Mountain Men Event for All Ages

Thursday, October 11, 2018 - 5:00pm

Join us for an event for all ages to learn about Mountain Men! The event will be held on Thursday, October 11th from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Park City Museum Education and Collection Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive. This presentation is sponsored by the Park City Museum and the Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History to help bring some of the interesting and unique aspects of Park City's history alive to locals and visitors.

Gary Nielsen was born and raised in Mapleton, Utah on a farm. While growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, several weeks each year were spent camping and exploring throughout the local mountains as well as the western United States with his family. Then as a teenager, Gary became interested in survival skills, and was intrigued by the life of the many Mountain Men and between horseback and backpacking, he spent considerable time camping on his own or with friends and the Boy Scout program.

After completing his Bachelor & Master’s Degree, he spent the next 10 years teaching at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY where he trained students in Recreation Management, Leadership Skills, and other subjects including survival skills. He planned and led numerous expeditions for groups to various parts of the country and has led canoe and rafting expeditions through over 1,000 miles of rivers such as the Hudson, Sewanee, Arkansas, Buffalo, Snake, Colorado, Green, and Missouri River, to name a few. Numerous backpacking trips into the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York

Following a decade in upstate New York, Gary developed a new Outdoor Recreation Management degree program at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, CO where he taught several courses in outdoor leadership, business management in the outdoor recreation industry, and took students on week-long survival training programs for the next 5 years of his career.

For the past 20 years, Gary has been back in his home state of Utah where he has been running an educational adventure business and teaching people about the fascinating lives of the Mountain Men and showing his furs, Grizzly Bear Traps, Beaver Traps, and the unique gear and equipment which the typical Mountain Man used in their fur-trapping profession. Learning and studying the lives of the Mountain Men and the fur-trapping history has always been a fascinating topic, and Gary says everyone can learn a great deal of how to deal with the stresses in our modern-day lives by understanding survival skills and learning about the hardiness of Mountain Men.

Basically, when we think our lives are stressful and difficult, just consider how much more stressful and difficult your life would be if you were dropped off high in a mountain range and you had to endure hunger, snow, cold, Indians and grizzly bears all coming after you!