Friday, September 24, 2010

Pathfinder System Basics Class - Part 1

I finally made the decision to take one of Dave Canterbury's Pathfinder Survival Classes. Dave's classes are by far the most affordable and it looked like what I had been searching for for quite some time. Dave offers two classes; a basic and advanced. I signed up for the Pathfinder System Basics Class.

I had been doing some on-line research and found that Dave and others have a very large library of YouTube videos that do a lot of teaching on a lot of subjects. I started watching some and trying out a few things. I started buying the things I had been wanting for a while and finally got them off my to-do list.

Before I knew it, I had a new Mora knife, two ALICE packs, lots of parachute cord and quite a bit of other stuff. I had built my 10 piece kit and it had about 50 pieces.

I had signed up for the September 24-27 class in South East Ohio. I was ready to go.

The website and some of the communications with Dave and his family left a few things fuzzy and I had expected some kind of email or letter with final details that never came. Luckily Dave responds to emails pretty quickly when he isn't in the bush killing alligators and such. I had met a couple other students on Facebook and we compared notes and headed to the right spot on the right day at the right time.

The class location was a good seven plus hours from my home in MD, so I drove to Pittsburgh the day before class started and visited with the family. At 0230 Friday morning, I got up and headed to OH. It took about three and a half hours to get to the rest stop meeting place and I was there with plenty of time to spare.

I immediately started recognizing other students and we introduced ourselves and started getting to know each other. Before long Dave and his wife Iris arrived in his truck. We all signed a liability release, had a short safety brief and then we made a caravan to the school site about 10 miles away. Our adventure had begun...

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