October 2025

When we venture into the backcountry, whether it’s a day hike in a nearby forest or a multi-day expedition into remote terrain, we knowingly trade comfort and convenience for solitude, challenge, and a deeper connection with nature. 

This is a trade-off that comes with a conscious decision to expose ourselves to a higher-than-normal level of risk. Backcountry travel increases our chances of experiencing injury and illness while decreasing our accessibility to nearby basic or emergency medical care.

Mitigating this heightened risk requires improving our wilderness medicine knowledge and skills, something we help people do here at The National Center for Outdoor Adventure & Education (NCOAE). Our Wilderness Medicine and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) courses cover everything from scene size-up and patient assessment to providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), treating wounds and fractures, and successfully evacuating patients from remote wilderness areas.

As experts in the field of wilderness medicine, we often find ourselves discussing what we believe to be the most essential wilderness medicine skills. Here, we present our top seven, in no particular order. These are skills that we think all of our students should possess before venturing into the backcountry.

1. Scene Size-Up and Patient Evaluation

Every wilderness medicine event should start with a scene size-up and patient evaluation, which consists of the following three components: (more…)

Coming off a four-year stint as coordinator for a university outdoor recreation program, J.T. Schexnayder III is proving to be a masterful leader as our outdoor program coordinator. Raised in Myrtle Beach, S.C., this neighboring state native led his middle school peers on backpacking, climbing, caving and paddleboard expeditions to backcountry areas in his home state, as well as other excursions to Colorado and Wyoming.

Before joining us here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), J.T. organized student expeditions for the University of Georgia from 2021 to 2025. Before that, he brought the outdoors into his six- through eighth-grade classes in South Carolina and Wyoming. When school broke for summer, he would head to Highlands Presbyterian Camp and Retreat Center in Allenspark, Colorado, where as the Adventure Camp director, he supervised and guided climbing, hiking, and outdoor leadership programs as camp director.

Our new program director (he joined our team in June of 2025) received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 2018 from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, with a major in American History. Following that, J.T. received a Master of Science in Forestry and Natural Resources (major in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management) in 2025 from the University of Georgia (Athens, GA).

As an outdoor educator, J.T. is a member of the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education (AORE), as well as the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). He holds certifications in Wilderness First Responder (WFR), CPR/AED and Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).

We asked J.T. to respond to a few questions about himself and his career, and he graciously agreed: (more…)