THEY WILL SURVIVE

So you’re out in the woods with a group of friends. You get lost. It’s cold and your friend who fell into the lake four hours ago isn’t looking too good. It’s probably hypothermia.

What do you do?

Well, according to Molly Hunter, you “get all of the wet clothes off of them, get warmer clothes on them,” then pack warm clothes around the person and “wrap them up in a tarp.”

You would know that if you were one of eight kids who learned wilderness survival tips from Hunter this week on the Palmer Hay flats. Hunter is a lead councilor with the Alaska Center for the Environment. The hypothermia demonstration was fun — the kids got to wrap up one of their camp-mates — but also useful.

“Especially for Alaska, it’s really important for people to know how to handle hypothermic patients,” she said.

The center has been running summer and winter camps in Anchorage for years. Four or five years ago it started eight-week summer programs at Spring Creek Farm in Anchorage. This summer is the first for the weeklong Hay flats camps.

“The kids had a blast, even in the rain,” she said.

Expanding the Valley program by offering the shorter camps just made sense, Hunter said.

“We’ve been doing the Palmer trailside out on Spring Creek Farm I’d say for four or five years now, and it seems to be growing every year. To allow kids more from the Valley, from the other side of the Valley to experience that outdoors and the Palmer Hay flats just seemed to be the best area to have it,” Hunter said.

This week’s session was the second-to-last of the summer. There may still be spots in the next session, which will have a different focus.

“It’s the Wasilla Wildlife Safari, where we’re learning more about the outdoors and the animals that live off of the Palmer Hay flats,” Hunter said.

Parents can head to akcenter.org for more information. If you miss out this year, there’s always next year. Hunter said the center plans to add sessions next year since this year’s sessions were such a success.

“This is just the first year and we’re seeing how it’s going. It seems to be going really well. Palmer Hay flats is an awesome place to have the camp,” Hunter said.

Eight kids were in the woods with her Thursday. A couple were out sick.

“For our first year in Wasilla it’s a pretty good-sized group. All the kids are awesome. They’re learning well,” she said.

Over the course of just a day, kids got those hypothermia pointers, but also learned what a person needs to start a proper fire.

“This afternoon we worked on shelter building, what you look for before you even start making a shelter: high and dry location, you want to make sure that you’re not in the middle of an animal trail. have a source of water nearby.”

And then the kids split up into two teams, each of which built a different style of lean-to.

“Both of them turned out really well,” Hunter said.