Muckerman's Mountain Medics
Written by Rob Schultheis
Telluride Style Magazine - Winter/Spring 1998-99
You've probably seen Peter Muckerman around town: A tall, lanky silver-bearded guy, hopping with energy. He's a cross between Abe Lincoln and Jethro Tull, always on the run from project to meeting to Dunton Hot Springs...And you've definitely seen his car: That infamous battered green '81 Mercedes jeep with the ONTOS license plate, one of the two or three most recognizable vehicles in Telluride... But what you may not know is that Peter Muckerman is one of the world's permier trainers of backcountry emergency medics. Folks come from as far away as Brazil, Puerto Rico and Alaska to take Peter's arduous 76-hour Wilderness First Responder Courses.
I took Peter's Wilderness First Responder Course last summer, and it's an unique experience. Up at dawn, gulp coffee, quiz on wound management, express lecture on fractures, review practice drill of CPR, lecutre on internal injuries, demonstrations of splinting, gobble lunch, practice bandaging, and you've still got four hours to go plus three hours of study on your own after that. You get the idea.
After the first couple of days, you're exhausted and your brain feels like an oversoaked sponge, but you learn. Six months later you're on the trail in Afghanistan or the Weminuche or Upper Wasatch or Solo Khumbu, and you stumble upon a sick or injured stranger, and, hey presto! Suddenly you know what to do. It's a great feeling.
Peter's secret? First of all, experience. He's been a hosptial administrator, an EMT, a teacher at St. Louis Free University, a jocularly-titled class called Street Medicine: What To Do After the Police Have Gone, even chief-medic in Afghanistan's notorious Pol-i-Charki Prison for two months in '78, where he was incarcerated for a visa violation and found there was no medical care for the 400 prisoners there!
He began teaching his Wilderness First Responder courses in '95, when he realized that traditional EMT courses, with their emphasis on high-tech ambulances and rapid transport to hospitals, didn't cover the kind of emergencies you run into out in the boonies and battlefields of the world.
But it's not only expertise. Peter also has a heart as big as Wilson Peak that energizes and animates his work. His words to live by "Be grateful." His dream is to "Live in a community with people who share the same values." His life: "I've got a great wife, a great marriage like something out of the movies, a great son, great friends, and I love what I'm doing." It shows.
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