The leader in wilderness education
Last Chance: Spring Semester Scholarships
Are you ready for a NOLS expedition? With $2M in scholarships annually, NOLS is committed to supporting your dreams of taking an extended wilderness education semester. As we approach the 2020 Spring season, we have a limited amount of scholarship awards still available. Choose from seven locations around the world and get ready for a life-changing experience.
Featured Courses
Spring Semesters in India
Hike deep into the Himalaya. Drink spiced cups of chai and challenge yourself with long days of backpacking. Live with an Indian family and deepen your cultural awareness with classes in ecology and history. On this course, you’ll build outdoor skills, cultural competence, and leadership while exploring a region of India.
New Zealand Backpacking
Explore the rugged interior of New Zealand’s South Island, a land of mountains, waterfalls, rivers, tundra, and forests. Spend your days climbing high ridges and exploring lush valleys as you focus on building skills in navigation and peer leadership with your group. Spy native tui birds and other wildlife found only in this region.
More Courses
Featured Location
NOLS Mexico
Learn how to handle a Drascombe Longboat in the Sea of Cortez or paddle a kayak along the coastline, making camp on a different beach each night. While backpacking, practice speaking Spanish with local communities or learn about the unique ecology of the region’s coastal desert. Whether you’re backpacking in the Sonoran desert or paddling in Conception Bay, you’ll get to soak in a new landscape and culture as you learn lifelong outdoor skills.
NOLS Mexico Courses
Stories from the Wild
Stories
The Big Picture How I Found My Grit in Baja
Sarah Buer | January 25, 2017
Three years ago, as part of a gap year, I took part in a semester-long, eighty-day NOLS course in Baja California. This course consisted of 15 students and 4 highly-trained instructors embarking on a... Read More
Stories
My Semester in Baja, as Told in Food and Sunsets [Photo Essay]
Claire Burgeson | January 22, 2019
On the seventh day of my Spring Semester in Baja, we bought a goat.We were one week into the semester, and for the whole week, we had been talking about the possibility of buying this goat from the.... Read More
Stories
Brave Not Perfect
Mairin Rogers | March 19, 2019
My mom always told me that I was brave. Brave for learning to play a new instrument, brave for trying out for a sports team, brave for venturing off on my own. During my three months in the backcountry.... Read More
“NOLS taught me the secret to great teamwork is great leadership … I learned that leadership isn’t exclusive to those in charge; anybody can demonstrate leadership.”