Dan Bristol, a 19-year-old resident of the The Little City, recently completed a 86-day expedition through the Southwest and Pacific Northwest in late June with the National Outdoors Leadership School (NOLS) as part of their Semester on the Borders course.
The course was split into four sections: backpacking, climbing, sea kayaking and sailing; two or three instructors accompanied students on each section.
The first two sections were in the Southwest desert and the final two were on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Bristol and his course mates began the expedition with a backpacking journey in the Gila Wilderness and Aldo Leopard Wilderness of New Mexico and continued with rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park, California and Cohsie Stronghold, Arizona.
On the second half of the expedition, the students went sea kayaking through the Johnstone Strait, The Broughton Archipelago and Queen Charlotte Strait on the northeast side of Vancouver Island before concluding the trip with a 393-mile exploration of British Columbia’s Strait of Georgia.
