Overview
“Become a Backcountry Leader” takes everything Five Miles Further’s Six Systems framework teaches about backpacking readiness and puts it to work on YOUR goal trip. This is where you move from understanding the systems to actually planning and leading a specific route, start to finish, for backpackers ready to go from general readiness to their own trip.
What you’ll learn:
- Mapping & Route Planning: how to read maps and build your own route, plus the software and tools that make it easier
- Permitting & Land Use: the registration norms and permit portals your route requires
- Elevation & Daily Cadence: pulling distance and elevation from your route to build a realistic daily mileage plan, with rest days built in
- Fitness & Training Readiness: building a training plan sized to your route’s actual demands, and checking your own readiness against your group’s
- Nutrition & Hydration: calculating food and water needs against your route’s actual duration and terrain
- Weather & Clothing Choices: reading a forecast for your trip’s actual window and building a gear list to match it
- Medical Response: sizing a first-aid kit to your trip’s duration, remoteness, and group size
- Risk Management & Decision-Making: planning alternate and escape routes, assessing risk in the field, and making the calls a leader has to make for the group
You’ll work through your own route in a small pod with other students, and your instructor for feedback. You’ll also get a private one-on-one session with your instructor to work through your plan directly, outside the pod setting.
This course builds trip-planning and leadership skill. It does not include wilderness first responder training or guiding certification. A private one-on-one session is scheduled individually with each student sometime before the capstone, outside this weekly grid.
Timeline
Session 1
Mapping & Route Planning, then Permitting & Land Use: building your actual route first, then the registration norms and permit processing
Session 2
Mapping Tools: software options, map-and-compass versus digital, and managing your trip data
Session 3
Plotting the Route: pulling distance and elevation off your route, the Five Miles Further rating system, and setting a rhythm with your own rest days built in
Session 4
Fitness & Training Readiness: building a training plan sized to your route's actual mileage and elevation, within the timeframe you have to prepare
Session 5
Nutrition & Hydration for Your Trip: calculating food and water weight against your route's actual duration and terrain
Session 6
Weather & Clothing Choices: reading the forecast for your trip's actual window and building a gear list to match it
Session 7
Medical Response: sizing a kit to your trip's actual duration, remoteness, and group size, and taking responsibility for your group's physical safety
Session 8
Capstone: assembling the complete trip plan, plus the judgment side of leading: risk management, alternate and escape-route planning, risk assessment, and decision-making for your group, closing with your communication plan
Event Details
Pre-Event Communication:
After registering, you'll receive a confirmation email containing exact directions to the venue, parking details, and a brief outline of the topics we will be covering.
Multi-Person Pricing Structure
• Multi-Person Discount: 10% off for parties of 2 or more (must enroll in one transaction).
• Youth (16 and below): 25% off.