Oaxaca, Mexico (May 2005)
The Upper School grades culminated their classroom studies of empires, globalization, world trade and the Spanish culture with an experiential trip to Oaxaca, Mexico in April 2005 where they participated in the intensive Becari Language Institute, coupled with family home-stays. The two-week trip enabled students to study Oaxacan native culture and arts, including music, dance, cooking, weaving and painting, as well as geography, geology, natural science, Aztec and Mayan ruins. Excursions were taken to ruin sites, hot springs, the widest tree in the world, cathedrals, and small rural communities. Studies were punctuated by a service learning project with Sustainable Solutions, funded in part by the Telluride Education Foundation. Sustainable Solutions is a Coffee Cooperative based in the United States with primary coffee growers in Oaxaca. Students volunteered their time on a coffee plantation run by the Juarez family in the Oaxacan highlands and through their work there learned about the life of a coffee bean - from plantation through harvest, export, purchase, transport and brewing, including economics, human rights, workers' rights and globalization.

Once back in Telluride, students used various aspects of the trip as springboards for their Spring Immersion projects and produced a video and still photography images taken from their experiences abroad.

Alta Lakes Observatory
For three days in late January, Telluride Mountain School 7 th -11 th grade students traded pencils and calculators for avalanche beacons, Nordic skis and field notebooks as they completed a Level I Avalanche course at the nearby Alta Lakes Observatory.  In addition to studying the basics of mountain weather, snow metamorphism and avalanche rescue, students also learned to identify avalanche terrain and test the snowpack for stability. While most of the three-day trip was dedicated to the study of avalanches, students also found time to read the short stories of Hemingway, cook delicious meals and enjoy friendship and camaraderie in the warmth of a rustic mountain cabin.  Overall, the trip educated the students on the inherent dangers of traveling in the San Juans and gave them skills to mitigate their exposure to those dangers by making informed decisions. The trip also served as a launch pad for the 7 th /8 th grade winter ecology and biology units on cold related injuries and wilderness medicine.

Bridal Veil Basin Backpacking
In early September 2004, Mountain School 7th - 11th graders spent a week exploring the history, geology and ecology of Bridal Veil Basin above the Town of Telluride. Students and their instructors camped at Blue Lake while learning about the formation of the San Juan Mountains, discovering how certain animals adapted to life in the cold and tracing the flow of water through the basin to the historic hydroelectric Power Station. Students touched upon the rich history of mining in the basin and wrote stories about what it would have been like to be a miner toiling in the mines a century ago. The week culminated with Power Station owner Eric Jacobson's captivating lecture on the deck of the station and a tour of the working facility. Upon returning to school, students prepared a PowerPoint presentation for the entire school community.