Compare Year In Patagonia by National Outdoor Leadership School

Mountaineering

• Duration: 40-50 days
• Route length: 60-100 miles
• Average pack weight: 56 pounds
• Skills: basic camping skills, navigation, and route-finding in the mountains; glacier travel; leadership, expedition behavior, and communication; and Leave No Trace principles
• Opportunities for ice climbing, peak ascents, snow climbing, and crampon use

On this section, you will hike through one of the many remote and beautiful mountain ranges in southern Chile. When the clouds clear, these rugged ranges will provide breathtaking vistas of sharp, unclimbed spires and mountain massifs with hanging glaciers. While the exploratory nature adds to the challenge of navigating through untraveled terrain, you’ll also get the exhilaration of exploring new places.

As you travel through the mountains, you will progress from basic wilderness travel skills to glacier mountaineering. You will learn skills such as rope handling, tying basic knots, belaying, ice axe use, rope team movement, hazard assessment, and glacier travel and camp setup. Depending on route and weather, you will also learn more advanced skills such as crampon use, snow and ice protection placement, climbing techniques for snow and ice, and crevasse rescue.

In addition to these technical skills, you will have many opportunities to develop your leadership and decision-making techniques. You may also have opportunities to visit with local ranchers, or pobladores, to work on your Spanish language skills and learn more about rural poblador culture.

Wilderness First Responder

• Duration: 10 days
• 80-hour classroom-based course taught by NOLS Wilderness Medicine

This is the standard first aid course for outdoor professionals and provides you with the tools to make critical medical care and evacuation decisions in remote locations. The busy days will run from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, with two evening sessions. You'll spend half of your time completing practical skills, case studies, and scenarios designed to challenge your decision-making abilities. Scenarios and practice sessions will take place both indoors and outdoors. Attendance is required for all scheduled classes. During your WFR, you'll be camping at the NOLS base.

Sea Kayaking

• Duration: 25-30 days
• Route length: 100 - 150 nautical miles
• Skills: paddle techniques, kayak rescue, coastal navigation, and seamanship

On this section, you’ll explore the island chains of Chile’s southern coast. The weather is often stormy here, which makes coastal travel both a mental and a physical challenge. When conditions are favorable for paddling, you may serenely glide along a flat calm sea at daybreak, or float quietly listening to a pod of dolphins in the distance. When conditions are unfavorable, you may find yourself holding down your tent in a battering wind, or watching the waves break on the shore while you wait for calmer seas. You’ll soon find that learning when not to paddle is as important as learning how to paddle.

This section may start on one of the large rivers that proceeds from the Andes. You may have to portage or carry your kayaks to avoid rapids. Once on the sea, you’ll learn to read the weather, the ocean, the landscape, and your group’s strengths. Other classes will include route-finding, weather interpretation, boat handling, and tidal theory. By the end of the section, you’ll have a solid foundation in sea kayaking skills that you can take to any environment.

Cultural Immersion

• Duration: 8-10 days
• Live with a family in a remote campo (ranch) setting
• Total immersion in a Spanish-speaking Patagonian family community

This is the chance of a lifetime to experience rural campo living, a true part of the Patagonian experience. You’ll meet and learn from people who are passionate about the Patagonian wilderness and have a vast knowledge of the birds, animals, weather, trees, and plants found in Chile.

On this section, you will be fully immersed in the language, customs, and culture of Patagonian host families. Paired with another student, you will perform service-project style work with the families. Prior to meeting the host families, we will orient you to poblador culture, campo tasks and way of life, including working with livestock, using typical farm tools, and the daily custom of drinking the herbal tea known as yerba mate.

While staying with your host family, your chores may include: food preparation, gardening, plowing farmland, harvesting crops, basic carpentry, chopping firewood, fetching water, hand washing laundry, shearing sheep, branding and castrating livestock, caring for livestock, milking cows, making cheese, animal slaughter, riding horses, making fires, tending the stove, clearing pasture, working with oxen, repairing fences, herding livestock, mending clothing, trail work, and using knives and machetes. Part of the culture of poblador families can be a division of tasks along gender lines, and this might be expected of students as well. This means that all students may not be able to participate in all activities.

Diet

The staple food on a campo is meat and potatoes with homemade breads and jams, rice, and beans. In the summer, the campo garden and greenhouse provide fresh produce. Please bear in mind that the concept of vegetarianism is not a part of the poblador custom, though you can have an adequate diet there without eating meat. If you have food allergies or sensitivities, we will need to know so that we can help you communicate this to your host family and make special arrangements. 

Communication

During this section, your instructors will not be with you. However, each student will have access to either a satellite phone or HF radio to communicate with the instructor coordinating the section. Please remember that these homes are remote and do not have telephones, cell phones, television or Internet access. This level of remoteness and immersion is unique and affords a genuine experience. However, you must keep in mind the implications of illness and injury in this setting. All students will be expected to use their knowledge and judgment to take extra care to avoid injury to self and others during the entire course, and particularly during the cultural section.

By the end of this section, you will have made an incredible connection to another culture and lifestyle, building cultural competency that will enrich both you and the pobladores with whom you will share a home.

Rock Climbing

• Duration: 18 - 21 days
• Skills: top-roping, lead climbing, multi-pitch climbing, and bouldering

On this section, you’ll learn the essentials of rock climbing and risk management. You will begin with the basics of movement, knots, rope handling, and belaying, then progress to more advanced topics such as protection placement, rappelling, and rope system management. More advanced topics such as ascending a fixed rope, aid climbing, and rescue techniques may be addressed, and you may have opportunities to lead climb, if you meet NOLS’ criteria.

Climbing camps are base camps. You’ll set up your tents, establish a kitchen, and stay in one or two locations for the duration of the section. You may camp in established campgrounds or in more pristine areas. Regardless, you should expect to encounter other people on this section and may end up using vehicles to travel to climbing areas.

Like any outdoor pursuit in Patagonia, rock climbing is weather-dependent. We schedule the climbing section to take advantage of the best weather conditions, but we cannot make any guarantees.

Independent Student Group Expedition (ISGE)

Duration: 7-10 days

Emphasis on expedition planning skills and application of the outdoor skills learned during the course

You'll plan this section with four to six other students under the guidance of your instructors. You will set goals as a group, plan the route, arrange pickup and drop-off locations, prepare your equipment, organize your rations and fuel, and discuss emergency plans. Whether this last section includes an instructor in the group or not depends on the competence and skill level attained by individuals and the group as a whole.

Each Student Expedition group will carry an emergency communication device that will allow students to initiate an emergency response in the event of a serious emergency. The student groups will be aware of other groups traveling in close proximity that would be able to offer help in case of emergency. The instructors with a satellite phone, or additional communication capability, may be up to 24 hours away from the students. Our students often say the student expedition was the best part of their course.