Phil Schneider
Hometown: Cincinnati,
Ohio
NOLS Instructor since: May 2001
Courses taught: Caving, Mountaineering, Backpacking and Winter sections
Locations: Southwest, Alaska and Rocky Mountains
As a trip leader with the Purdue Outdoor Club, Phillip Schneider, who
graduated from Purdue University with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical
engineering, once backpacked a 56-mile trail in Indiana in 23 hours.
A NOLS Instructor since 2001, Schneider has gone on numerous personal
expeditions, including mountaineering trips to Alaska and three ascents
of Mount Rainier in Washington, caving trips in Arizona, Wyoming, Utah,
and New Mexico, and rock climbing in Zion National Park. When not working
NOLS courses, Schneider also likes photography, playing ultimate frisbee,
skiing in the Teton backcountry, and traveling to see friends and family.
Schneider says that he works for NOLS for a number of reasons, including
the “variety,
flexibility, great co-workers and working environment.”
“I’m helping people to learn real things about themselves and the
world through the outdoors,” he says. “And it is rewarding.”
Schneider says that he likes to teach map classes on his NOLS courses because
it is an ongoing process. “Topographic maps can be pretty complicated and
they are hard to use at first. It is neat to see people move through the learning
process and be pretty good at it by the end of a course in the backcountry,” he
says. One of his favorite memories from a NOLS course happened on an Alaska Outdoor
Educator course. It was July 4, 2002 and Schneider says that it was a grueling
day of backpacking and river crossing, but that they enjoyed cooking dinner over
a fire and “soaking up the 10 p.m. sunset of the Alaskan summer—they
last forever.”
Schneider believes that one of the greatest lessons people
learn on a NOLS course is to believe in themselves. His advice for anyone
considering a course
is to “go
for it!”
“A NOLS course is a unique opportunity and it will be what you
make of it,” he
says.
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