Our minimal-gear hike in the White Mountains was fun and a great learning experience.  We covered a decent amount of ground, with the students carrying everything they needed on homemade pack frames and using their homemade rope as pack straps.  They built their shelters as we went, and experienced what it’s like to travel with [...]

Our new video, Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal 11: Earth Skills Semester Program Week 4 is live on our video page. It’s also up on our Youtube channel, and will be on our Blip.tv channel in a few days. Enjoy!

This morning we’re off to the White Mountains for a walkabout, or limited gear hike.  We’ll be there for several nights.  The point of the exercise is for the students to put into action the skills they have learned thus far, as well as to explore some new and beautiful country.  We’ve planned several routes, [...]

Some of our students made a music video on braintanning last week to share with their friends and family. I had no role in the production, or editing.  It looks like they were having fun to me. See it on youtube. Enjoy.

We had a great day poling on the upper Saco river yesterday. We were joined by writer/photographer Christopher Percy Collier, who was working on a magazine story about canoe poling. From the put-in we poled upstream for several mies. It was slow going as the river was running at 175 cubic feet per second, which [...]

Today we’re off to pole and fish the upper Saco river. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, and although brisk, the water will still be warm enough for a midday swim. I’m bringing my fly rod and the video camera, so hopefully we’ll shoot some footage that will make it into this week’s Bushcraft [...]

We spent the entire day yesterday exploring the woods and looking for plants and mushrooms to identify and collect, as well as tracks to cast and scat to examine.  Our travels led us a few miles into the woods, around an old beaver pond, along a stream, and through a variety of habitats.  We found [...]

Today marks the start of week 4 of the Earth Skills Semester Program. This week we’ll be working on a new shelter, finishing our braintanned buckskins, and roughing out longbows. We’ll also spend a day poling and fly fishing a nearby river, and continuing with our studies of the natural world. Yesterday morning we put [...]

Our new video, Jack Mountain Bushcraft Journal – Episode 10, is live. You can see it at jackmtn.com/video. Have a look and let us know what you think.

Our semester students all passed their hunter safety tests, so each of them can now legally purchase a hunting license. We encourage all of our students to take a state-sponsored hunter’s safety course, which is a basic firearms course in addition to the content on hunting. We also recommend that they take a bowhunter safety [...]

This is turning into the season of the porcupine for me.  While we were on the edge of a swamp looking at some of the semester students’ shelters yesterday I heard a commotion of crow calls.  I looked in their direction, and while I didn’t see them or what had gotten them so riled up, [...]

This Sunday we’ll be continuing our series of sustainability workshops with one on sourdough baking. The workshop starts at 2 pm. If you’re planning on attending, be sure to bring a container or plastic bag so you can bring home some of our sourdough starter. Our sustainability workshops are free, but there is a suggested [...]

Another busy week (week 3 of 10) is near completed in the Earth Skills Semester Program.  Early in the week we havested a tree for bow staves.  We felled it with an axe, sectioned it with a crosscut saw, split it with wedges, and debarked it using draw knives.  Yesterday we started scraping deer hides [...]

Our new video featuring the second week of the Earth Skills Semester Program is live on our new video page. You can also see it on youtube. Yesterday we had torrential rains which slowed us down a bit, but last night I picked up a bunch of frozen deer hides which we’ll be tanning as [...]

Pepe the porcupine has been sleeping on our stone oven.  It seems as if he thinks it’s a cave and a good place to den.  Yesterday morning someone watched him come out of the oven and have his morning stretch.

The Earth Skills Semester Program week 1 video is live on youtube.  We’ll get them onto our site soon, but for the time being you can see all of our videos on our youtube channel.

The video from our recent canoe and bushcraft trip in northern Quebec is live on youtube. We’ll be adding the video to our website soon, but for the time being you can see all of our videos on our youtube channel.