Get a Crash Course in Backpacking

Wyoming-based National Outdoor Leadership School offers a range of opportunities for youth and adults to learn important skills, from leadership to communication to wilderness safety — using the outdoors as a classroom.

The NOLS Scandinavia branch is a particularly attractive one, set some 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. Courses range from 12-day backpacking courses aimed at adults 23 and older to month-long trips that combine backpacking and kayaking instruction. Groups often traverse parts of Sweden and Norway, whose border is just a few kilometers from base.

These trips are designed to teach concrete skills as well as soft ones. You’ll learn to work as a team with other travelers, cooking, navigating, and making decisions on trip specifics together. And you’ll learn important skills that will keep you safe in the wilderness, including compass navigation, GPS, map reading and a range of other skills to manage risks and deal with emergencies.

NOLS also prides itself on teaching the culture and history of the region its students travel in, so instructors are extremely knowledgeable about Sami culture and World War II history on the Scandinavia courses, for example.

On its adult courses, NOLS allows for significant student input, so the participants are guiding and directing the program’s evolution and content. And as an adult, that’s a particularly empowering element.