Make Friends While Learning
Premium Workshop - Fee of $30
Heidi Nisbett
Water Color Painting Class
1.5 hr Workshop
$30 additonal, limited to 20 people, includes all supplies to take home. Learn from a renowned artist and thru-hiker how to paint natural landscapes.
Free Workshops and Talks
Nancy East
First Aid and Best Practices for Hiking With Dogs
1:15 hr Workshop
Dr. Nancy East, a small animal veterinarian, will share her knowledge about canine preventative health care, nutritional needs on trail, and common problems with tips on how to provide first aid to your furry friend in the backcountry.
First aid topics include snake bites, heat stroke, orthopedic injuries, GI issues, toxin exposure, lacerations, and evacuation techniques.
Heidi Nisbett
1 Hour Workshop
Heidi will be talking about her thru-hike of the ALT and her artowrk she created on trail. She will dive into the locaitons, the flora, fauna, feelings and motivation she used to create her amazing artwork. Her origonal ALT pieces will be on display during this workshop.
Jeff Byard
Tools of the ALT
1 hour workshop
Whether the volunteers are building a bridge, felling a tree, blazing, swamping, brushing, bucking, loppering, digging tread or working on a washout area, there are some interesting tools they use.
This workshop will highlight when and where various tools are used and the certifications needed to use tools. Volunteers play a vital role in helping maintain the ALT. You will learn how to sign up for future workdays.
Justin Mullins
Gear Shakedown
Justin has over four thousand miles hiking on the Appalachian Trail, Benton MacKaye Trail, Pinhoti Trail and has thru hiked the ALT two times already!
Needless to say, Justin has a dialed in approach when it comes to quality gear and lightening your pack load.
He will answer your burning questions, share ideas on how to drop pack weight and talk about the luxury items you think you need to have.
Brian Hirt and Rodney Davis
Hanging Rock Raptor Migration
Doug Wood
ALT History
1 hour workshop
Dianne Anestis
Eating Well In The Wild
Workshop 9am -3pm throughout the day
Dianne has been enjoying primitive, but upscale campfire cooking and backpack meals as long as she has been able to ‘play with fire’
Participants will learn that with a simple amount of preparation, you can make your camp meals enjoyable and not ‘just sustenance’. "Roughing It” does not need to include unimaginative or unhealthy meals. Campfire and backpack meals will be demonstrated throughout the day.
Bob Sheets
Fort Warwick and Colonial Hiking
1 hr Workshop
Becca Lusk Childress
Nature as a Revitalizer
1hr Workshop
This workshop will be led by a WV native and Army veteran. She has spent the last 15 years of her career teaching stress management for the Marine Corps.
She is a Registered Yoga Teacher, Ayurveda coach, retreat leader, an ambassador for Girls Who Hike Virginia, and event leader with Team Red White and Blue.
The workshop will include discussion on stress management, resiliency, practical application and practice of breathing techniques, grounding, and meditation. Bring a journal to take notes!
Collin Waybright
Laurel Fork Falconer
1 hr Workshop Sat 11:30am
Collin Waybright has been practicing falconry for nine years. He started at fourteen by trapping his first falconry bird, a Red-Tailed Hawk named Ace, from the wild.
Collin's hopes are to impact his home state of West Virginia and surrounding states, by providing educational presentations that help people understand the nature of birds of prey. He aims to help people realize that they are a very important part of the environment.
Collin has also trained as an American Kestrel for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA, and is one of the youngest people in the US, at the age of 18, to work with a Bald Eagle. The Bald Eagle, Mr. Spectacular, is a non-releasable bird and is now an educational ambassador. Collin is a homeschool graduate and that allowed him to follow his passion as a falconer.
Right after graduation, he spent 10 months working at the Ararat Ridge Zoo located at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, KY where he was part of their animal education team. Armed with over 9 years of experience as a falconer, working with a raptor rehab center, and the Ararat Ridge Zoo, Collin has worked with a number of different birds including some that a raptor would consider "lunch". Collin was the Executive Director of a raptor rehab center in West Virginia for over a year and traveled more than 10,000 miles doing Raptor Educational programs.
In the summer of 2022, Collin presented a falconry program for the Embassy of the Czech Republic and the European Union in Washington DC.
Amy Settle
Tagging butterflies / Pollinators
Amy Settle is a West Virginia Native, but has spent her adult life in Virginia. She is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist and is the chair of the Outreach Committee for the Central Rappahannock Chapter.
As a Master Naturalist, she has been involved with various programs with the Virginia State Parks including water quality monitoring, Great American Campout, kayak sweep for various nature programs including fossil finds and bald eagle watching, Bluebird education, native pollinator education, and Monarch butterfly tagging. She is the King George County Coordinator for the Virginia Bluebird Society.
Monarch Butterflies and tagging: Learn about the lifecycle of the Monarch butterfly and how even small efforts can contribute to the conservation of this beautiful native pollinator. We’ll talk about the amazing annual migration of the eastern population of Monarch butterflies and tag butterflies to participate in tracking of the migration patterns.
Adam Casseday
Fun Run presented by WV Mountain Trail Runners
All ages welcome. Saturday 10am
5K, 5 Mile and 10 mile
Charles Evans
Mountain Biking
This workshop will focus on beginner bike safety, bike maintenance, and GBO trails.
Chip Chase
Skiing on the ALT
More Info Coming Soon
Drew Palmer and Carla Beaudet
Mushroom Walk
2.5 hour workshop
After a lifelong interest in mushrooms turned into a full-blown obsession, Drew Palmer has spent the last 4 years as a mushroom educator and as an officer for the West Virginia Mushroom Club. As a foraging instructor, he takes pleasure in sharing knowledge and helping fellow Appalachians connect to and appreciate the natural world around us. Drew takes a special interest in edible, toxic, and entomopathogenic fungi.
Carla has over thirty years of foraging experience and is a culinary wizard with fungi. Her interest in fungi started in the kitchen, but she soon found the stories that mushrooms have to tell us even more fascinating. “Mycology is an infant science that is just starting to understand the importance of fungi in various ecosystems and the sheer diversity of their ecological roles. Fungi were key players in big, planet-scale evolutionary stories that are just beginning to be told.” Carla is a retired engineer from the Green Bank Observatory, amateur mycologist, forager, and kitchen experimentalist. She has been with the West Virginia Mushroom Club since 2002.
Jane Birdsong
Tick Education
1 hour Workshop
This workshop will disucss why the tick population is increasing and what we must do to avoid the 17 tick-related diseases they carry.
Having had 2 recent brushes with Lyme Disease, Naturalist Jane Birdsong will give you information about symptoms of various diseases carried by our most common ticks, how to avoid ticks, spot them on your clothing and on your skin, and what to carry when you hike. In most cases, a tick must be attached 36 hours before the bacteria can be transmitted from their saliva to you, thus PREVENTION works to our advantage. You will be given several Prevention tips to take home as reminders.
Nature Conservancy
More Info Coming Soon!
US Forest Service
More Info Coming Soon!
GRBO Tours
45 min tour- $10 pay at the GBO gift shop on property.
