(View additional Outdoor Leadership programs here.)

This nationally recognized program is a condensed version of American Alpine Institute’s Wilderness Education Association (WEA) National Standards Program (NSP). This 14-day program is specifically designed for professionals with significant previous outdoor leadership experience. Takes place on Mount Baker and in the North Cascades of Washington. Please read our general introduction to the WEA NSP certification program.

The Professional Short course (PSC) is the “fast track” to becoming a certified Outdoor Leader. Participants are typically current instructors with Outward Bound or NOLS, graduate students in recreation, practitioners in the private sector, or professors in the discipline of recreation or outdoor education. Many participants use this program to expand their leadership and technical skills for use in their current program, while others use it to prepare for the role of instructor with the Wilderness Education Association, the American Alpine Institute, or other professional organizations dealing with outdoor education, the teaching of leadership, and/or the teaching of technical climbing skills.

The curriculum is similar to that in the 30-day National Standards Program, but it is covered at a more rigorous pace and involves participants in delivering lessons beginning in the first few days of course. Less time will be spent on basic camping skills because participants arrive with a solid basic skill set. Emphasis is on expanding prior knowledge in the areas of leadership and group dynamics and developing technical alpine skills for glacier climbing and alpine travel. Substantial time is spent on problem solving in a variety of leadership and program execution scenarios.

Outdoor educators carry with them the responsibility to protect the wild lands we live and work in. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics has helped create basic principals which can be taught to the general public in order to greatly reduce user impacts. This course includes an LNT Master Educator component which involves discussion, practice, and teaching of the seven Leave No Trace principles.

Certification upon successful completion of the PSC:

• "WEA Outdoor Leader"
• "LNT Master Educator”

Prior to the start of the course, we will send you a few course topics to research, and during the course, you will have opportunities to further develop your lesson plans and deliver them to your peers on course. You will also participate in the process of analyzing and assessing lessons presented and activities led by your peers in the field.

While judgment is the foundation of leadership, specific educational techniques are the most important aids in facilitating the transference of skills to others. An outdoor educator understands that specific skills, objective information, and partially objective/partially subjective processes for observation, interpretation, and analysis can be taught to students and that all can aid the student in developing an ability to make sound decisions and judgments. The Professional Short Course explores a variety of teaching methodologies and learning styles while working to improve each participant’s content in presentations, clarity of delivery, style of delivery, and understanding of all subjects and skills included in the program curriculum.

Effective outdoor leaders are able to teach and model the techniques and skills necessary to travel safely and comfortably in the outdoors. This curriculum point will be emphasized through lesson planning and the delivery of individual lessons, and it will be followed by evaluations from peers, instructors, and the presenter himself or herself. Additionally, you will learn as outdoor leaders how to facilitate transference in students - the ability and process of taking what is learned in one situation and applying it to others.

Participants should emerge from this program as good designers of curricula and itineraries, as effective leaders and teachers of leadership, and as safe and skilled alpine climbers.

The first portion of this course takes place on the glaciers of Mount Baker. During this phase you will acquire and practice the technical mountaineering skills necessary to safely travel over complex alpine and glaciated terrain. We will focus on crampon and ice axe technique, self-rescue and team crevasse rescue, hazard assessment, route finding, and the fine points of rope team travel as we introduce the comprehensive eighteen-point WEA curriculum.

For the second portion of the program, we move to the spectacular, glaciated Mount Shuksan to provide a new venue for the practice and application of technical skills and to focus on several facets of outdoor leadership including lesson planning, teaching methods, group dynamics, and leadership styles in technical terrain. Both of these venues offer an ideal terrain in which to learn and practice outdoor leadership in a non-contrived setting. The alpine climbing is also some of the very best in North America.

1.Teaching and leadership

• Teaching methods – an overview of learning theory and lesson planning
• Teaching practicum – participants will present at least two lessons ranging from 20 - 45 minutes each
• Leadership styles and methodologies
• Situational leadership – theory and practice
• Group dynamics and the concept of “expedition behavior.”
• Leadership practicum – A minimum of two days in a leadership role facilitating the decision making process, group dynamics, programming, and risk management through proper route planning and finding, hazard assessments, travel techniques, and situational leadership.
• Self-assessment – over range of skill competences including educational, humanistic, and technical skills
• Risk management – assessment and mitigation of hazards through objective techniques as well as the physical positioning of the instructor and positioning within interpersonal relationships.
• Nutrition and Rations planning - food planning for the trip; how to cook nutritional meals utilizing the “pantry system.”
• LNT Training and Certification – teaching methodologies
• WEA 18-point Curriculum (download pdf)

2. Alpine Travel and Climbing Skills

• selection & use of personal equipment
• selection & use of ropes, knots, & harnesses
• design concepts, selection, & use of technical equipment
• the uses of map, compass, & altimeter
• principles of glacier travel & route finding
• belaying techniques on rock, snow, & ice
• the concept and application of the self-belay
• self-arrest from all positions
• free climbing technique on rock, snow, & ice
• French, German, and American cramponing techniques
• interrelationship, choice between, & application of all principal ice axe positions
• rappelling & prusiking
• glissading for speed & ease of descent

3. Objective Hazards Evaluation and Self-Rescue Skills

• evaluation & prediction of mountain weather
• introduction to the assessment of natural hazards
• individual & team crevasse rescue techniques

4. Environmental Skills

• Glaciology – Introduction to the physics of glacier formation & movement for use in route finding, route evaluation, and hazard analysis
• Ecology – Assessment of the fragility & vitality of several ecosystems
• LNT Training and Certification - Comprehensive coverage of Leave No Trace travel, camping, & climbing skills and methodologies

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