Tomorrow morning, I will hop on the bus with my coursemates and make the day and a half drive down to southern Utah to begin our 30-day Canyon Section. We'll return on April 18th.

We spent all of yesterday in classes and meetings with many of NOLS' key departments and their leaders, including meeting with the Executive Director, Human Resources, Environmental Policy, Risk Management, NOLS Pro (professional development services), and a luncheon with many employees from both NOLS Rocky Mountain and the NOLS International Branch. As a result of all that, I met one of the interns working in the video department, and after sharing my love and passion for video and my desire to have a camera in the field, he arranged for NOLS to loan me one of their cameras for this section. Since it's a small digital media video camera, it can replace my still camera in my pack and won't even add much extra weight, but will allow me to get footage that NOLS and I can share. It also means the content from my canyon section here will be even richer than the photos I've already been able to get.

Today we packed up everything we need for the section in packs, including rations (and my extra food, thank goodness!). My pack, even with extra food and a few little extras I'll probably be able to eliminate, weighs in at 45 lbs, a respectably low weight for the section. Every day, it should get at least 2 lbs lighter, as well! Woohoo!

Our canyon section will bring us to southern Utah Canyonland, exploring natural and human history in areas such as the Mancos Mesa, Gravel & Long Canyons, and the Dark Canyon area. I've included here some Google Maps snapshots to give you a peek at what the terrain in those areas is like, and so you can see the general progression of the course.

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View Larger Map

View Larger Map
When I return on April 18th, after some time catching up on things, I'll be sure to get another section recap blog up before I head out to our climbing section at Split Rock and Sinks Canyon.

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Labels: adventure, canyonland, canyons, connections, creative process, equipment, film, filmmaking, NOLS, outdoor educator, outdoors, utah, wyoming, youtube

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Labels: connections, contributions, design, filmmaking, lighting, new hampshire

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