85 COMBINED YEARS OF LEADERSHIP NOLS: Celebrating 55 Years of Wilderness Education and Leadership Training By Anne McGowan NOLS Development Communications Coordinator With Reporting by Kate Dernocoeur
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020 has been a profoundly challenging year for most people, businesses, and organizations around the world, and NOLS is no exception. From mid-March, when we became aware of coronavirus and the majority of our employees were sent home, to the soon-to-follow shuttering of most campuses and the layoffs of many of those valued employees, NOLS locations around the globe felt the impact of this pandemic. Still, we have much to celebrate as we mark NOLS’ 55th year and the 30th anniversary of NOLS Wilderness Medicine, as well as the joining of those two powerhouses in wilderness education under one banner 20 years ago. While we can’t gather to toast this high point, we can look back at our history and raise a glass (or maybe a Nalgene) to all who came along with us, learned with us, stumbled with us, and helped us get to this milestone. It’s been an extraordinary adventure and we’re glad you were on the trail with us. As origin stories go, NOLS—founded as the National Outdoor Leadership School—has a rich one. Fifty-five years ago, a charismatic, middle-aged mountain climber named Paul Petzoldt started the school from scratch, bent on instructing others how to teach mountaineering and leadership skills from a base outside the sleepy Rocky Mountain town of Lander, Wyoming.
Little did anyone guess—except perhaps Paul himself—that this motley outfit would go on to become the most respected outdoor school in the world, responsible for teaching leadership, wilderness skills and, soon, wilderness medicine to more than 320,000 students in the last five and a half decades. Paul was already 57 years old in 1965, and had wide and deep experience in mountaineering, when he saw a need for an outdoor school that “taught the teachers.” He was also a “master scrounger” in the words of Kate Dernocoeur, the author of A Worthy Expedition: The History of NOLS, and, after plenty of planning, spent the spring of 1965 prepping for NOLS’ first course. Scabbing for gear and wool clothing (never cotton) at military surplus and thrift stores in the West and Midwest, Petzoldt was able to outfit the 43 young men who’d enrolled on that July expedition, before leading them into the Wind River Mountains. With NOLS’ roots in mountaineering, lessons taught on that first course included climbing, hiking, shelter building, map reading, fishing and packing. When the course was
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