SURVIVAL COURSES
Interested in a life-changing challenge? Feel like seeing the world differently?
Our survival instructors are some of the most experienced and competent in the world. The challenges that our BOSS survival courses offer aren’t for everyone, but if you’re the right person and it’s the right time for you, we promise our survival classes will provide adventure, challenge and world-class instruction.
Field Courses
The BOSS Field Course has been our signature trip since 1968. There is nothing else like it: ultra-light travel through Southern Utah’s mountains, mesas and canyons with little more than a blanket, poncho, and a knife. No tents, sleeping bags, stoves, or backpacks, and definitely no watches, GPS, or cellphones. You will be physically and mentally challenged as your small group travels some of the most beautiful land in the country and learns the skills needed to survive and thrive in the deep wilderness.
A BOSS Field Course is for those seeking to push themselves, to receive skills instruction by master instructors, and for an opportunity to reconnect with the natural world. No previous outdoor skills or knowledge is needed.
Skills Courses
BOSS Skills Courses are held in some of our favorite camps on the public lands surrounding our campus in Boulder, and these survival courses include possible day and/or overnight trips into nearby areas for materials gathering. Some of BOSS’s most skilled instructors will teach you primitive survival and traditional living skills like friction fire, shelter construction, cordage, edible plants, primitive pottery, and flintknapping. Instruction is hands-on and class sizes are small to ensure each student has ample access to our instructors. These courses trade the physical challenges and navigation practice of a field course for intensive skills practice from dawn to dusk in a basecamp setting. You will leave these courses with your arms full of the products of your labor.
A skills course is for those seeking focused, hands-on time to build their primitive, traditional, and bushcraft skills in a wilderness basecamp setting. No previous outdoor skills or knowledge are needed.
Ready for the next level?
Hunter Gatherer survival course
The Hunter Gatherer survival courses build on the skills developed in field courses to truly live off the land in the rugged Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument for an extended period of time.
Our Hunter Gatherer courses are for experienced students of wilderness and traditional survival skills that want advanced training and experience in low-impact wilderness survival.
Navigation Courses
The 14-Day Navigator course combines advanced use of map and compass with the art of low-impact wilderness travel. Veteran survival instructors will teach you everything from map and compass to navigating by the stars in the context of group and solo wilderness travel. We aim to provide thorough instruction and practice in land navigation and give you a real wilderness challenge at the same time.
A BOSS navigation course is for those seeking on-the-ground instruction and intensive practice in land navigation, delivered by master instructors. No previous outdoor skills or knowledge are needed.
Ready for the next level?
The Advanced Navigator course builds on the skills developed in the 14-day navigator course to offer the most advanced and challenging navigation training our expert instructors can provide.
Wilderness Medicine Courses
BOSS offers Wilderness First Responder certification and recertification for guides, outdoor trip leaders, and others interested in outdoor medicine. These courses are taught by faculty from the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS and held at BOSS’s campus in Boulder, Utah.
Private Courses
We can build a course to meet your needs. We have created survival courses for individuals, executive teams, people seeking specific skill intensives, actors researching for roles, and more. We’ve also provided customized experiences for newspapers, magazines, television programs, and movie studios seeking content for their programming, including 20th Century Fox, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, The History Channel, VOGUE, PBS, and National Geographic Television.
