TRAIL FIRST AID – PART THREE

Anna Beck uses her know how to guide you through stings, bites and more for your essential trail first aid skills.

If you’re a meme-queen or just a regular user of the internet, you have probably stumbled across a few memes featuring Australian Flora and Fauna and inferring how it wants to kill you. They’re very funny…and somewhat accurate. Mountain biking is one of those activities that lures you into the scorpion den of the great outdoors. Now, it’s not all doom and gloom; in fact I am probably being a bit dramatic, however there are a few key things to take into account when riding bikes in the Australian bush that are a little different from other places throughout the world.

Today we are going to go through some of the animals and insects you could encounter that could cause you to come to grief, as well as what to do in extremes of temperatures or in the case of hyper/hypothermia, and what to do if you encounter a trailside medical emergency.

As always, if the patient is not breathing and not conscious we refer back to the first article and start resuscitation. Bite-y, sting-y things For the sake of applicability, we are going to assume that your bike ride doesn’t always end with a dip in an ocean or creek and omit marine envenomations from this section, however there are many things that can cause harm in the Australian bush.