesting happening during the second week or at least not interesting enough for me to remember now when writing this… But on the third week we had two pretty nice first aid courses each lasting for two full days. The contents of the courses were based on the first aid 1 and 2 courses of the Finnish Red Cross but were modified for outdoor situations and had quite a lot of additional content. I got a lot of useful information from the courses and learnt to do few things also in practise. The teachers were also really good and thus the course gets a place in the highlights of the month. I can’t wait for the WAFA course in November!

Yours truly in a splinted stage of being.

And during the last week we got back into the woods! This time we headed to the Southern end of the Karhunpolku trail near the Patvinsuo National Park where we exercised basic wilderness skills like camping with Erätoveri tarps (relatively light traditional 3m x 3m PU coated tarp) and cooking on open fire. This wasn’t especially new for me but it’s always good to spent time outside under a tarp. We didn’t hike too much during the trip but instead did some fishing, orienteering exercises with 1:50000 maps during the day and night and  learnt many things about the surrounding nature thanks to our visiting teacher/guide Harri. He was a superb guy with very profound knowledge about the North Karelian nature.

I didn't bother taking of my trail runners for this. 😉

Cooking: grilled sausage, eggs in moss and mushrooms with some onion. Delicious!

But the best thing, at least for me, was tent sauna. We took with us a big box-shaped tent cloth that can be used as a sauna using an improvised stove. We made the stove from a big pile of rocks and some steel grating we found near the beach. Then we spent about five hours warming up the stones and ended up with a big pile of red glowing stones (see the picture, most of the red glowe is not from the fire but from the stones themselves). After that we shoveled away the embers, poured some water on the stone pile to put out the last of the flames and then pulled the tent cloth over corner poles to cover the stove and benches made of a big fallen log. And the sauna was ready! It was a great sauna, definitely making it to the Top 3 sauna experiences I’ve ever had. The only problem was that we had to cut it short as we had some more night orienteering to do that evening…

Straight from the deepest pits of Mount Doom: Improvised stove for sauna.

Enjoying the work done.

This week we’ve had a lot of time in the classroom and also some orienteering. The next week we’ll have some more sitting in the classroom, some more orienteering and our first exams in nature lore. We might also be going for a long walk but if we go, I’ll write a separate post about it. After that we will have the basic course in white water paddling at Ruunaa and the week after that we will head to Lapland for a six-day autumn hike. We have a challenge of getting the total pack weight below 15 kilo for the trip. That one should be relatively easy. even if I’d had to borrow a heavier sleeping bag for the trip.

Two Erätoveri tarps and a fire. A good place to be.