The great First Aid kit battle has been concluded and we are very grateful for your participation. For those of you who were unable to make it to the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival this last weekend, I’ll summarize.
We had two kits laid out at our table. One, a commercially available kit and the other we assembled. We called them “the Blue one” and “the Red one.” So called because one was blue and the other red. We are creative types. It should be noted however that the red one has also been named “The Dave” after the illustrious and experienced Dave Watt. (And I don’t just mean old…he has a lot of medical experience too.)
We sought out the opinion of people visiting the booth and framed the question thus: “would you spend a little more money to get a kit with better quality, highly useful components.” And the resounding answer was yes. 81% of you chose “the Dave,” the kit curated by Dave’s years of wilderness medicine.
“The Dave” includes: 2 triangulars, 1 tensor, 2 roll gauze bandages, AR barrier device, Transpore™ tape, steri-strips, alcohol prep pads, providone-iodine pads, burn stop gel, triple antibiotic ointment, sting stop swabs, aspirin, assorted bandaids, sterile 4X4 gauze, non-stick gauze, Tegaderm™, biohazard bag, good quality sheers and tweezers, irrigation syringe, moleskin, lots of gloves, and RMAM assessment checklist and useful phone numbers card, and a pencil and RMAM incident reporting sheet.
We received really useful feedback, which we will be incorporating into “the Dave” as we can, all the while keeping costs down. Common suggested additions were duct tape, (we Canadians feel really strongly about our duct tape needs) super-glue, and whiskey. One of these definitely won’t be included in the final kit!
We’d love some further feedback here. Consider the list above and leave us a comment with your suggested addition, not including meds. We recognize the value of meds but won’t include them in a kit due to provincial guidelines (with the exception of Aspirin.) Keep in mind the kit is designed for a small group (about 4) on a trip of less than about 4 nights.
One lucky winner has been selected to win a kit of their choice so congratulations to you! And for the rest of us, “the Dave” will shortly be available in its complete form for purchase. We will also be running some contests in the next few months on social media to win some of our all-time favourite first aid supplies, so find us on Facebook or Twitter!
