Today is halfway day for the fall, 2023 semester. To celebrate it we are heading out on the Aroostook river for a few days in canoes. We have had the wettest September I remember, and the rivers in northern Maine are near or at spring flood levels. This means that traveling downstream will be easy, […]
Read more
Recorded on June 26th, 2023, this is a stab at a new format for the JMB Podcast; doing it solo. The topic for the day is differentiating between professional training and personal enrichment. We embrace both styles of program, but they are definitely not the same thing. The student has to decide what they want […]
Read more
– Ago Puteus Foris –
We’re a bushcraft, guide training and wilderness expedition school and traditional Maine Guide service founded in 1999. We help people become more skilled, more knowledgeable, more experienced and more confident by using traditional wilderness skills, a few simple tools and field-based experience. This is our media hub. For information on our programs, go to JackMtn.com, and check out our Calendar to see all upcoming programs.
It has been a cold and wet start to June in northern Maine. To keep things in perspective I will occasionally look at this picture from a few winters ago when the thermometer in my truck registered negative forty degrees below zero. This is the spot where the F (freedom) and C (Canadian) scales cross. Continue Reading...
Today is halfway day for the fall, 2023 semester. To celebrate it we are heading out on the Aroostook river for a few days in canoes. We have had the wettest September I remember, and the rivers in northern Maine are near or at spring flood levels. This means that traveling downstream will be easy, […] Continue Reading...
Dutch ovens have been difficult to find since the pandemic took over American life. Because we design our gear list to provide you with useful items, not just things that will get put in an “outdoor gear” box and collect dust, we’re changing our recommendation for a dutch oven for students. In short, we’re removing […] Continue Reading...
We’re adding the Autumn Woodsman, session 2, to our schedule for this November. This course is a great introduction to living in the cold, but without the difficulties that deep snow and deep, midwinter cold can bring. The weather in northern Maine in November can be quite cold, but usually we do not have enough […] Continue Reading...
This morning the parking lot is empty for the first time in 14 weeks. We finished the summer Wilderness Bushcraft Semester with three people receiving their Journeyman Certification. It was a challenging course. June started cold and rainy, then got very hot, humid and buggy. But it was a solid group of people and they […] Continue Reading...
We bought an inexpensive drone this past winter and have been getting some aerial photographs. This image is shot directly above Moose Vegas, looking toward the pond, Guide Shack, big field and the river on the right. We are excited to get better at using it so as to get some great canoe expedition photos. Continue Reading...
On expeditions and long courses there are many things we have no control over. These include, but are not limited to, water level, weather, wind, bugs, etc., and the list goes on and on. I frequently tell our students that we are not in control when we head out into the woods or on the […] Continue Reading...
We’ve reached halfway day on the summer Wilderness Bushcraft Semester course. We’ve been busy with camp projects and making things, and today everyone will be bringing their newly-made canoe paddles and poles out on a three-day trip. I love it when a group of individuals become a team, and that’s the point of the course […] Continue Reading...
I’ve guided a lot of trips over the years, and some stand out in my mind, often because everything didn’t go as planned. Like the one in this picture. It was the second week of June, 2018, and a small group of friends and I were on the Gaspé peninsula in Quebec, coming down the […] Continue Reading...
Recorded on June 26th, 2023, this is a stab at a new format for the JMB Podcast; doing it solo. The topic for the day is differentiating between professional training and personal enrichment. We embrace both styles of program, but they are definitely not the same thing. The student has to decide what they want […] Continue Reading...
Recorded on June 3rd, 2023 at the headquarters of Full Tang Outfitters in Tracy, New Brunswick, Canada. Tim and returning guest Blake Towsley discuss scheming for winter trips, dishonesty in marketing knives from people who have been on the tv show “Solo, By Myself, Without Clothes”, and the currently trending topic of Wild Pooping, or […] Continue Reading...
Recorded on May 25th, 2023 in the Guide Shack, with an outside temperature of 43 degrees F, Tessa and Tim talk about the spring, 2023 Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester and making hard decisions. It has been a long month and we were both tired while recording this, and we’re still looking forward to the weather […] Continue Reading...
We’re back on the grid for two days in the middle of the spring, 2023 Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. In this episode we discuss our recent canoe expedition and the challenges we have been facing on the course. We also discuss not believing the hype about rankings and which school or outfit belongs on the […] Continue Reading...
Spring finally showed up at the field school at the end of week 1 of the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester. We had a day of sun and made it our first day on the water. On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the arrival of spring and the skills necessary to get our people […] Continue Reading...
Big thanks to JC, camera-person extrordinaire! Join us as we paddle and pole down Chase Rapids on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in Maine. This video shows the first 2 miles, which is the challenging section and toughest on the 99-mile waterway. Some good footage of poling and paddling in fast water. This is from the […] Continue Reading...
Our big canoe trailer broke on a woods road on the Allagash trip. Like the phoenix, it will rise again. Woods roads are tough on gear, especially trailers. Continue Reading...
