Photo Gallery
I had always wanted to teach outdoor skills. The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) was the premier school for this profession. So I decided I would take a class and hopefully be recommended to their Instructor school. So on August 17th 1986, I flew to Riverton WY via Denver CO and took a ride to Lander, the home of NOLS to begin the Wind River Mountaineering Course.
The next day the first thing we did was we bagged all of our food we would need for the next month. Some we put into our packs and the other was set aside to be packed in by mules to us at specific trail heads. Next they issued individual climbing gear to each person, then they issued group gear, tarps, stoves, cook gear, climbing ropes, to each person as size and strength dictated. Then we weighted our backpacks, mine was 85 pounds! It was 99 degrees as our group of 20 loaded the bus for the 2.5 hour ride to Union Pass in the Wind River range at 9910 feet.
The next day after breakfast we had our first group instruction. Typically at least once every few days you would have a topic of instruction for everyone. The instructors would go over certain things the you needed to know, at first more basic stuff, and then more advanced topics as we got further into the course. Since you are out for a long time, cooking and preparing food was a big topic of discussion, since all of the food is dehydrated and not prepared food, you had to learn how to bake bread, cinnamon rolls, pizza and other items for the long haul. I found this fascinating, since most of my experince is with quick cook foods. They gave us the NOLS recipe books for guidiance. One student brought Fly Fishing gear and we able to catch some small trout that we had for dinner.
The next days were spending traveling, having lessons about climbing and learning to cook. Later we picked up our first resupply at Simpson Lake and hiked back to camp. The next day we learned some self-arrest techniques on a snow field above camp then did some bouldering. Moved camp to Pinto Lake, then the next day up to Continental Glacier, where we camped and survived a thunder storm on the glacier in our tarps. Then next day dawned clear and cold but sunny. Later in the morning, a student named Brent collapsed on the glacier with altitude sickness. We got him into a sleeping bag, make a rope litter and started carrying him to lower altitude at Long Lake. He recovered enough over the next days to walk out with another instructor and return to Lander. Later we met him when the course was over.
We next traveled to a spot near Grasshopper Glacier, where we camped a few days and did some multipitch rock climbing and rapelling. It snowed on my birthday, it had never done that before! The last leg of the trip is where the entire group splits up and takes a different route back to the trail head. This is to "test" your groups navigation and travel skills. We camped near Phillips Lake. Next few days we make it to the rendezvous point. There each student had a evualation with the instructors. I was told I should apply for the instructors course as I had done well on this course.
We all traveled back to Lander and had a big steak before the group was dismissed. I flew back to Denver and then home.
I was glad I took this course and learned a lot from the instructors about leading and teaching. However at this stage I was not ready to move out west from my family and girl friend.