Rediscovery.org

CAMP SKILLS, CULTURE & NATURAL HISTORY TRAINING PROGRAM

Location: “SOARING SPIRITS” Rediscovery Camp, Kitwanga, B.C.
Dates: August 21-31st, 2010

The Rediscovery International Foundation is offering a unique training program at its new Soaring Spirits Camp located on the legendary Skeena River. Surrounded by majestic mountains towering to nearly 3,000 meters, and with five million wild salmon swimming past its shores, eagles soaring overhead and white ‘Spirit Bears’ grazing in nearby meadows - this is a setting that will surely inspire.

The 10-day training package has four goals: 1) to teach camp skills necessary to running healthy and safe wilderness adventure camps, 2) to offer hands-on instruction in sustainable living through organic gardening, composting, and wind/solar renewable energy technologies, 3) to teach natural history interpretation techniques in a wide range of settings for camp naturalists and the growing ecotourism industry, and 4) to offer immersion educational experiences in four distinct First Nation cultures – the Wet’suwet’en, Gitksan, Nisga’a and Tsimshian.

Important Documents:

Soaring Spirits 2010 Itinerary

This fun filled training will have three major focuses:

A) CAMP SKILLS:

• camp set up & safety standards
• day hikes preparations and workshops in the outdoors
• bush skills basic: fire building, shelter making, direction finding
• food gathering and Indigenous ethnobotany
• water safety & canoeing
• wildlife tracking & identification
• overnight expedition planning & implementation
• selecting safe solo sites & monitoring solos
• conducting Rediscovery games and large group activities

B) CULTURAL IMMERSION:

Trainees will have the privilege of visiting the sacred homelands of four First Nations:

• Wet’suwet’en culture will be introduced to trainees at Morrice Falls where families have gaffed and trapped salmon for thousands of years.
• Gitksan culture will be presented through stories that inspired the world’s oldest and largest collection of totem poles at ancestral villages like Kispiox, Gitamaax, Kitwanga and Kitwankool. A traditional canoe journey down the Skeena, the “River of Mist” will bring this ancestral highway alive in unforgettable ways.
• Nisga’a culture will come to life along the Nass River where Canada’s most recent volcanic eruption buried three Nisga’a villages more than a century ago. At Kincolith, trainees will enjoy a native home stay experience and learn the ways of these Nisga’a masters of the sea.
• Tsimshian culture will come alive at Kitselas Canyon, a National Historic Site, where several villages controlled trade along the Skeena River for countless centuries.

C) NATURAL HISTORY INTERPRETATION:

• Alpine ecology, trainees will hike to spectacular wildflower meadows above timber line where marmots, lemmings, wolves and mountain goat roam free
• Lessons in interior forest types, coastal temperate rainforests, bog, lake and river ecology will offer further interpretive skills
• View grizzly bears feeding on chum salmon at one of the worlds best viewing sites ( trainees will travel into Southeast Alaska), and will learn lessons in glaciation at Bear Glacier and Salmon Glacier, the 5th largest ice field in Canada
• Marine biology explorations will include inter-tidal life and marine mammals: seals, sea lions, orcas, grey whales and humpback whales along the Pacific Coast
• Volcanic forces will come to life for trainees at the Nisga’s Memorial lava beds, where a cataclysmic eruption buried villages in the last century
• Salmon habitat protection and salmon life cycles will be an important focus of study, along with fishing, smoking and jarring this vital resource

COST/PERSON: $1,700

For More Information, please contact Thom Henley at:  ThomHenley@gmail.com