NOLS WFR (Wilderness First Responder) — Detailed Course Review

16 Mar 2025 | Guest post by Shubrank Mukhiya

I recently completed the 10-day NOLS WFR course at Raithal, India in March 2025. This is my detailed review of the course.

About The Course

First off, WFR stands for Wilderness First Responder, not Wilderness First Rescuer. It focuses on how to respond to a medical situation in a wilderness setting where access to professional medical help and emergency services is delayed, resources are limited, communication is difficult and conditions are challenging.

The course takes a non-medical student, and trains them just enough to save a life and manage medical scenarios in the outdoors.

In the course, I learnt how to:

Address immediate life threats to keep someone from dying.
Identify & manage common injuries & illnesses & keep them from getting worse (and sometimes even help make them better).
Monitor & care for a patient while I am there with them in the wild until help arrives.
Effectively communicate with the rescue teams or higher medical staff.

Sounds nice right? But that probably doesn’t really give an idea of what a WFR is ACTUALLY able to do. With the help of your imagination, let me illustrate the skills that are unlocked.

All of these are super valuable life skills. I wonder why these are not taught in school. I don’t remember that last time I used Pythagoras theorem in real life.

Many of the skills and knowledge learnt in WFR course are also relevant & useful in urban context. But the key difference between urban and wilderness scenarios is how quickly you are able to get professional higher medical help.

In the wild, it’s going to be a while until help arrives or the patient is evacuated to the nearest medical facility. So as a WFR, your focus is to manage, monitor & provide care to the patient for that extended period of time.

In India, rescue and evacuation resources are very limited, unorganized and mostly volunteer-driven. Dispatch of help can be further slowed down when multiple layers of bureaucracy come into play.

So managing, monitoring and providing care to someone in the Indian wilderness context requires even MORE patience on-average than, say, in the US. Although teaching patience is out of syllabus of WFR, but the course does enable you with plenty of tools and knowledge to be able to provide an effective first response.

Course Curriculum

Let’s explore what is actually taught in the course. There are 2 parts to the curriculum: The problems and the PAS process.

Part 1 : The problems

There are many medical problems that can happen when in the outdoors — all kinds of injuries and illnesses. WFR covers a lot of them.

In the course, a huge amount of the time is spent learning about these medical problems — what are the signs and symptoms of a particular injury or illness, what is the treatment for it and what are the NOLS-recommended evacuation guidelines for it.

Part 2 : The PAS — short for “Patient Assessment”.

PAS is the process that defines every single step of what you are supposed to do as a WFR .

It outlines every small step you need to take at every stage and every question you need to ask and the order in which you are required to do them — right from the beginning when you first arrive on a scene, to conducting a complete assessment of the patient, to making an evacuation request in a proper format.

PAS is the holy grail of WFR. They stress on it so much that if you don’t master it and follow it to the T, you won’t pass the final exam.

It is also worth noting that the treatment you learn as a WFR is — more often than not — about managing the problem rather than actually treating it.

WFR is not about diagnosing or treating a medical problem — that is the job of a real doctor with a medical degree and years of experience.

You can’t learn that in 10 days.

Your job — as a WFR — is only to provide a great first response to a medical problem to save and stabilize a patient until they are handed over to trained medical staff.

This course enables you with the tools and knowledge to provide that effective first response.

Course Experience

The course is taught over 80 hrs across 10 days. That’s 8+ hrs of classes and practice time every day.

Throw in lunch and tea breaks and after-hour conversations with other students & instructors — you’re looking at spending the entire the day back-to-back studying, listening, talking and learning.

The day starts at 7.45am and ends at 5.30pm. Sometimes there are late evening classes that run up to 8pm. Some students would meet up in the classroom after dinner to revise what was taught that day, these would often go on till 11ish in the night.

If you have a medical background, you are going to find medical theory part of the course a breeze. But for students with non-medical background, the medical content may feel like someone put a fire hose in your mouth and opened it.

It’s a lot of information to consume in 10 days — but the way things are taught, the way instructors deliver the lectures and the way the course is designed… it’ll get over before you know it.

The course strikes a perfect balance between classroom theory and practical sessions or demos. Plenty of props, demo kits, slides, makeup etc are used throughout to make it engaging.

But what takes the cake are the “scenarios”.

Every day we’d learn about new medical problems (theory) and then head out & simulate medical scenario to get practice. Students would take turns to role play as patients and rescuers. We would often use make up to make injuries and bruises look real.

Every scenario ended with a debrief where we’d uncover new learnings from our mistakes & missed steps.

Image Credit : NOLS

Here are some example scenarios:

You witness an ATV rider slow down and then fall off their vehicle in snow country from 50m away.
You find an MTB rider lying on their back and their bicycle crushed lying 20 ft away.
You are on a hike where you find someone sitting on the side of the trail breathing heavily.

That’s all you know going into a scenario. But as you follow the PAS process and dig deeper into what happened and the patient’s history, more clues are revealed — using that info you make an assessment, decide the treatment and make a call whether to evacuate them or not. Watch this video to get an idea what the PAS looks like when it’s implemented in a real scenario.

Most scenarios were played on the campus right outside the classroom in an open space. But two larger scenarios were outside the campus in the outdoors. One was during the day, another one was played out during the night. Those were absolutely epic and simulated a rescue scenario as close to reality as possible.

