The summer gig and ensuing friendship with a SUNY Potsdam undergraduate led to plans that would throw Yuhnke together with three Potsdam wilderness education students on a quest to scale Mount Rainier. In what we have come to regard as one of the most sacred aspects of the outdoors, the directions to a new life were laid out in the quiet of the Washington wilderness.
Yuhnke was struck by the leadership, decision-making abilities, organizational skills and hard skills his compatriots demonstrated on the trek β so much so that he decided to transfer to Potsdam the next semester.
As a result, it produces lots of high caliber professionals that go out into the world and excel at whatever they put their minds to. The summer after his graduation, Yuhnke decided to try to bike across the country. He had never ridden more than 20 miles, but knew he could make the trip successful with the skills he had learned in the wilderness education program. He pushed the pedals through 3, miles of the American landscape, from California to New Jersey, over two self-supported months that tapped every skill he had acquired.
A year later, he chased the waking dream of oxygen-starved trekking even higher on the 23,foot Lenin Peak in Kyrgyzstan. Yuhnke went on to plan and execute sea kayaking trips and backpacking adventures as the program director for the Boy Scouts in Anchorage. Then in , he rode his bike from Canada to Mexico along the Pacific Coast. A week after he finished, he was at a birthday party and learned about wilderness therapy guiding for a company called Alaska Crossings. The wilderness expeditions demanded the learning of hard skills β the use of safety gear, paddling a canoe, setting up camp, organizing gear and cultivating personal habits to stay dry.
Wedged together in small vessels and guided by three counselors, nine youths with abused, angry and bewildered histories were tasked with finding ways to adapt and overcome, and new methods of dealing with themselves and others. Bonds form on these trips, and once they do, so does a stronger, more productive community.
