Peak District Office....

Almost as soon as I announced I was starting to offer First Aid courses my good buddy N got in touch to ask if I could put together a bespoke package for his business (Climbing Wall Services) over in Sheffield. They're leaders in their (admittedly specialist) field and I was chuffed to bits and really quite excited to be asked, lots of research and cross platform skill use and I think I put a pretty good product together.
Subsequently a series of issues meant that N wasn't able to promote the course as well as he liked, but also had the dilemma that he and a staff member simply had to be certified before month end to meet other obligations. So this weekend I ended up running a very small course with some very specific additional requirements. Back at the workshop we did First Aid at heights, Catastrophic Bleed and working in confined spaces - with an even higher than usual level of self protection and scene evaluation. These guys regularly work in places the paramedics simply won't, or indeed can't, get to. N's done a lot of First Aid courses over 20 years, D's a virgin...made for a good mix.
But they're also super psyched climbers - so in the weekend's one limited window of "not torrential" we drove out of the city to Higgar Tor and introduced D to the basics of scene survey, primary survey, secondary survey , wound care and airway management with suspected head/spinal complications - pretty much every climbers worst fear.
We also spent a while looking at the lines we'd climbed, the ones that defeated us and the ones we still want to bag. Within a mile in each direction are Birches Edge where just two weeks ago N helped out a serious trauma for a climber not wearing a helmet - and in the other direction is Millstone, scene of my own spectacular accident , the same accident whose repercussions I'm dealing with 24 years later. It added a little poignancy that's for sure.