EXPOSE
To Infinity and Beyond— As a Team By Tre-C Dumais and Ben Urmston NOLS Instructors
Alaska’s Talkeetna Range. Courtesy of Tre-C Dumais and Ben Urmston
18 | THE LEADER
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veryone wanted to know: what’s it going to be like? They were referring to instructing a NOLS Custom Education course with the first-ever private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Really, we instructors had no idea what it was going to be like. Coming from different backgrounds and with an average age in the 60s, this team of four were not were not typical NOLS students. We were heading into Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains in June. We had five days. And they barely knew each other. Twenty-four hours into our course, however, there was no time to ponder such things. It was hailing, thunder and lightning were nearby, and visibility regarding bears and navigation was very low. We were tired, wet, and hungry and I remember thinking, as we set up the tarp, “I haven’t been this cold in years!” It was very different from their future experience on a space station with a relatively constant temperature in the 70s. Nonetheless, these conditions gave the crew an opportunity to learn about each other. They had to work as a team, sharing responsibilities, looking after tent-mates and cook-group members. They did their best
