Riley Hopeman
Position at NOLS: NOLS Bus Representative
NOLS Course: Rocky Mountain Adventure
Riley Hopeman is the newest member of the NOLS Bus crew. He officially joined the team of travelers in 2006, but began his relationship with NOLS over nine years ago as a 1997 Rocky Mountain Adventure student. A year after romping through the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the Lander, Wyoming native spent a summer issuing gear from NOLS Rocky Mountain, the same branch that outfitted his course. However protracted, the eight-year NOLS hiatus that followed proved rewarding and productive.
Hopeman majored in Physical Geography and Journalism with an emphasis on Public Relations (he acknowledges and jokes about the dissimilarity of the two interests in the same breath) at the University of Wyoming, where he also achieved great athletic success. A competitive nordic skier, Hopeman was the 2005 8.5km Classic national champion and helped his team achieve the national championship the next season.
No doubt about it, skiing is an effective mode of transportation; Hopeman’s mastered it. But after six years leading pack trips for the Lander Llama Company, a Lander-based outdoor guide service, he’s as comfortable steering domesticated camelids as he is skating on snow. Moving from skis to llamas to, most recently, a NOLS Recycled Vegetable Oil-powered vehicle may seem like large jumps, but Hopeman’s handled them well.
Traveling with the NOLS Bus will let Hopeman not only educate students about leadership, backcountry skills and environmental ethics, but also satisfy his travel bug. You can catch Hopeman and his NOLS Bus crewmates when they embark on the “Creating a Climate for Change” campaign. |
