Outdoor School for All Senate Hearing April 9 2024
April 10, 2024
Classrooms & Learning Spaces
Discover more trails, lakes, and streams at Wolf Ridge. Explore Campus
Pichotta Science Center
Dedicated to Jack and Genea Pichotta, founders of Wolf Ridge, the Science Center is where many classes meet before heading outside. It houses an aviary for raptors, a large auditorium used for evening programs, a 35-foot indoor rock climbing wall called Mystical Mountain, our gift shop, multiple classrooms, and staff offices.
Located at the end of our driveway. The Science Center is visible from our main parking lot.
Forest Ecology Building
The Forest Ecology Building is a classroom used for full-day K-12 school group excursions, our forest ecology classes, and many of our adult learning courses. In the winter, it doubles as a ski chalet for the Baptism ski trails. It has two classrooms, storage for cross country skis used by Wolf Ridge students, and indoor composting toilets. Outside, an old-fashioned two-person crosscut saw is set up for classroom demonstrations.
Located on the dirt driveway leading to our main campus. Look for signs along the road.
Lake Superior Field Station
In addition to the main campus, Wolf Ridge has a 68-acre classroom on the shores of Lake Superior. Facilities include an observation deck overlooking the lake, a classroom yurt, and restrooms. This unique spaces adds vital educational opportunities in freshwater literacy to our extensive curriculum.
Wolf Ridge Organic Farm
Located near our campus entrance, the Wolf Ridge farm has three high tunnel greenhouses, a processing building, outdoor classroom spaces, a wood-fired pizza oven, and pollinator gardens along with crop and research fields.
Students visit to learn about food systems, pollinators, land stewardship, and sustainable farming practices.
The food grown, harvested, and processed on our farm feeds the Wolf Ridge dining hall and surrounding communities in the Arrowhead Region.
Weather Station
Just a few steps outside the Science Center, our weather station uses digital sensors from Campbell Scientific and daily observations by Wolf Ridge naturalists taken each morning at 7:00 am to monitor cloud cover and type, wind speed and direction, temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, precipitation, along with snowfall and depth. Wolf Ridge is a certified national weather service coop monitoring station with one of the biggest snow data records in Minnesota going back 30+ years. We also partner with the Minnesota State Climatology office.
Listen close to weather reports from Minnesota Public Radio and you’ll hear Wolf Ridge mentioned, especially when it comes to snow cover. Data collected by our weather station is incorporated into our Weather Classes and helps train students in our graduate naturalist program.
Wetlands Building & Ski Chalet
The ski chalet located at the beginning of the Raven Lake ski trails receives its energy from the sun. Learning about the photovoltaic panels is just the first of many new experiences students have here. Up to 100 skiers per day can be outfitted. During the summer months, it serves as a classroom for the Wetlands Ecology Class.
Stream Ecology Building
Located near Sawmill Creek, this building is part-classroom, part acid rain, and air quality monitoring station. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has an air monitoring site located near the Stream Study Building.
Education Building
This building is home to eight classrooms, a small auditorium, and a 35-foot tall indoor climbing wall. Many classes meet here before heading outside.
Chickadee Landing
During late winter, students visit chickadee landing to study bird behavior up close. So close, they might experience the surprise of a chickadee landing in their hands or nesting on their winter hat.
Our bird banders give our visiting chickadees a color band so we can follow how old each bird is, and follow them from year to year and season to season.
Ridgetop & Skyview Ropes
The Adventure Ropes Course is the most highly requested experience at Wolf Ridge.
Students discover how to collaborate effectively and provide mutual support. When combined with the multi-day experience of ecological classes such as Birds or Wetlands Ecology, or physical science classes such as Climate Change or Renewable Energy, it serves as metaphors for how we can work together to address the environmental challenges.
Each of the two Wolf Ridge adventure ropes courses is roughly 25-30 feet off the ground. Students traverse the course while attached to safety lines.
Voyageur Encampment
After portaging and paddling along Wolf Lake, as part of an imaginary North West Company brigade in the year 1793, students set up camp at the Voyageur Encampment. At camp, they make fry bread, tea, flint, and steel fires, learn about shaving a paddle, and practice voyageur games.
Birch & Spruce Ojibwe Sites
These spaces introduce students to our Ojibwe history and language curriculum, with structures and tools used to represent an Ojibwe camp from 250 years ago. Students practice skills like fire-starting using a bow drill or flint and steel, preparation of wild rice and raspberry tea, as well as the making of basswood twine and black ash baskets.
The Telescope Deck
Located behind the Science Center, from the telescope deck, students have the opportunity to observe the night sky using 12″ Meade Schmidt-Cassiegrain computerized telescope, 25 power binocular telescope, laser pointer, standard binoculars, and their very own eyes. There are three stations where students can experience and observe gastronomical delights on the observation platform.