| Day Hikes Day hikes are a safe, easy way to gain the skills you will need to stay safe in the wild--all while learning about the natural and social history of the area. You will learn about the 10 Essentials, map and compass, trip planning, risk management, and staying found. Your Guide will lend you a kit with some of the Ten Essentials, and you will hike +/- 7 miles while learning about Olympic National Park. Trips do not leave every day, so Reserve Your Spot Today! |
Backpacking Backpacking sweeps the backpacker into the wild world of wilderness with all its grandeur and intensity. Backpackers can hike for almost as many days and almost as far as they want: for example, from Staircase in the southeast corner of the park to the Grand Valley in the northeast, from the Dosewallips in the east to Quinault in the west, or from Elwah in the north to Sol Duc in the west. Consider these routes for your ultimate wildnerness experience. Then Reserve Your Spot! |
| Leave No Trace (LNT) Trainings Leave No Trace is the national standard for outdoor recreation ethics from a conservation perspective. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics has established two main basic trainings in LNT: Awareness Workshops and Trainer Courses. Awareness Workshops last only a couple hours and offer little or no outdoor training. Trainer Courses are an intensive overnight experience with some backpacking. Reserve Your Spot for the course that's right for you. |
Scouting Guide and owner Jason Bausher is an Eagle Scout, Vigil Honor recipient, and is Wood Badge-trained. He can advise your troop about 50-miler hikes, the Leave No Trace Awareness Award, and merit badges such as Hiking, Backpacking, Camping, and Climbing. Jason can also serve as a liaison with the National Park Service to organize work parties or service projects in Olympic National Park. PLUS: Grays Harbor Boy Scouts receive FREE TRAININGS! Reserve Time for Your Program. |
| Service Tourism on the Olympic Peninsula will only last if we work to conserve the resource by doing trailwork, raising money for political action, and by teaching wildness to the generation to whom we hand over the earth. Sign Up Today to do or give what you can for the preservation of our children's earth. Where are your talents? Clearing trails? Educating National Park visitors about Leave No Trace ethics and practices? Raising money from friends, family, and business associates? Leading Boy or Girl Scouts? YOU CAN HELP!!! |
Mountain Seminars Do the mountains, rivers, and glaciers of Olympic National Park merely form one big playground, or is wilderness essential to our Being as embodied Beings in the world? Jason Bausher works on questions such as this in his environmental philosophy, and he shares his research in mountain seminars. He received his master's degree in theology from Yale University and is finishing an M.A. while in a doctoral program in philosophy. Check out a few of the seminars. Don't see your burning "big questions" being asked on this list? Email Olympic Mountain School for a custom program. |
HUMAN SURVIVAL SKILLS
This course is taught in the rainforests of the Olympic Mountains, which offers both advantages (plentiful water) and disadvantages (plentiful water!). Students will learn how to "live off the land" while learning how to live in the fullest sense. Although bodily survival is most immediately important, our long-term concern is for the survival of the soul. "Human survival skills" thus includes basic outdoor skills such as how to find water, warmth, and food. Yet such skills are only the bare minimum for preservation of the body. We are interested in preserving the human soul as well. Modern life allows for basic preservation of the body while allowing the essentially human soul to wither by substituting machine-like things and processes for its being. We will learn the following skills, and we will discuss their significance in becoming fully human beings.
Day 1: What is human life?
Breakfast lab. Barbecued beef ribs and corn: how did this meal end up on Lake Quinault? Some special words about barbecues from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
Ecology: speaking about home.
"Pre-history" and "post-history:" hunting-gathering and the Pleistocene human essence
Finding and treating water
Basic fire-making: starting fires with readily-available devices
Aristotle's "On the Soul" and Feuerbach's anthropology.
David Harvey's "The Condition of Postmodernity"
Advanced fire-making: making bow drills and starting fires
Finding shelter: lean-to and wickiup.
Making cutting tools
Day 2: Gathering (part 1)
Edible plants
Traps, snares, weirs, and nets
Campfire conversation: How might doing things like making traps be the highest mode of thinking the traps? How do we become the things we make in the making? What does this imply for human life?
Day 3: Hunting (Predation 101)
Making bows, arrows, spears
Giving and givenness in the predator-prey relationship--ancient and contemporary thought
Tracking, stalking, and killing prey
Campfire conversation: What does the gift of prey teach us about human life? What do you think about this relationship to that of love? What is the ecological function of predation? Why do we hate predators? What are the advantages and disadvantages of predator-hating?
Day 4: Hunting (Predation 201)
Slaughtering and processing prey
Campfire conversation: How does it feel to receive the gift of life and to transform this gift into necessary items? What is the cosmic significance of transformations such as these?
Day 5: Hunting and Gathering
Finishing up projects to take home: bows, arrows, drills, cutting edges, dried meat, hide, sinews.
During in-camp craft-time: last-minute words from books of Carleton Coon, Stanley Diamond, Dolores LaChappelle, Paul Shepard, Max Oelschlaeger, Bruce Wilshire, John Muir, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and much more.
Bring: wool blanket (try military surplus), strong poncho (try military surplus), a compass with a base plate, one 1-liter water bottle, and some extra clothing (wool thermal underwear, for example).
