We had a quick transition from the Wilderness First Responder section to the backpacking expedition. After the students finished their testing on the last day (everyone passed!), we began sorting through what we wanted to take backpacking and what we wanted to send back to the NOLS basecamp. We also had to sort through our 14 days worth of food and divide it into a five day ration and a 9 day ration. The five day ration would be the portion that we would start with and the remainder would be brought out to us at our resupply point.
Our first day of hiking went well. We chugged our way up a trail that was 3 miles long but gained 2,000 feet of elevation. The weather that day was cool, dry and windy--pretty good overall for hiking in Patagonia. When we reached the area that we wanted to camp we sent some scouting teams out to see if they could find suitable places for all of us to set up tents and kitchens. Our desire was to have each tent group within a couple of hundred feet of each other but far enough apart to spread out our impact. At NOLS we do our best to follow the seven Leave
No Trace principles which are guidelines to help backcountry travelers to make choices and conduct themselves in a way that minimizes their impact. The second LNT principle is "Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces." We were able to find some areas in the forest that had very little vegetation or were just plain dirt and duff. Once our tents were set up we started cooking dinner and then met in the evening for a group debrief of the day. We also had the students think of a couple of goals that they wanted to accomplish during the backpacking section. Pedro then led an exercise where he had them write their goal on a small piece of paper and place the piece of paper a few feet outside of a six foot diameter circle. Then all the students stood inside the circle (close quarters!) and had to figure out how to reach their own slip of paper without stepping foot outside of the circle or even placing a hand outside the circle. After two or three minutes of discussion, Pedro (who was facilitating the exercise) told them they couldn't talk anymore and had to continue the exercise in silence. They used hand motions to continue to communicate, but also just started trying things and learning what works by trial and error. In total it took about 15 minutes for all 14 students to "reach their goals" and became a nice metaphor to illustrate the importance of teamwork to overcome the challenges that lie ahead.
