Worst Experiences and Lessons Learnt

[TerraMer]

What have been your worst experiences?
Have you ever had to call for help?
What lessons have come out of these situations?

When you do 1st Aid and leadership courses you hear all these stories, they're always someone else and you think "How could anyone be so stupid?" until one day it happens to you. Why not share a personal story here, perhaps someone might learn something the easy way

My worst was the first time crossing between the Skenes and Hotham on the AAWT, I was hiking solo. It had been an awesome hike, perfect weather, sleeping under the stars, met only one other hiker heading in the other direction and some cows. Crosscut Saw was good, camped in Catherine Saddle surrounded by lyre birds, no trouble with water.
The next day started with an ominous sunrise and it was snowing by the time I was on the Razor. There was a bit of a break from the snow while I walked through fog to the base of The Viking and climbed up. Once on top it came in blizzarding with an electrical storm. I had enough time to find a thin ledge of rock to squeeze under, rummage through the pack for the spare thermals and change before lightning started striking The Viking. My hair was standing on end. Made for a very exciting lunch break. After the storm passed the fog came in and I had about 1m vis. I found the drop off point but I couldn't see down so had no idea how steep or far it would be. I was concerned about more storms so I found another rock to camp under for the night and collected fresh water as it rained all night.
It was clear again by about 8am so I dropped of The Viking but slipped on ice and dislocated my shoulder. Luckily it wasn't the first time for that shoulder (and I have since dislocated the other one too but not in the bush) so, with some tears and expletives, I popped it back in, kicked my pack down to the bottom and strapped everything up. I made a few adjustments to the pack and managed to balance it with just one shoulder.
But in the haze of pain I had somehow missed the track heading to Barry Saddle and wandered too far around the base of The Viking. Irrationally I bush bashed across instead of back tracking and luckily noticed when I crossed the track.
After Barry Saddle I started hearing trail bikes and 4WDs and decided to push on to a trail intersection and wave someone down to drive me out but it clouded over, fog came in, started raining and for 2 hours not a single vehicle passed me.
It was getting dark so I consulting the map and noticed a building (ie a little nameless black square on the topo) about 4-5km away and hoped it was a hut that was still standing. I took 3 paracetamol, waited 20 minutes for them to take the edge off the pain, hoisted my pack and started running to reach the hut before I couldn't see anything. I had no idea what the hut was called but it was such a relief to find it. It was relatively new so obviously it had replaced one lost in a fire. Seeing that hut was just the sweetest thing, being able to dump my pack and have a good cry knowing everything was going to be okay.
The next morning I flagged down a 4WD. They just happened to be leaving and dropped me at the closest town and medical clinic to have my shoulder checked out.

It wouldn't have taken much to have turned this into an emergency like location, weather, first time dislocation, lack of 1st aid, getting lost in a blizzard, lightning strike, lightning fire among many variables. I admit, I did have my EPIRB in my hand seriously thinking of using it while weighing up distance, terrain, water, level of pain.

I learnt that pain seriously inhibits rational thought.
It pays to pay attention in wilderness 1st Aid courses.
Mark on your maps huts that are reasonably close by and check that they are still standing before you start so you can get to shelter without undue stress and time wasting.
Don't bury your spare set of thermals too deep inside your pack because there usually isn't convenient shelter when you need them.
Always carry strapping tape in your first aid kit, if it's not an ankle or knee injury it will usually be another important joint.
Trust your gut instinct, if you feel something is not quite right stop and assess the situation, I was not too far off track but if I hadn't listened to my instinct I could have kept wandering in the wrong direction assuming it was an overgrown section, stopping gives you time to collect yourself, slow down your heart rate, control your breathe, take a look around yourself and give yourself the chance to make a smarter decision, perhaps not the smartest when you're in agony but you give yourself a better chance of survival.
Carry something stronger than paracetamol in the 1st aid kit.

I have hypothermia and frost bite stories too but they're not so exciting and a bit embarrassing

[Nuts]

slipped on ice and dislocated my shoulder. Luckily it wasn't the first time for that shoulder (and I have since dislocated the other one too but not in the bush) so, with some tears and expletives, I popped it back in, kicked my pack down to the bottom and strapped everything up. I made a few adjustments to the pack and managed to balance it with just one shoulder.

This is interesting. I have assisted 'relocating' a shoulder it looked Very painful. What sort of relief did you get when it is popped back in? How debilitating is it (once the shoulder is back in place) How long before its usable, back to normal? Did you have much swelling or brusing? Does medication help, which ones?

