'NOLS Wilderness Guide' is an outdoors classic

Last night, I finished reading “The National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Guide” by Mark Harvey, and the book was even better than I expected.

The “Wilderness Guide” is probably the best-known book in a series of books published by the National Outdoor Leadership School, aka, “The Harvard of the wilderness schools” and “the leader in wilderness education.”

For those of you unfamiliar with NOLS, it is a world famous school that conducts classes in a number of outdoor programs at eight locations throughout the world. Its headquarters is in Lander, Wyoming. Notable alumni of the school include CNN anchor Anderson Cooper; Sebastian Junger, the author of “The Perfect Storm;” the late John F. Kennedy Jr. and most U.S. astronauts.

Published by Simon & Schuster in 1999, the “Wilderness Guide” is a detailed handbook for backpackers and draws on the years of expertise and experience of NOLS instructors to provide readers with expert guidelines for a number of outdoor activities. This book also won the prestigious National Outdoor Book Award in 2000.

Topics covered in this 268-page book included expedition planning, route planning, ration planning, a detailed equipment primer, dressing for the outdoors, camping techniques, Leave No Trace camping, camping in the vicinity of bears, backcountry traveling techniques, leadership and expedition behavior, map and compass use, emergency procedures, backcountry weather forecasting and cooking in the backcountry.

This book also included an outstanding list of books for further reading. Books on that list included:
- “Staying Found: The Complete Map and Compass Handbook” by June Fleming
- “The Complete Walker” by Colin Fletcher
- “Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills” by Don Graydon
- “Soft Paths” by Bruce Hampton and David Cole
- “The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch” by Joseph Wood Krutch
- “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold
- “The NOLS Cookery” by Claudia Pearson
- “The New Wilderness Handbook” by Paul Petzoldt
- “NOLS Wilderness Mountaineering” by Phil Powers
- “The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors” by David Seidman
- “NOLS Wilderness First Aid” by Tod Shimelpfenig and Linda Lindsey
- “Marking the Sparrow’s Fall: Wallace Stegner’s American West” by Wallace Stegner
- “Medicine for Mountaineering” by James A. Wilkerson

As I mentioned earlier, the NOLS “Wilderness Guide” is one in a series of outdoor guides published by the school for use in their courses. Here are a list of the other titles in the series – “Backcountry Cooking,” “Backcountry Nutrition,” “Bear Essentials,” “Cookery,” “Soft Paths,” “Wilderness Ethics,” “Wilderness Medicine,” "Wilderness Mountaineering,” “Wilderness Navigation,” “Wilderness Wisdom” and “Winter Camping.”

In the end, I really enjoyed reading the “Wilderness Guide,” and I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the series.

Have any of you had the chance to read the “Wilderness Guide” or another of the other NOLS books? If so, what did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.

For more information about the National Outdoor Leadership School and to request a free NOLS course catalog, visit NOLS’s Web site at www.nols.edu.