NOLS Blog

Students learn to be adaptable and resourceful. They learn to persevere and to pursue goals doggedly. Those are life skills – skills that will stay with students long after they leave their mountain, desert, jungle or ocean classroom.

Fifty years ago on March 4, 1965, Judge Jack Nicholas and Paul Petzoldt signed papers establishing the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander,' current NOLS Executive Director John Gans told a large gathering at the Lander Community and Convention Center. 'While Paul was a visionary, he did not envision that today we would be an international school that taught courses in 28 countries, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have chosen ‘National’ for the name.'

This month, on October 8th through 10th, the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) will celebrate its 50th Anniversary with an alumni reunion full of events and merry-making. The celebration will take place in Lander, Wyoming, the school’s home base. In attendance will be Liz Nichol, RMFI’s Office Manager, who completed her first NOLS course as a student in 1967

As part of the NOLS 50th Anniversary Celebration, the 10th Mountain Division is hosting a Living History Display featuring the uniforms and equipment that Paul Petzoldt, founder of NOLS, helped develop for the Army. The display includes mountaineering equipment, skis, sleeping bags, packs, climbing boots, and a display of military mountaineering medicine from that time.

A contract that a young man signed releasing a Wyoming-based wilderness training academy from liability before his death on a 2011 backpacking trip to India bars his survivors from suing for damages, a federal judge has ruled.

Andrew Altepeter fell in love with the outdoors at a young age after a transformational hike up to Knapsack Col in the Wind River Range. Pushed past his limits by his father, incredible views of the northwestern Wind River Range awed him. He was hooked. This passion stayed with him through four years at Whitman College, where he regularly participated in the school’s outdoor program. Next came work in the energy industry as a drill-site geologist, but still he managed to find time to adventure when not at work. However he soon moved on, taking an instructor course with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). There, he started to learn about lightweight hiking. “By summer of 2010 I had worked a few courses, and I was hooked,” he says. And five years later he shows no signs of slowing down. He says the chance to be an instructor has “provided an avenue to support transformational experiences for others” and helps him appreciate the importance of the wilderness. Plus it has given him the opportunity to hone his ultralight hiking skills and how he teaches these skills to others.

Molly Herber, Staff Writer at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) recommends a recipe that’ll knock the socks off any camper: backcountry pizza.

My life has been connected with the outdoors, as an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School and now as the leader of a conservation organization.

A Big City Mountaineers teen trip opens a window on some of the more daunting challenges of increasing youth diversity in the outdoors. By Corey Buhay

I wanted to go Lander, home of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), and to the Wind River Range, where the fishing was supposedly epic.

The Lander Valley Leadership Expedition has become a tradition for upcoming seniors at Lander Valley High School who elect to serve as 'Senior Mentors'.

One of the toughest aspects of the training is NOLS Expeditionary Training. This involves the whole class roughing it out in the wilderness for 10 days.