I recall we pulled the arm out and up while holding/feeling the shoulder joint pull back into the socket. How do you do it yourself? (I recall it took a Lot of force even when they had 'relaxed')

All sorts of medical expertise and first aid courses but rarely do practitioners understand these things from personal experience..

(sorry, have a few worst experiences but probably didn't learn much )

[TerraMer]

...I recall we pulled the arm out and up while holding/feeling the shoulder joint pull back into the socket. How do you do it yourself? (I recall it took a Lot of force even when they had 'relaxed')

All sorts of medical expertise and first aid courses but rarely do practitioners understand these things from personal experience...

It was excruciating

On this occasion I was very lucky that wasn't the first time and I managed to get it back in the right place. I tied my wrist onto a branch above and pulled down. I screamed getting my arm up and almost passed out pulling down. I thought of doing it Bruce Willis style and whacking it against something hard like a tree trunk but a slightly less insane part of my brain reminded me that Hollywood isn't real

The first time I dislocated that shoulder I was also knocked out so I don't remember much of it. It was a long time ago but I do remember it was much more painful than a broken clavicle, took a few weeks to start moving it again without wincing and a few months to move it smoothly and start using it normally. I had a few other injuries at the same time including broken ribs. As a kid my parents didn't really bother about pain management unless i made a fuss and therapy was unheard of. That's probably why it took so long to heal

When I dislocated the other shoulder, only 6 years ago, it actually relocated itself but was prolapsed, again, just lucky. It was dislocated while in a very unsafe working environment that involved repetitive jolting of my shoulder joint in an up/out movement for a few hours each day for 2 weeks and it just gave up, popped out and then popped back in as I was dropped to the deck. I could move it but it was agony. The boss was very unhelpful so I strapped it up and took some panadiene forte I had left over from a hip fracture earlier that year and stopped working. I was flown back to Darwin 3 days later and saw a dr and physio. The physio gave it a bit of a twist and the pinching pain was gone. I was back at work 2 weeks later but restricted to tasks that didn't involve any lifting or bracing from above waist height. I couldn't hold much weight through that arm but I kept it strapped for nearly 2 months, until it stopped hurting.

As to medication and pain management, its hard because as an Aspie I 'experience' pain differently to most humans. I feel pain but don't always 'respond' to it. I worked with a fractured hip for 4 weeks until my body stopped responding to paracetamol and ibuprofen. I thought I had just sprained something until the boss noticed I couldn't use stairs and ladders or carry loads without crying and gave me shore leave. After some xrays they found a fracture. Codiene helped.

Neither shoulder has ever been the same since their first dislocations. It has always been a point of great frustration, especially in the gym when I couldn't push past a 15kg shoulder press, forever stuck on little weights as both joints crunch, grind and crack with every lift. I didn't feel any pain but this kind of movement makes me feel a bit sick in the stomach. Sometimes they ache for no apparent reason. I try to be careful with them now as I have been told they dislocate easier after the first and have worked a lot on strengthening the supporting muscles and ligaments. Yoga is good because it's more gentle than the gym but deceptively effective

(I'm not accident prone, I just like to push myself and often discover my limits in uncomfortable ways )

[Nuts]

(I'm not accident prone, I just like to push myself and often discover my limits in uncomfortable ways )

Har, yes, i'm sure there are those More accident prone A friend was recently diagnosed with Aspergers. I'll have to remember that pain thing if he gets angry

I'm gathering from that it is definitely debilitating, ie wont be usable on a walk with a few days rest. Pretty much the quickest exit possible...
Iv'e never dislocated anything, i imagined at least some relief was immediate, I didn't get to stick around for the one we attended.

I appreciate how debilitating pain can be. Iv'e thankfully never broken much (besides a finger) but my knee has dropped me recently.

Had my fingers caught in a rabbit trap when I was too small to open the jaws.. I feel for rabbits

[colinm]

Isn't the problem with field relocation of joints that you can catch bits in the joint that didn't evolve to run through joints, leading to a world of danger? (if you catch the wrong blood vessels you can end up losing the limb below the joint.)

We were rock hopping over Breakfast Ck (I think it was,) it wasn't particularly high, one of our party slipped backward and tried to arrest their fall with their arm. First problem was they were on their back and pack, as water rushed over it (should carry rope, really, to tie peoples' torso so their head's above water, prevent drowning.) Second problem was incipient hypothermia (luckily we were right near a campsite, so a fire, change of clothes and something warm to drink.) Third problem was their arm looked funny ... and hurt them a lot once the adrenalin and the cold of their dunking wore off. So: a collar and cuff sling, hanging the arm just where they naturally held it, some panadeine forte (or equivalent, you can get some with slightly less codeine from the chemist - the codeine is the thing you want.) We assessed and since we were pretty close to the start of the walk, and had enough daylight, packs were rearranged and the party split - 2 going out with the casualty, some food and cooking gear, one tent and a sleeping bag - the other two staying with the remainder of the packs, to be ferried out next morning.

