Friday morning a group of nearly thirty students eagerly gathered for their departure to Dutchman’s Flat in central Oregon to try their hand at building snow shelters, I being one of them. For the past 5 weeks we had met once a week learning about all aspects of snow camping, such as avalanche...

Arriving to the trailhead at 11:30pm, we traveled by moonlight without the help of our headlamps. The meadow we walked through was awash in the soft glow of the moon. We walked a few miles that night until we rolled out our sleeping bags near a stream with a collection of small waterfalls we would...