Not Quite Frantic - But Getting Close

As our hiking trip quickly approaches we are all reacting in different ways.

Dan - is freaking out a little about the amount of work to do between now and then and he desperately wants to pack all of our gear into our packs right now and leave it there until the trip.







Cindy - Is living from day to day, she will often stop and go "oh no the hike is so close and we are not ready," then she will go about her duty for the day.

Alex - Is still desperately trying to figure out how to get out of the deal as he collects his homework from all of his teachers.


Tammi - Reality of the whole thing is sinking in. So I have been printing off packing list, PRAYING, working out, PRAYING, doing additional research on things I realized I still dont know, PRAYING - you get the point.


Did I mention that we still have not obtained all of our gear. *Ugh* Well our pastor tells us we will be fine; so, since he is smarter than me I will choose to believe that.

Backcountry Medical Emergency

So a couple of us went off to get water from the closes water supply and when we return we saw one of our team lying on the ground moaning.....

This is the sort of scenarios and situations we learned to deal with last night. Our friend Carl came to teach us how to assist an injured person until we can get them out and to help. Carl learned how to be a first responder in a program during his mission work in Zambia. He was assisted by his daughter Kessid, she may look young but she has logged more hours in a first responder class than any average person and she remembers everything. You can find out more about Carl and his family at VondiNews.com.

We learned how to clear a scene to be sure it is safe, how to move a person quickly from an unsafe scene, how to check a person for injury, how to set a fracture, how to immobilize a person to be carried out and how to splint a broken bone.

We also talked about signs of shock, assessing situations for the critical need first and refreshed on the major points of CPR (thankfully there was no scenario practice involved with this one).

After we learned some of the information on paper it was time to practice. Kessid was our victim to be moved quickly from an unsafe scene without assessment first. That meant we all had to pick a section of her body, lift at the same exact time and move her location without moving her position or jostling her body. It was not too difficult with Kessid.....but if Alex, Cindy and I had to move Dan; well you better just pray Dan stays uninjured on our trip or Dan needs to find a stronger crew.

Our second scenario Alex fell down and broke his leg. I know this makes everyone do the nervous laugh a little. Dan was able to splint him right up and then told him "suck it up boy and start hiking."

Then we had the dreaded scenario where Dan goes down and we have to splint him up and carry him out. We practiced the splint part but not the carrying part. Like I said we need to work on the whole muscle end of our crew.

All in all we had a lot of fun learning some very useful and very serious information. At one point we were so entertaining Kessid was eating cheese puffs and laughing at us.

I will leave you with some tips:
*Never remove a deeply impaled object from the body, secure it and get them to help.
*You can move a person with a broken neck if you do it slowly and securely.

The beginning....we think.

So this is the adventures of the Thunderbolt crew. We hope you will laugh with us, perhaps cry with us and certainly learn with us on our journey toward becoming "serious" hikers.

So, let me start with a brief little history for those of you who may not know us.

Our fearless (or so we hope) leader Dan "Thunderbolt" has a dream of someday hiking the Appalachian Trail from start to finish. Thunderbot's wonderful and willing (at least for now) wife Cindy has embraced this dream as well. But, you have to start somewhere; you should not just buy your gear and jump on the trail for the next 6 months with no experience. Which brings us to the present day.

The first overnight journey to tackle will be the Foothills Trail in South Carolina. A "moderate to very strenuous" hike of 76 miles which we hope to accomplish in and 8day period. We will start our hike at the end of September and obviously end in the beginning of October.

Now enter the rest of the crew. Let's face it hiking is just more fun if you have some friends and family to share the fun with. Alex, the reluctant teenager, will be drug along (although we all think he secretly likes all of this). Then there is me; my name is Tammi and I am not really sure how I fit into all of this aside from liking to take part in adventures and doing something new.

So, here we are the crew of 4 ranging in the ages of 14-39 hoping to train and learn enough to survive our first "serious" hike and at least 3 of us are optimistic enough to believe there will be future hikes.