The injury turned out to be a dislocated shoulder, and was ok after a couple of months' therapy. It didn't pop back in on the walk out, nor when subjected to simple traction at Katoomba Hospital, so they knocked him out and relocated it.

Lessons Learned: (1) count and record the number and type of tablets the person takes - the hospital will want to know. (2) probably carry some rope to tie people out of the water - it was a near thing. (3) Make sure the casualty knows he owes you some triangular bandages ... my good linen ones were cut up on a hospital floor somewhere.

Also: Get some remote 1st Aid training. I strongly recommend the Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Squad's courses (http://www.bwrs.org.au/?q=first-aid-training) as Shep *really* knows what he'd doing. Sorry for the ad, but these guys deserve all the kudos they get.

Colin.

Last edited by colinm on Wed 04 Jul, 2012 10:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

[colinm]

Oh, some more lessons: (4) carry a stick or walking poles when you're rock hopping, (5) if you fall backwards with a pack on a more-or-less flat surface, go with it and let the pack take the impact - your arms ought to go to your head and neck, not to arrest the fall (easier said than done, I know, it's instinctive to use your hand.)

And one more thing about dislocations: in this case the cas fell backwards and so the force (of a heavy pack) was applied in a pretty unusual way - dislocating forward with the pack straps constraining the movement of his arm. If the ligament capsule around the joint had torn, which I think it hadn't, then applying the usual dorsal/lateral traction would probably not have helped, and may well have done more harm than good - catching the ligaments in the joint. I'm not surprised it didn't pop back in naturally (although I didn't tell him that, and I did encourage him to carry some weight in that hand.)

And one other thing ... we werev. lucky - enough daylight, close to start of the hike, plenty of people to help walk him out. If he'd been o/night with that injury untreated, he may have had a worse outcome.

[mikethepike]

What have been your worst experiences?

Gee TerraMer, you sure packed a lot of 'discomfort' into one trip!

It was excruciating

Hhmm. I don't think that that face quite depicts agony but it was probably as close as you could get despite the wide range to choose from!

[mikethepike]

My worst walking experience in recent times happened just yesterday and I mention it here as the incident could be relevant especially for solo bushwalkers. It was raining when I went outside, put my crocs on and sort of hurried down the earthen driveway to get the bin out on time. I slipped over backwards so suddenly that my back hit the ground before I hardly knew it. But I knew it alright! The thump was tremendous and while it arrested my back instantly, my chest kept on its downward trajectory a while longer, absolutely winding me and leaving me struggling for my first inch of breath for I think nearly half a minute. I was a long while before being able to breathe like anything approximating normal and my chest remains very sore, extremely so at time when I move about. If my head had contacted the ground with anywhere near the force my back did, I'd be in real trouble if not actually dead. I'm in training for a rogaine and it has put a stop to that for the time being. Imagine such a fall in the bush and you are solo. It's no way a case for using the PLB but it would be a case of getting out as best you can after a day of rest and taking just the bare essentials to lighten the pack. The walk out would be accompanied by audible gasps and sharp shouts, or at least in my case.
I've got into the habit of sometimes taking the crocs as camp shoes but this shows me how dangerous they can be on slippery surfaces. It also shows me to avoid rushing -so what if the bin remained unemptied? Further relevance to bushwalking is of course how it shows that many if not most accidents happen when least expected. In retrospect though, cause and effect become clear to show how, with a bit more care or attention, it may have been avoided. .

[eggs]

Yet to absorb everything on this thread, but in the interests of those who use these pages as a kind of reference, there were a couple of related topics.

See - http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2973&hilit=stories
and http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1666&hilit=worst
and http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1895&p=15913#p15913

[flatfoot]

Not so much a bad experience for me - but a lesson learned.

I had to render first aid recently to an injured person I encountered. There was a great deal of blood. I had only one pair of gloves in my first-aid kit. This was not enough as there were situations during the hour of first aid where I needed to remove the gloves. I have just ordered a box of individually packed pairs so that I can carry a number of spares.

