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Is it possible to survive in the mountains without all of the modern gear we are used too? We typically bring some great gear with us when we are taking veterans into the backcountry of Montana. This time was quite a bit different. We had a crazy idea for a future fundraiser and needed some volunteers to try it out. We ended up with an amazing group of humans!
Laura Zerra lives in the wilderness 99% of the year. We met at a veteran gathering hosted by Montana Knife Company and have been looking for an opportunity to partner up.
"Laura is a true nomad who loves to challenge herself and is always looking for the next great adventure. By pushing her limits, she is constantly furthering her knowledge and loves to learn new skills. Her passions include primitive hunting and bow building, shed antler hunting, exploring wild places, processing her own meat, wild foraging, free diving and spearfishing, functional fitness, and teaching what she loves." -laurazerra.com
When we sat in a little breakfast diner in Missoula, Montana about 6 months ago, she loved the idea! We had a basic plan to get random people into the woods and show them how to survive without the normal things we bring.
No tents, sleeping bags, cookers, change of clothes, sleeping pads, etc.
We started looking for more people to join us for this first trial run in the mountains. We reached out to all of the outdoor organizations that have partnered with us in the past. We thought they would have a list of people wanting to test their personal survival skills... we were wrong. It was actually pretty hard to find people wanting to push themselves this far. One business that really helped us fill the seats, was Gastro Gnome. They are a backcountry food producer out of Bozeman, Montana. Shannon (owner), sent out a few texts, and within a couple hours, she had three of our seats filled.
Justin works for the Sheriff Department for Gallatin County. He is married to Shannon from Gastro Gnome, and they spend a ton of time in the mountains all year long.
Shannon also connected us with Steven Drake and Keren Zucker. They have an amazing social media presence in the outdoor community. Steven is known for his photography and helpful hunting videos. Keren has worked in the outdoor community as well, and has a wealth of knowledge in the outfitting and guiding world.
Laura connected us with Tyr Symank. Tyr is an American badass. He has been in the Army since 1995, advocates for several veteran organizations, is an amazing writer, and has been working with Black Rifle Coffee since 2019 where he founded their nonprofit giving division.
We also invited a few people/businesses that have been our largest supporters and one took us up on that offer: Chase Yerger
Chase joined us from the other side of Montana. He is a dentist in Miles City, Montana. Chase has been one of our biggest supporters in all we do with MVP. We were honored to have him join us in the backcountry.
We also have a partnership with the Montana Pilots Association. They added a level of "coolness" to this trip that really put the cherry on top of an amazing weekend. They gathered volunteer pilots with their personal planes and flew us from Great Falls to Russian Flat in the Little Belt Mountains. They also provided a plane to fly over the next day, so we could teach a class on signaling. They flew in early Sunday morning to pick us up and bring us back home. We are so thankful for their support of our mission and we look forward to working with them again in the future.
The rest of the people that were on this trip were 5 team members of Montana Vet Program:
Luke Urick - Executive Director
Bryon Gustafson - Partnership Specialist
Joe Miller - Wellness Coordinator
Chris Whitley - Team Leader/Medic
Aaron Peters - Team Leader/Medic
We are planning to have a few more blog posts about this trip. Mainly on the classes we covered, but also talking about lessons we learned, and our plan for the future (links will be here once the posts have been made and posted). We wanted to first just introduce you to this amazing team. We could not have planned a better group of people.
Here is a quote from one of our participants that was sent in on our anonymous survey:
"Everyone did a really great job demonstrating and explaining methods in a way that was clear! I was also really impressed by the fact that team leaders were happy to show how to do things that I don't think were originally planned. For example, I mentioned wanting to learn how to boil water without a cup, so Laura demonstrated how to boil water in a bag, or someone showed interest in building a fish trap so immediately a few leaders got together and started working on that and demonstrating it."
We have a goal to be the largest veteran nonprofit in Montana and it is thanks to support from all of these individuals that is helping us reach this goal.
MVP TEAM
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