During a late winter snow storm last month, a group of hikers from Pennsylvania trekking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park stumbled across four freezing college students suffering from the early signs of hypothermia.

They were holed up in a shelter along the Appalachian Trail with sleet-soaked clothes and gear that weren’t drying out, a recipe for disaster in near-freezing temperatures. The Pennsylvania group took the poorly equipped hikers under their wing. Two hiked out for help while the rest stayed behind and counseled the college students through the night on how to fend off hypothermia. Rangers arrived the next day to bring the students out of the woods, and the group of Pennsylvania hikers was credited with potentially saving the college students’ lives.

When Justin Padgett of Cullowhee read about the incident in the newspaper, he thumbed through some old files, picked up the phone and called the Pennsylvania hikers.

“Good work guys!” said Padgett, who deserves at least a sliver of credit himself for the successful rescue. The Pennsylvania hikers took a wilderness medical course from Padgett at Landmark Learning Center in Cullowhee a couple of years back, enabling them to spring into action that day on the trail when they came across fellow hikers in trouble.

Landmark Learning Center offers a host of wilderness training classes, from weekend crash course to months-long wilderness EMT certification. It also offers everything from Leave No Trace instruction to backcountry trip leader workshops.

Landmark Learning courses are geared for outdoor instructors, such as camp counselors, climbing guides, rafting guides and hike leaders — providing the prerequisites and certifications needed to work in the outdoor industry. But the courses also include valuable first aid skills for outdoor enthusiasts who could be far from help when they or a someone else in their party has a backcountry disaster.

Landmark holds courses on its site in Cullowhee, on the trail out in the woods, and on-location — bringing the courses to groups.

Landmark Learning Center is a partner with SOLO Wilderness Medicine School, a national leader in the wilderness training industry. The courses combine classroom lectures with hands-on improvisation of backcountry materials and rescue scenarios full of blood and broken bones. The experiential learning model dramatically drives new skills and knowledge home. Landmark Learning Center also holds Basic Life Support certification programs to the outdoor industry and the community of Jackson County.