From north of the Arctic Circle in the Brooks Range to the Southeast Alaska archipelago, NOLS knows Alaska.
Photo: Shawn Stratton
An Alaska Backpacking course is a wilderness expedition in every sense, allowing you to explore beautiful landscapes in either the Talkeetna Mountains, the Alaska Range, or Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where the trees disappear and the land stretches into alpine tundra plains with a backdrop of rugged and heavily eroded mountains. Up here where it’s still light at midnight, you’ll follow the tracks of the seasonal caribou migration.
How to hike on tundra; identify the birds, flowers, wildlife, and plants of the North Country; and keep warm, dry, and happy even when it’s wet are all part of your backcountry curriculum.
You’ll become a seasoned wilderness traveler, learning how to read a map, navigate off trail, and scan the horizon for grizzly, black bears, moose, wolves, and Dall sheep.
Effectively leading your peers in the backcountry will transfer to life back at home as well.
Photo: Chris Bessonette
“People talk about wild areas all the time,
but Alaska has a wildness and beauty unlike anywhere else. When
our group finally made it to a summit, we just went wild. I’ll
never forget that feeling of being on a mountain where hardly anyone
else has ever been.”
Ryan Hughes
Semester in Alaska, 1999
University of Maine Student
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NOLS ALASKA...
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