Oct 8, 2021
This week on the show, I speak with Chris Agnew. Chris has dedicated his career in education to combining immersive learning with more traditional learning models. He grew up on Bainbridge Island near Seattle and spent 25 years in various outdoor educational institutions, 15 of which were with NOLS. Chris began his career at NOLS, leading expeditions backpacking and mountaineering, teaching wilderness medicine, eventually becoming the NOLS Pacific Northwest Branch Director. Chris left NOLS in 2015 to lead Teton Science Schools, which provides on-site learning for all ages, including more comprehensive learning for PreK-12 students. Chris currently lives at ID Victor with his wife Lara (former NOLS Instructor) and their 11 and 8-year-old sons.
In this episode:
- [5:21] Chris Agnew talked about his first Waddington range course where he and Jared Spaulding were newbies. The glaciers in this mountain range are similar to those in Alaska. To get to the glacier, you had to endure days of bushwhacking. There were crevasse falls and rockfall, near misses, and Jared got hit in the head with an ice ball the size of a basketball. But everyone got out of there safely.
- [11:42] Chris Agnew talked about his 2nd trip leading a Waddington mountaineering course where they had the same route and had to do all the bushwhacking. But this time there was 3 weeks straight of rain, and on their first resupply, they had so much fuel that they burned so that they could carry less. But on their 2nd resupply, the story was vice versa they were low on food and had less fuel due to delay. On the final and 3rd resupply, there was a miscalculation in the amount of cheese when someone mixed up kilograms and pounds. So everyone had to carry a five pounds log of cheese. On their last day on the course, a truck drove to them and told them that their plane was not coming tomorrow. Listen to the podcast to get to know what happened after their plane didn’t come.
- [27:00] Chris talked about an incident in his third Waddington Range Course. This year, he started the course on the other side of the mountain range and had to take a floatplane to begin the reverse direction from past years. On the first day hiking, one of the students had difficulty breathing from his pollen allergy. He started to use his inhaler, but that didn’t help him. So Nadine began to care for the student, and at one point, she said that he had lost his airway. SO they called for help on the satellite phone. Luckily they were in British Columbia, where there is a robust search and rescue system and the cavalry can come fast. A large military plane came in less than 30 minutes, and two people jumped off with parachutes and immediately started to help Nadine. The student with asthma turned out the be having a panic attack brought on by his asthma. They made the student comfortable until a helicopter came near enough to lift him off the mountain.