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Southwest Outdoor Educator - Backpacking and Rock Climbing
 

Are you an active or aspiring outdoor educator? If so, we’ve designed this course for you. This is your opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for teaching and leading field-based wilderness education programs.

While in the desert, you’ll learn “hard skills,” such as backcountry travel, adapting minimum-impact techniques to an arid ecosystem, first aid, and map reading. We will also give you an inside track into the fundamentals of running wilderness education courses with an overview of program supervision, risk management and NOLS administrative practices.

After building a foundation of program knowledge, the course dives into a 19-day backpacking expedition in the remote Kofa National Wildlife Refuge where you’ll learn the backcountry living skills you need to lead others on wilderness trips. You’ll travel among saguaro cactus, mesquite, ocotillo and palo verde trees where quail, songbirds and raptors share the skies and desert bighorn sheep, mountain lions and javelina move across the land.

Then 10 days at Cochise Stronghold, a maze of granite pinnacles in the Dragoon Mountains where the Chiricahua Apache and their leader, Cochise, took refuge, rounds out the curriculum. Renowned for its excellent climbing, the Cochise provides an ideal classroom for learning rock climbing skills such as anchor systems, knots, and top rope site management.

Southwest Outdoor Educator - Backpacking and Rock Climbing
Duration: 31 days
Age: 18 and Over (Average age: 21)
Tuition:

$3,825

Dates:

Jan. 10-Feb. 9, 2008

College Credit:
(Optional)

6 Semester Credit Hours
2 Hours Environmental Ethics
2 Hours Leadership Techniques
2 Hours Risk Assessment

Course start/end: Tucson, Arizona
Equipment Deposit: $350
Fly in/out: Tucson, Arizona
Downloads:

Course Description (pdf)
Equipment List (pdf)


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Related Courses
Pacific Northwest Outdoor Educator
Rocky Mountain Outdoor Educator
Yukon Outdoor Educator

Southwest Outdoor Educator - Backpacking and Rock Climbing
Instructor Lauren Reich tops out on a multi-pitch at Cochise Stronghold. You'll benefit directly from the experience and skill of your instructors.
Photo: Rainbow Weinstock
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"NOLS was my first experience of taking something that was hard and overcoming it. I came away from NOLS with a feeling that the outdoors was something I belonged to and that belonged to me."

Janice Bloom
Southwest Outdoor Educators Course, 1997; Wind River Wilderness, 1988
High School teacher

 

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