[ULWalkingPhil]

My worst walking experience in recent times happened just yesterday and I mention it here as the incident could be relevant especially for solo bushwalkers. It was raining when I went outside, put my crocs on and sort of hurried down the earthen driveway to get the bin out on time. I slipped over backwards so suddenly that my back hit the ground before I hardly knew it. But I knew it alright! The thump was tremendous and while it arrested my back instantly, my chest kept on its downward trajectory a while longer, absolutely winding me and leaving me struggling for my first inch of breath for I think nearly half a minute. I was a long while before being able to breathe like anything approximating normal and my chest remains very sore, extremely so at time when I move about. If my head had contacted the ground with anywhere near the force my back did, I'd be in real trouble if not actually dead. I'm in training for a rogaine and it has put a stop to that for the time being. Imagine such a fall in the bush and you are solo. It's no way a case for using the PLB but it would be a case of getting out as best you can after a day of rest and taking just the bare essentials to lighten the pack. The walk out would be accompanied by audible gasps and sharp shouts, or at least in my case.
I've got into the habit of sometimes taking the crocs as camp shoes but this shows me how dangerous they can be on slippery surfaces. It also shows me to avoid rushing -so what if the bin remained unemptied? Further relevance to bushwalking is of course how it shows that many if not most accidents happen when least expected. In retrospect though, cause and effect become clear to show how, with a bit more care or attention, it may have been avoided. .

I don't think crocs are the ideal camp shoes. I've found them very slippery in the wet, so much so, it felt like I was walking on a ice block, and there not all that light.

[norts]

Two worst experinces and learnt alot from both
First Doing the Mt Anne Circuit in Sept with alot of snow, Couldnt make it from shelf Camp to Lonely Tarns in half a day, sat on a rock shelf on Mt Lot all night when realised couldnt get all the way around - lesson learnt travelling in snow - especially waist deep - dont expect to travel very far.
Second Going into Lake Rhona , got caught on the wrong side of Gordon, had to be kayaked out - lesson learnt check the weather forecast before leaving for large amounts of rain, especially when crossing a significant river. Luckily in those days we carried a significant amount of food were able to make a 3 days food last 7 but still couldnt get back across that river:(

Roger

Roger

[RSD]

I'm really really hoping that bushwalking is a completely safe activity for me as my body has been dragged through hell backwards already!

[wayno]

walking next to a flooded river in NZ with my mate, i came to a vertical face, my mate backed out and found a route up the side of teh river, I couldnt be bothered climbing out and decided to walk in the river, couldnt see the bottom, stepped into a hole and got swept away.... face down in the water with my pack buoyant on top of me it as hard to get my face above water.... eventually rolled over, started undoing my belt to ditch my pack then realised it was still buoyant so kept it on.... i was making fast progress in the water, a lot faster than i had been walking through thick untracked bush that we expected to hav a track and trying to cross the flooded river...
seemed like it might have been a good idea to keep floating down the river but i had no knowledge of the river ahead, would have been a good ten k's to the hut i was aiming for.... plus it was june and risk of hypothermia
decided to try and get out and after maybe half an hour managed to find a shallow enough space where i could get to my feet and get out.
some time later I bumped into my mate again.... he had half the camp gear, we ran out of light and torches failed and had to camp.

dont get seperated from your tramping mates.
don't take a path simply because it will involve the least energy expenditure, take the safest path....
don't trust water that you can't see the bottom of.
don't trust a river thats up.
pack liners can be life savers
test your gear before you go on your trip.
do your homework on track conditions and existence.
think you're near bulletproof as it gets? dont be surprised if you get proved wrong, if the river was up more or nastier or it was colder i could very easily have ended up a floating corpse... a slight change in conditions can be the straw that breaks the camels back

[Wollemi]

I don't think crocs are the ideal camp shoes. I've found them very slippery in the wet, so much so, it felt like I was walking on a ice block, and there not all that light.

I wear crocs frequently while kayaking. On the last 6 days of my most recent kayak crossing of Bass Strait, they were my only footwear - I had thrown out the running shoes after climbing Mount Strezelecki. I recently took them on a bicycle ride, and changed out of clipless shoes into Crocs so as to cross the lower Grose River. Thongs would have sufficed.

After rowing out to the racing sloop recently, the skipper knocked his pair accidentally overboard, so we used them as MOB practice. Crocs float higher than any shoes. And all water simply run ran off.

I just weighed them - 310g/pair
They do have a bit of internal slippage when your feet are wet, though.

[tas-man]

<snip> I've got into the habit of sometimes taking the crocs as camp shoes but this shows me how dangerous they can be on slippery surfaces.<snip>

I have been using croc imitations for camp shoes for a few years now and got a bit blasé about them. Had a wake up call on my Easter trip around the Walls of J where one evening in the dark I slipped on wet rock and fell backwards, fortunately onto an upwards sloping rock face, with my left elbow taking the brunt of the fall. If I had fallen the other way down the slope, it might have been a sorrier story. After that I considered going back to my heavier surf shoes with much better grip.