Cross Country Skiing

My dad used to say "preparation is what separates the men from the boys", so for my 17th birthday he got me a survival strap. However, when I first saw it, I laughed inside of me thinking "when will I ever need this"? Oh the irony in that statement. This winter, a friend and I decided to go cross country skiing in the Rocky Mountains (in Alberta, Canada) and I decided to bring my survival strap along for kicks and giggles, thinking "it looks cool, might as well". Anyways, one late afternoon, me and my friend are skiing, and it started getting dark, while that didn't bother me, my friend's vision isn't very good. We are in the forest going at a rapid pace so that we can make it to his cabin before its completely dark. I was in the lead, and I saw a 15 foot drop up ahead so i turn to miss it, my friend however didn't see it. He goes flying over the edge and hits the bottom. His right leg was broken. It's was below -25.C by this time and he needed to get home pronto. So we decided to make him a splint by using one of his damaged ski's that was split in a few pieces from the fall plus my hoodie as padding, and we tied it all together to form the splint with half of the survival strap's rope. We cut off the other half to use as a rope so that I could pull him behind me (him sitting partially on his one ski, another on an extra windbreaker jacket we brought along. So I towed him about two miles to the closest road, borrowed a phone from a guy in a car that was passing by and was able to call the paramedics. Thanks to the Survival Strand my dad bought me, my friend ended up only having mild hypothermia and a broken leg. Thank you!

God Bless!