Canyon Day!

One of our training days takes place in the Blue Mountains in one of the 'wet canyons' called Grand Canyon - canyoning is a huge sport over here and many of the canyons aren't even marked on maps or well-charted. This, of course, leads to some injuries in these areas and requires us to go get them. (Though most of the orthopedic injuries in the Blue Mountains are actually due to elderly people stepping off of tour buses at the Three Sisters overlook and looking at the view and not their footing and they break their ankles or hip).

We wore wetsuits and rappelled into the bottom of the canyon, making our way to two trapped 'patients' that we treated and then had to haul out on litters and get to a spot where we could winch them to the helicopter (though we didn't actually winch them up for the training day). Used some interesting techniques - in a lot of areas the river was deep enough to have to swim, but with our dry bags in our backpacks and the packs lashed together we could use them as pontoons to float the stretchers along on the water. Lots of carrying and pushing and hauling of course too...and managing airways and medications and etc. in that environment was a challenge as well.  Fortunately, we ended the scenario before having to carry the victims up and out of the canyon as the hike out was a pretty good leg workout as it was...

Speaking of workouts - today at the health club a replay of the scintillating final of the Queensland 2011 open lawn bowling championships was on - hard to believe there's something more boring than cricket to watch on TV, but yes, and FoxSports found it...