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Excited to be on the road for their second year as Traveling Trainers Ella and North are looking forward to working with diverse groups and exploring new landscapes. Two passions that North and Ella share are the wild places in the world, and experiential education. Meeting while co-instructing a twenty-one day backpacking course in the Grand Canyon they quickly learned to work together, forming an interdisciplinary curriculum for the college students they were instructing. Their combined experiences at Prescott College have given them opportunity to develop their personal teaching styles and ethic of environmental stewardship. Ella's exuberance coupled with North's contemplative style create a teaching combination that is inspiring and insightful. When not instructing wilderness adventures for others they find themselves high on the cliffs of the desert southwest, backpacking through mountains and canyons, climbing up glaciers, knitting, reading, playing music, and sleeping under the stars. North and Ella have a wide array of expeditionary teaching experience, both on land and in the water, and are Wilderness First Responders. Their love for adventure, teaching, wilderness, and new friends make them a stellar educational team.
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Running wild in Northern California, Ella developed a love for the outdoors while fly fishing with her father, building forts with her brother, and riding horses with her mom. Ella began backpacking in the Trinity Alps when she was seven and soon progressed to multi-day and multi-week trips. While in high school she began climbing and her passion for climbing pushed her to pursue a degree in Adventure Education at Prescott College. Throughout her college career she developed her unique teaching style by coaching lacrosse to young girls, working with troubled teens, teaching climbing and backpacking to college and high school students as well as assistant managing a garden store.
Ella self-designed her major and thus was able to incorporate experiential and environmental education into her path of study, enabling her to share her love for the mountains and desert with a wide array of students. One of her primary focuses has been honing her technical climbing skills by becoming certified through the American Mountain Guide Association as well as teaching more technical courses. Since graduating she has focused on educating and empowering women and girls in the outdoors at The Women's Wilderness Institute. She has also been working in southern California teaching high school students climbing, backpacking, and the natural history of the desert. In her free time you will find Ella high on a glacier, immersed in a good book, trail running and practicing yoga, or curled up working on her knitting.
Raised in the green forests of northwestern Washington, North spent his youth spread between the currents of the San Juan Islands and the glaciers of the Cascade Mountains; taking his first backpacking trip at the age of four and his first kayaking trip when he was nine. His experiences and passion for the wild places of the earth have continued to grow far beyond the borders of Washington. The traveling bug was implanted in North early with a family trip to India and his love of diverse cultures and environments has taken him around the globe. At the age of eighteen he spent the summer working for the US Forest Service as a wilderness ranger, observing the seasonal changes cross the alpine slopes of the North Cascades. Between his trips in the wilderness and overseas, North spent two years as an apprentice potter, honing his craft to a professional level.
In North's time at Prescott College he engrossed himself in creative writing and experiential education. His degree in Outdoor Experiential Education has enabled North to combine his love for the outdoors with his love for culture. He has worked in a variety of settings with unique groups of people, from Sea Kayak guiding in the San Juan's to backpacking with troubled youth in Montana. In his free time he enjoys mountain biking, rock climbing, mountaineering, song writing, and playing guitar and mandolin. North is an energetic and dedicated young teacher who loves to adventure and share his stories with others.
