By Julie Slama | [email protected]

Summit Academy’s Angela Grimmer has moved on from teaching at the Draper campus to overseeing high school students as the principal at the Bluffdale campus, but at least one tradition she started remains—inviting mountain man Scott “Grizzly” Sorensen to teach fourth-graders about Utah history.

“He provides a cool, hands-on interaction with the students,” Grimmer said. “And his tall tales don’t disappoint. Every year he shares about the five-point buck on the bicycle and we all laugh hysterically—and the students are so excited to hear more.”

This school year was no exception as his visit and the school’s 13th annual mountain man rendezvous was held as a sampling of what students will study this year.

When Sorensen visited Summit Academy, he wore his own home-sewn buckskins and showed students the tools of early trappers and explorers who mapped out much of the west.  

“Remember there was no Utah back then,” he told students. “Utah was the name of the tribe, not a place to mountain men.”

In between tall tales, he snapped steel animal traps, called out for elk and coyotes, and sang folk songs while playing his dulcimer. 

Fourth-grader Ivy Pizza remembered jumping when the beaver trap clinched.

“They had to work it with these jaw-like traps and if they got their hand caught in them, it could break it,” she said. “They’d hide the traps in mud around Cottonwood trees because that was what the beavers liked. We learned how mountain men would call and make animal sounds, like the elk one is really high-pitched, and what all the mountain men did with the animal skins.”

Intermixed with the fun, Sorensen introduced Kit Carsen, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger and other real mountain men from the 1800s, telling students about their survival skills such as skinning beavers to trade as they were used to make top hats or hunting moose to make moccasins. His own fringed pants were made of five deers.  

“These mountain men knew the trails, the passes, the waterways; they weren’t the ones who were interesting in mining or gold. They loved adventure and exploration,” he said. 

He brought coyote, wolf, raccoon, lynx, mountain lion, elk, bear and other animals’ skins, but most he admitted he acquired, not that he had to shoot them on the grounds of the fishing lodge on the Kipawa River, about 500 miles north of Toronto, where he has lived for 46 summers. In the wintertime, for more than 30 years, he has visited thousands of classes in the western United States to tell them about living in the wilds. 

“I like to make history and education fun and there are no better audiences in the world than fourth-graders,” said the former high school teacher. “Through showing and telling them about this style of life, they’re learning without even realizing it. I try to present it in a way students won’t forget.”

Fourth-grader Jacob Broadbent said he liked feeling the hides with the back of his hand, but also hearing Sorensen’s stories.

“I learned not to take Twinkies when I’m out where there are bears and I bet his grandma is still chasing the deer on the bike,” he said with a laugh referring to Sorensen’s tall tales. “What I really learned was how people came to the west to discover what was here and how they lived and survived while exploring.”

Many students have written to Sorensen through the years. After writing “Kipawa River Chronicles,” which includes many of his tall tales, Sorensen composed a second one of letters he received from schoolchildren called “Dear Mr. Mountain Man.” He hopes to write another book with even more letters.

Ivy’s and Jacob’s teacher, Emily Fox, said that during their writing time, she will encourage students to pen a letter to the mountain man. For those who are interested in sharing theirs, she will send it onto him as she did for three students following his last visit.

After the presentation, the students took part in their own mountain man rendezvous where they dipped candles, made arrowhead necklaces, played with button whirligigs, practiced gold panning, tried lassoing and took part in more hands-on activities.

Fox said this was an introduction into their fourth-grade study of the mountain men. Before he came, they started studying the five tribes in Utah and how mountain men traded with them. 

Typically, Sorensen’s presentation comes later in the year, but since he was already booked during the winter months, Summit teachers decided to have him come and give the students a preview of what they will study.

“We’ll study more in detail about the mountain men and have each student choose one for a report, which will be more specific to Utah, but it’s usually pretty interesting for them and they find some cool stories to share,” she said. “With having the mountain man come and letting the students have hands-on activities such as soap carving and working with leather, they’re actively learning about what life was like during this time period.”