It has snowed off and on for the last five days, and as I’m writing this it is -6 degrees F and there is 8 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Winter has definitely arrived, and I’m getting excited for winter programs in February. This photo was taken a while back, showing a line […]
Read more
Recorded on November 20, 2023. We just wrapped up the field school season, and in this episode I look back and reflect on the experiments we ran during 2023. I discuss the Expedition Instructor (XI) as a continuous 6-month, residential program, moving the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester back to May and the high waters of […]
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.
From the spring. We went up to our local lake for some paddling and Maine IFW was stocking remote trout ponds by float plane. They would load the young trout from a stock truck into the floats of the plane, then it would fly off and dump them in the ponds. Since I was a […] Continue Reading...
My wood canvas canoe, rigged up and ready for the carry around Allagash Falls. Notice this canoe has a center thwart, not a carved yoke. Notice how the paddles are tied to the thwarts so that when it is carried, the weight of the boat is distributed by the paddle blades onto the shoulders as […] Continue Reading...
It has snowed off and on for the last five days, and as I’m writing this it is -6 degrees F and there is 8 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Winter has definitely arrived, and I’m getting excited for winter programs in February. This photo was taken a while back, showing a line […] Continue Reading...
Learning how to wash your clothing by hand with limited or no infrastructure, such as when on a long expedition or living off the grid for a length of time, is a useful skill to learn. It is one we are adding to our long-term programs because as the years go by, fewer and fewer […] Continue Reading...
Maybe the rest of the world is catching on. Here’s a link to an article about the use of human urine as fertilizer to contribute to food security: phys.org. From the article, :”Urine contains nitrogen and phosphorus, two essential nutrients for plant growth. Urine can thus serve as an almost cost-free and locally available nutrient […] Continue Reading...
Many of our alunmi have become Registered Maine Guides. A guide license is necessary in Maine to receive any form of payment for your services in the field. It is a state license which is granted at the end of a testing process. In recent years students on long courses have tried to get all […] Continue Reading...
The USDA recently updated it’s hardiness zone map with data from the last few years, and northern Maine is getting warmer. On the older maps, Masardis was zone 3B. On the updated map, we’re zone 4A. It’s an indicator of changing times. It also opens us up to a wider variety of perennials we can […] Continue Reading...
It has been cold and snowy in Aroostook County this week for the Autumn Woodsman course. We’re past the halfway mark on the course, and thus far we have covered a lot of ground, including axemanship, fire making and management, fire by friction, navigation, hot tents and stoves, woodstove lighting and management, and a bunch […] Continue Reading...
A small shelter next to a long fire, spending the night with no sleeping bag in the cold. The details all matter: The size of the fire, the quality of the fuel, the width of the bed, the distance from the edge of the fire to the back of the shelter, the overhead volume of […] Continue Reading...
One of the shelters students spend the night in on the Wilderness Bushcraft Semester is one with no insulation, just a fire to keep warm. This image is from that night a few weeks ago. It is a great learning experience with regard to the use of fire to keep warm, the science involved with […] Continue Reading...
Recorded on November 20, 2023. We just wrapped up the field school season, and in this episode I look back and reflect on the experiments we ran during 2023. I discuss the Expedition Instructor (XI) as a continuous 6-month, residential program, moving the Wilderness Canoe Expedition Semester back to May and the high waters of […] 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...
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...
Featured Posts
We’ve put up a lot of posts over the years. These are some of our most popular.
