Today marks the start of the spring, 2025 Wilderness Bushcraft Semester, and the 2025 edition of the Expedition Instructor (XI) training program. This is our 65th long-term immersion program. I can see them all in my mind’s eye, stretched out over the past 26 years.
For arrival day yesterday, mother nature decided to roll out the red carpet and we had five fresh inches of snow, but it warmed over the course of the day and much of it melted. Snow this time of year doesn’t last long, but it slows the long-term melt. There are two local spots where the snow takes the longest to melt. One is few hundred yards down the road that I call the Masardis glacier. It’s a spot that gets no southern exposure where big drifts accumulate because of the topography. I’ve seen snow there as late as May 18th. The other spot is the access road into the field school. Much of it also receives no sunlight from the south, and in a few spots the snow accumulates into deep drifts due to northwest winds. Also, the snow is packed from running the snowmobile up and down during winter programs. The result is in a few spots, it is some of the last snow to melt, and this year is no exception. As it is slowly melting and full of water, it is also heavy; too heavy for our small tractor to move with the loader. A few years I’ve paid a guy with a bulldozer to open the road up, but not this year. This year I’m waiting. In a few days, maybe a week, on a warm day where the snow is soft and slushy, I’ll put the truck into 4 wheel drive and try to make it through the deep spots. Once you get through once this time of year, the wheel ruts in the snow aid in the melting process and the rest disappears quickly.
Some years we’ve hauled people’s gear down the hill is sleds by hand. Some years we’ve hauled it in by snowmobile. After talking to the class we decided to stay up the hill for at least a few days. I’ve been developing the area behind the Athenaeum into a campsite and teaching area for a few years now and it has all of the comforts of camp: outhouse, hand pump well, cooking and fire area, and a few tent sites. The official name for the spot is Moonshine Hill, a name coined by a friend.
So today we start the long process of training the next generation of guides and instructors. Similar to a big expedition, after all the planning and preparation, it feels so good to get going. I can see the finish line nine weeks away, and we’ve got a long way to go to get there.
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