Risk Management Magazine

I then noticed that Jim — by far the better skier — was starting to fall behind. I yelled to see where he was, and he told me to go to the edge of the trees and wait for him there. I didn’t make it far before I heard Jim say he was having a hard time skiing. Jim is the type of guy who won’t complain unless he’s dying, so when he said he was having difficulty moving his legs, I was concerned.

It was the beginning of December at Camp Taegu, South Korea. I was in the seventh month of my second tour of duty assigned to the same medevac unit based at Camp Humphreys. I was only a week away from going on mid-tour leave to the states for Christmas with my wife and children.

Cold weather is more than just an inconvenience. It can be dangerous and even deadly. Luckily, our bodies have a number of ways of signaling that cold temperatures are creating dangerous conditions, and we know the steps to take to keep a cold-weather tragedy from happening.