Winter Camping Workshop
Speaker Bios

Steve Fritz has been a bushcraft and survival practitioner since 1982, and winter camping since 1986. He has completed two courses at the Tom Brown Tracker School and served 26 years in the military with two tours in Iraq. Steve is a former survival and land navigation instructor for A & C Co, 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry. Steve is an avid kayaker during warmer seasons, hikes year round, and enjoys winter camping and teaching others how to venture safely in the backcountry.

Greg Weiss started leading winter skills trips during 1991 while in college. Since then he's worked as an outdoor instructor for bushcraft and primitive skills, rock climbing, and leads kayak instructor trainings and certifications. Greg currently runs Lost Creek Adventures, an outfitter offering sea kayaking tours within the Apostle Islands WI, as well as internationally, and offers bushcraft classes and winter workshops during his off seasons. You can find out more at http://lostcreekadventures.org

Michael Neiger lives in Marquette, Michigan, along the south of shore of Lake Superior. Since 1984, he has organized and led 100's of backpacking, canoeing, mountain biking, skiing, snowshoeing, winter-camping, and caving trips and expeditions in the bush between the Upper Great Lakes in Michigan and the Arctic Ocean in Canada.

He has skied solo from the end of the northern-most plowed road in Ontario, Canada to the Arctic Ocean, and has paddled solo from the Lake Superior area to the Arctic Ocean. He has completed at least a half dozen winter expeditions to the Arctic Ocean, and he has helped train and outfit members of two North Pole expeditions. He currently leads monthly trips, primarily backpacking and winter-camping, in the bush between the Upper Great Lakes and the Arctic Ocean. He also teaches two-day wilderness survival classes and two-day wilderness land navigation classes.

Michael was a Det/Sgt with the Michigan State Police for 26 years and currently is the lead investigator with Michigan Backcountry Search and Rescue (MibSAR), a Long Range Special Operations Group (LRSOG) that investigates long-term missing person cases and cold-case murders in the bush between the Upper Great Lakes and the Arctic Ocean. He is also the author of the "Missing-Person Sourcebook: Strategies & Tactics for Finding Your Missing or Murdered Loved One from the World’s Top Experts.

"You can find Michaels complete bio here. http://www.mibsar.com/Bio/Bio.html

Kyle is a professional educator with a rich background in microbiology and science education. He combines his formal and informal education to offer well-rounded, hands-on instruction in essential outdoor skills, including bushcraft, knife skills, and fire starting. He enjoys enhancing sporting gear for better performance, crafting lightweight shelters, and developing more protective sports equipment. As a gear enthusiast and modifier, Kyle thrives on being an early adopter, innovator, and rediscoverer of sporting and camping equipment.

Jeff Kelm is Co-Host and Editor for the award winning show Outdoors Radio with Dan Small, the Director of Marketing with the United States Freshwater Fishing Federation (USF3) and a delegate with the Wisconsin Conservation Congress.

Jeff qualified to be one of 11 members of the 2012 USA Ice Team having competed against ice anglers from across America and will be traveling to Kazakhstan in February 2012 to compete in the World Ice Fishing Championships.

Hardwater-angler.com is a website that Jeff posts all the teams tournament results, his seminar highlights and fishing tips and tricks. Along with writing for the website Jeff has written articles for various publications as well as being featured on television and radio.

Steve Larson is an outdoor adventure leader and community builder with years of experience both formal and on the trail. He has been working as a BSA leader for 30 years and has planned and facilitated many large scale youth events. Steve also served in the military for 25 years and holds certifications in CPR, First Aid, and Wilderness First Aid. In addition, he hosts programs year round in SE Wisconsin aimed at helping outdoor enthusiasts connect through social events and related skill building workshops.

Dawn Mackety is a licensed guide, teaches workshops, and manages trip registrations and logistics. She has over 30 years of teaching, programming, evaluation, and administration experience in outdoor and experiential learning settings including museums, zoos, 4-H, and Outward Bound. She has been an outdoor adventure volunteer for Girl Scouts for over 30 years and has guided wilderness expeditions for them in seven states, including their BWCA basecamp in Ely, MN. She enjoys challenging, high adventure outdoor activities in all seasons, is a canoe, kayak, and archery instructor, and a certified National Weather Service SKYWARN Weather Spotter, Master Naturalist, and Wilderness First Responder.

Todd Theoret is a wilderness guide and outdoor skills educator living along the south shore of Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan. Todd grew up off-the-grid in the remote woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he was homeschooled, but primarily self-taught through book study and trial-and-error experience to help his family become as self-sufficient as possible. Snowed-in during the winters, for nine years he skied nearly four miles one way to reach the nearest plowed road and ten miles round trip to a remote phone booth to contact relatives.

Todd has enjoyed sharing wilderness skills since the age of 19 when he led his first wild edible plant walk, and he is currently a certified Outing Leader with the Sierra Club. Todd has studied at The Tracker School, Tom Brown Jr’s Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School. During two back-to-back week-long classes, Todd constructed a debris hut which he lived in for nearly two weeks.

He has been an investigator with a long-term-missing and cold-case search team working the bush between the Upper Great Lakes and the Arctic Ocean in Canada since 2011 and has been on a first-response Search and Rescue team - Marquette County Search and Rescue - since 2021. His tripping partners appreciate his bush skills, including his ability to start a fire in foul weather, navigate through tangled bush, and gather wild foods at will - he can identify upwards of 100 edible wild plants.

Nick Gordon, Owner of NOW Outdoors, is an expedition guide and educator. He's a Wilderness EMT and teaches for AHA and the SOLO School of Wilderness Medicine helping novice and outdoor professionals live their best life working and playing in the backcountry. Nick is passionate about winter camping and runs the two largest winter camping events in Wisconsin including the Winter Workshop and Frozen Butt Hang which draws hammock camping enthusiasts from across the country every January. Nick leads international trips as well to Nepal, Peruvian Andes, the Amazon Jungle in Colombia, and the Arctic Ocean. He regularly presents at the Winter Camping Symposium, Canoecopia, and various outdoor related shows and podcasts.

As a child of camp directors, Pam Wright’s early life was steeped in the outdoors of eastern Montana and woodlands of northern Minnesota. For the past 20 years she’s been adventuring and leading others into the BWCAW and other backcountry locations throughout the US and Canada. When she’s not dipping a paddle, she enjoys ultra-running, winter camping and backpacking. She takes joy in introducing everyone to the beauty of the north country, hoping that they too will be caught in the wonder of the wild. She currently works as a guide for Women’s Wilderness Discovery in Ely, MN as well as a volunteer leader for Thrive Women’s Outdoor Adventures, Hudson, WI.

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