Welcome back to SurThrival Thrusday from a really, really cold Cheat Mountain! It’s currently one degree Fahrenheit up here today, so I thought it apt to write about dressing for the cold. Now this is a tricky thing to teach, as each person’s clothing system will vary based on how your individual body produces and […]

Hello from a very snowy Cheat Mountain and welcome back to SurThrival Thursday! Today I’m going to feature our favorite kind of homemade shelter: the debris hut. A debris hut is a kind of shelter made entirely of materials found on site, in the forest where you plan to shelter. In many forest types, you […]

Hi! Maureen here, from Cheat Mountain. This is a back issue of SurThrival Thursdays from 1/14/16:   Hey Folks, it’s SurThrival Thursday! SurThrival is a new word that we came up with a few years ago to describe the skills that we teach here on Cheat Mountain. Our goal isn’t just to teach survival, but […]

We are so very pleased with our first semester of Mountain SOL. This semester we offered both an in-school program for students at the Morgantown Learning Academy as well as afterschool programs open to all local students. Our In-School Mountain SOL program worked with Morgantown Learning Academy classroom teachers, from Pre-K 3 through Middle School, […]

What we have been up to: We have been exploring our property and creating new hideouts as well as working on our tracking skills!  We found new fox and even bobcat tracks today on our property. (these images are not ours, but we used them to show our online students what a West Virginia bobcat […]

Hello everyone!  Hercules says that the plants around this area are Yucca, Pincushion cactus, Prickly pear cactus , and Agave.[ Might see]  Cereus cactus. Animals in his area are the Prarie dog, fox, coyote, and tarantula! He is hiking in the Gloss Mountains State Park: Gloss Mountain State Park is located in the heart of a […]

Today we went to Coopers Rocks.  We found all kinds of new stuff.  It was Kris’s first time at Coopers Rocks and it was his birthday :]!  We climbed rocks+we went in caves that we had to squeeze through. Happy Birthday Kristian!! Here we are at the Overlook!  It was supposed to thunderstorm on us…but […]

Here are the online check-ins that we have received so far: From Sajit (Nepal): Hi!  I’m hiking near Shivapuri. Aiselu, Nepalese small wild fruit .we called in English wild raspberries.   A common fruit in the hilly Nepal, Aiselu, is usually ripe for eating in around spring time. These delicious wild raspberries can be plucked […]

Today in Mountain Jaguares we worked on compass skills and we found which way was north. Next we showed the domino effect (which is when our front scout is to close to our snake scout and we all fall down) then we showed what Not to do if there where a bear…to scream and shout […]

Hello jaguares! We had a fantastic first day!  We are delighted to welcome new members to our group, including friends from Nepal and from Ecuador!  First, I will share our adventures, and then introduce our new friends. Today we hiked on our property and we were excited to find feathers from a turkey.  We went […]