The course is overall well-designed & well-paced but at the same time you don’t get enough time for revising or doing laundry.

Quality of Instructors

Despite how well a course is designed, the truth is — it is the instructor that makes all the difference.

People often mistake expertise or credentials as proxy for great teaching. That is far from true. Teaching is a different skillset all together.

The difference between learning from a good instructor vs. learning from a great instructor is HUGE. One teaches, but other changes the way you look at that subject forever.

Instructors that are both experts in their field AND great at teaching are super rare.

We were super lucky to be taught by Vikrant Gaud and Bhaskar aka Muggy — both excellent outdoor educators. I had a great time learning from them.

A note on Instructor-to-Student ratio :

For NOLS WFR, Instructor-to-Student Ratio is 1:15 (2 instructors and 30 students). Since this was mostly an on-campus course, this is an acceptable ratio. Though I would have preferred if it was a bit less crowded.

For most outdoor or adventure courses that have significant outdoor component, the gold standard is 1:5 or 1:6. Other NOLS course maintain this standard. So when exploring outdoor courses, see if this standard is maintained. If not, you could run into over-crowded batches which compromises student safety and individual attention.

Testing and Certification

On the last day, you are required to pass 2 tests to become a certified WFR — a written test and a practical one.

Written Test : MCQ style, 100 questions, 100 marks, closed book exam. Minimum passing marks is 70. Pro tip : The night before the test, take the WMI Quiz and this practice test.

Practical : You will be paired with another student and tested together as a team with a scenario. The focus of the practical exam is to ensure you have reasonably mastered the PAS process. Mistakes are acceptable and instructors will give on-spot feedback. However, if you make a critical mistake like skipping an entire step or not following the decision making process, you will be required to retake the practical. The failure criteria is clearly outlined in the handbook.

Certification : Once passed, the certificate is valid for 2 years and you could re-certify anytime in the 2+1 year timeframe. The "re-cert" course is generally a 3-day course at 50% course fee.

Course Cost

Course Fee : NOLS courses are expensive in general. NOLS WFR fee is around INR 80,000 in other countries but runs for INR 43,000 in India (as on 2025).

Stay and food : This is separate at INR 10,000 which is paid directly to the host of the course.

At the time of writing this article, IndiaHikes hosts the NOLS WFR at their Raithal campus in Uttarakhand. This includes 3 unlimited meals/day, 2 teas, 1 bunk bed with blankets in a swiss tent (shared with 6) & warm water to drink. I’d say that’s pretty good deal for INR 1000 per day. 50% seats are filled by IndiaHikes trek leads who pay for the course fee out of their own pocket to upskill themselves.

Other Costs : Depending on where you travelling from, add the travel cost to overall cost of taking the course.

Total: You are looking at spending more than INR 60,000 and 12 days all-inclusive if you plan to take this course.

Is it for you? Is it worth the money and time?

The answer depends on what you do and what you plan to do after taking the course.

You would benefit from WFR course if you are:

Someone who is already pursuing a professional career in the outdoors. Becoming a certified WFR will add to the your profile and help get better jobs/salary especially if you work outside India.
Someone who is responsible for other people in the outdoors as part of their job. Teachers who take kids to camp, employees who take tourists on hikes, local guides who takes clients outdoors, people who work in adventure travel segment or people who are often involved in search and rescues.
Someone who spends a lot of time in the outdoors recreating and exploring — since you are more likely to come across medical situations in the wild where your WFR training can be put to good use as a good samaritan.
Someone from the medical industry (example nurses) who want to transition into the outdoor industry while working in medicine. WFR course is a good start and then you can do the more advanced W-EMT course (available only in the US).

Who should NOT consider enrolling in the course:

Someone looking at it as a hobby course to do. The course is intense enough that if you are not serious about it, you will find it difficult to follow along.
Someone looking at this course as an opportunity to take a break and get outdoors. Most of the course is run on-campus and you won’t get a lot of free personal time.
Someone who is just starting out a career in the outdoor. This should not be your first course. Take the 2-day Wilderness First Aid (WFA) course instead.
Someone who does a lot of independent hiking and hoping to learn self-aid or self-rescue techniques. This course is not designed for that. While some of knowledge can be applied in independent hiking context, but spending over INR 60,000 and 12 days would be an absolute overkill. Manav’s Hiking Field Course has dedicated modules on self-aid and self-rescue which might be more aligned to your goals.

What can be improved in the course

NOLS is a US-based organization. The official curriculum, content and instruction in any NOLS course are heavily US-based. There is scope for making their courses more India-focused keeping the ground realities in mind. But it is worth pointing out that the instructors personally make an effort to connect the content to Indian context wherever possible.
Since WFR is mostly an on-campus course, it does not need to be hosted in a remote village in the mountains that requires a lot of time, travel and unnecessary braving of the cold, rain and harsh sun. Everything we learnt at Raithal could have also been learnt in, say, Delhi or Bangalore.
WFR skills are emergency skills. You can’t really implement them unless an emergency occurs and you are present there to respond. Maybe the WFR alumni can come together & conduct quarterly meet-ups where we can practice mock drills to keep our skills sharp and knowledge fresh.

I hope this review assists you in making an informed decision as well as give an insider glimpse of what you can expect once you enrol :)

Link to photos and videos from the course : click here