Charlie Thorpe, our wizard on Leave No Trace, sent the following e-mail about LNT Master Educator courses to the Yahoo Venturing List for additional dissemination. His e-mail is duplicated -- mostly -- below. You can contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it directly for more information.

Hello All -

Please help distribute this info by placing this message on other Scouting email lists and digital forums where it has not yet been posted.

The article in Scouting Magazine which lists the BSA Masters courses should be on your coffee table by now (I don't have mine yet, but mine is always late for some reason). The ME course info in the Jan - Feb 09 issue of Scouting Mag is the best we had at the cutoff deadline of mid-Oct set by the mag staff (Frank Rreigelman was able to get some of the changes into the article after that, but not all). We are actually looking at a total of 19 courses spread all around the country instead of the 15 listed in the article. One of the courses is for Philmont staff and the other 18 are set up for any/all vol/pro Scouters and older Scouting youth age 18 and up. Many of these courses are hoping to "double" into two courses with different field experiences if registrations warrant.

The Scouting Mag article lists being a LNT Trainer as a prerequisite for a Masters course, but that is a future requirement that is not currently in place. WAY too few of our Scouters have yet had a realistic opportunity to take a weekend LNT Trainer course - this prerequisite has been relaxed for our initial BSA LNT ME rollout ('06 thru '09) to make it possible for us to reach our goal of having a LNT Master Educator (or better yet, a small team) in place as a resource for every Council by our 100th anniversary year. Extra time is taken during our rollout ME courses to provide the extra curriculum needed to start a participant from "LNT scratch".

Most of our Masters courses have a minimum of 6 registered participants and a max of 12. A few of the courses will have different size restrictions due to space or group-size limitations - this kind of detailed info will be posted on Don's ROAR website. All of the host Councils will be working on budgets in Jan if they haven't done so already - the course fee can be set and publicized once a budget has been approved by the host Council. We ask our host Councils to try HARD to keep the fee in line with local Wood Badge, PowderHorn, and other week long Council-level courses.

I will highlight our '09 BSA LNT Master Educator courses in this email and will later post major changes (dates, locations, etc.) when all of them have their major planning in place. The courses are listed in chronological order by start date:

Dates; host Council;
location(s); field experience(s)

Jan/Feb; Puerto Rico Council (PR);
Camp Guajataka, El Yunque NF; backpacking, rainforest
***course postponed, new date TBD***

Mar 20-22, 26-29; Okeefenokee Area (GA);
Camp Tolochee; sea kayaking

Mar 22-27; Oregon Trails (OR);
Cascade Mountains; snow/winter camping

Apr 3-5, 24-26; Northeast Region National Camp School (MA);
Camp Resolute (Knox Trail Council), AT; backpacking
***Application not received (info may change)***

Apr 12-18; Utah National Parks (UT);
Entrada HAB; Scouting frontcountry, mountain biking

Apr 17-19, May 1-4; Quapaw Area (AR);
Blass SR, Buffalo NSR; canoeing, Scouting frontcountry

May 17-21; Philmont Staff (NM);
Camping HQ, Philmont backcountry; backpacking

Jun 7-12; Black Hills Area (SD);
Medicine Mountain SR; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry

Jun 7-12; Midnight Sun (AK);
Northern Lights HAB; canoeing, Scouting frontcountry

Jul 17-19, 24-27; Mid-Iowa (IA);
Camp Mitigwa; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry

Aug 21-26; Northern Tier HAB (MN);
Boundary Waters Canoe Area; wilderness paddling

Aug 23-28; Chief Seattle (WA);
Camp Sheppard, Mt. Rainier NP; mountaineering, Scouting frontcountry

Sep 23-28; Golden Spread Council (TX);
Camp Don Harrington; horsepacking, Scouting frontcountry

Sep 25-27, Oct 9-11; Caddo Area (TX);
Camp Pioneer, Ouachita NF; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry

Oct 2-4, 9-11; Clinton Valley ((MI);
Camp Lost Lake; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry

Oct 2-4, 9-12; Twin Rivers (NY);
Camp Wakpominee; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry
***Application not received (info may change)***

Oct 5-10; Philmont Autumn Adventure (NM);
backcountry, Zastro; backpacking, Scouting frontcountry

Oct 10-16; Western LA County (CA);
Camp Emerald Bay, Catalina Is.; sea kayaking, Scouting frontcountry

Fall; Five Rivers (CT);
***Application not received (info will change)***

This will be a fun year for BSA LNT Masters courses... We could possibly end up with as many as two dozen courses in '09 if everything breaks exactly right! Gotta admit that all of this "breaking exactly right" magic hasn't happened yet in our rollout, but I can always hope .

We have made a major effort to provide these important Masters courses in areas which have not yet had access to a convenient BSA LNT ME course. We realize that "convenient driving range" means VERY different things in different parts of our country (!), but we are moving our local Council courses around each year to try to eventually provide one within 2 to 4 hours driving range of our key Scouters who can go back to their home Council and effectively conduct weekend LNT Trainer courses.

Each course hosted by a local Council is expected to provide training slots for a small team of Scouters (and older Scouting youth age 18 and up) from that and all surrounding Councils - we will very likely never be able to offer these courses in every Council. All Scouters are welcome at all listed BSA ME courses and national adventure bases courses are our "wildcards" which are set up specifically to be for all Scouters from everywhere. Our national goal is to have at least one LNT Master in every Council (small team is preferred) so that these key outdoor trainers can train/maintain at least one LNT Trainer in every District (small team is preferred) and on every summer camp staff. We are shooting for as much as possible of this to be in place to support the new T-2-1 LNT rank requirements in the new Boy Scout Handbook coming out before our centenary.

We have also made a big effort to provide a much wider range of field experiences, from backpacking to paddling to mountaineering to mountain biking to horsepacking to Scouting frontcountry. All LNT ME courses everywhere teach the entire ME curriculum from the ME Handbook as a contract requirement (BSA included) and all Masters (BSA Masters included) are expected to share their LNT training / experience with everybody who can benefit from it (both in and out of BSA). The BSA LNT Task Force is actively working with the LNT Center's Educational Review Committee to provide format options and additional curriculum content (both formal sessions and experiential) in our BSA ME courses to help our BSA Masters hit the ground running in a BSA setting.

Shout if you have any questions about any of the courses!

Trace No Leaves,

- Charlie