September 14, 2009

Back at the Homestead
by Cori Stanek

They’re home! After nine days of hiking and camping in the Swan Range and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the students are back at the homestead—a little sore, but happy, healthy, and charging forward with backcountry vigor!

The trip took the students up the Swan face via the Smith Creek drainage into Condon Basin for more WFA training and a geology primer, then over Smith Creek Pass into the Bob Marshall Wilderness where they encountered (and survived) three days of rain and snow.

Asha, Tyler, Will, Leah and the rest of the crew with Tom Parker and Rod Boothby—learning about pack animals as a means of travel in the mountains..

Leah, Dan, Celeste and the students learn to build emergency fires in a September snow.

Field instructor Zach Wallace helps students coax a fire out of a very wet day.

The next few days brought the L&L crew up the Palisade Creek trail to Lion Creek Pass. Where we set up camp in a sweet little meadow on Lion Divide.

The view of Tierra North from the Lion Divide campsite.

Colleen en route to Owl Peak.

The final days of the trip brought an excursion to Owl Peak for a day of orienteering in view of the Swan Range’s highest peaks, and the inevitable hike out of the backcountry through the shaded Cedar stands of the Lion Creek drainage.

Field instructor Steve Lamar details Owl Peak’s history as a fire lookout to the L&L students.
Journaling at the top of Owl Peak.		The landscape perspective of Owl Peak allows for the perfect opportunity to practice map and compass skills of triangulation and orienteering.

It was a rigorous nine days of Biogeography and Field Skills—as well as smiling faces, hot drinks, and huckleberries.