About Us

Learn more about our Instructors and their backgrounds

Erik Kulick, JD.WEMT.FAWM

Founder & Chief Instructor

Looking to bring the finest outdoors training and education to Pennsylvania and its surrounding states, Erik Kulick drew upon his passion for the outdoors and his 30+ years of teaching experience to found True North in 2011.

Growing up as a backpacker and paddler, Erik has a diverse background.  He has taught for regional and national outdoor programs, like the L.L. Bean Outdoor Discovery School.  He has spent the last twenty years focusing his training on wilderness survival and he feels particularly fortunate to have worked with Byron Kerns, a former U.S. Air Force SERE instructor featured in the book, Deep Survival.  He’s been privileged to instruct military personnel of various service branches, from those in the enlistment pipeline to special operations.  In his classes, Erik is best known, not just for his technical skill and knowledge, but for his energy and patience in teaching folks of all levels and backgrounds.

Erik has a background in emergency services where he started as an EMS provider.  He is a Wilderness EMT, a Pennsylvania certified EMS Instructor, an instructor for the American Heart Association, and has taught at the Center for Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is a member of the Wilderness Medical Society, where he is also a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine (FAWM).  Erik presently serves in law enforcement.

As an attorney and MBA, Erik also works with organizations to help achieve train and develop their members.  The Great Outdoors may lack access to telephone and the internet, but it provides some of the best opportunities to learn team building, communication, conflict resolution, and risk assessment.  Erik has worked with the Boy Scouts of America, Carnegie Mellon University, UPMC, and the Association of Consulting Foresters amongst many others.

Erik has been featured in various national and foreign media outlets, including BackpackerCNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Philadelphia InquirerKDKA, Men’s Health, National Public Radio partner, WITF, as well as Australia’s News Corp and Britain’s The Guardian.

J.C. McGreehan, BS.NRP.WEMT

Senior Instructor

JC & BearAn avid outdoor enthusiast, J.C. McGreehan brings his extensive recreational, military, and medical experience together to provide his students, no matter their skill level, a well founded and truly unique instructional experience.

J.C. brings much wilderness survival and medicine expertise, garnered at home and overseas, to the table. He is a practicing National Registry Paramedic and a certified Wilderness EMT. J.C. is a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot who completed his survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training at the U.S. Army SERE School.  J.C. has deployed to some of the most devastated areas of the world, including Haiti and Afghanistan. In 2013, as a team leader for Team Rubicon, J.C. led a group of medical and rescue professionals to the Philippines in less than 72 hours after Typhoon Haiyan, one the most devastating tropical cyclones ever recorded, made landfall to help the nation’s survivors who were in dire need of clean drinking water, shelter, and critical health services.

On the recreational side, J.C. enjoys mountain biking, hiking, outdoor photography, primitive camping, sailing, SCUBA, not to mention the occasional adventure race, all of which have taken him around the US and abroad, as he continues his search for the next great experience.

J.C. initially joined the True North team as a student almost fifteen years ago when he took our Advanced Wilderness Survival course to hone and refresh his skills.  Shortly afterwards, he began to consult for True North, then later started teaching its clients.  He has represented True North in the national media, including Fox News.

J.C.’s teaching philosophy is to create a comfortable learning atmosphere for our clients that first instills confidence, thus allowing them to effectively acquire tangible and useful skill sets that are applicable, not just to survival situations, but to many aspects of life too. 

Lisa Anantarow

Youth Education Instructor

The CaptainWith a love for the outdoors and adventure, Lisa Anantarow provides any added dimension to our mission at True North.

Lisa has diverse career focused on service, education, and leadership.  She has more than 25 years experience as a teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools working with children of all ages and backgrounds.  She also served as an Officer in the U.S. Army, where she was deployed to Iraq.

Lisa believes that everyone should have access to all of the benefits and opportunities that the Great Outdoors has to offer, no matter one’s background and circumstance.  While she is always up for a day on the trail or the river, Lisa especially loves urban exploration where she can investigate abandoned structures and long forgotten places.  

Joe Triebsch

Senior Trip Leader

Since childhood, when his family built a cottage near Pymatuning Lake backed against state forest lands, Joe Triebsch has enjoyed the outdoors and spent countless hours exploring.  While in college, Joe had a chance to downhill ski, then try cross-country — He was hooked!  After college, Joe began to backpack, drawing him to places all around Western Pennsylvania.  In the middle 1970s, he joined the Explorers Club of Pittsburgh which fostered his interest in other earth sports, such as rock climbing and paddling.  Joe has taken opportunities to hike, backpack, ski and climb in numerous places across the United States, including several hiking trips in the Alps.

Joe loves to share our local woodlands and trails with others of all skill levels and backgrounds.  As a high-school teacher for Pittsburgh Public Schools, Joe not only ran the ski club for many years, but co-sponsored an outing club where he took students hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, snowshoeing and white-water rafting.  Joe later volunteered his time as a trip leader for Venture Outdoors, who then asked him to serve on its Trip Leader Council and instruct in its Trip Leader Training Program.  After retiring from teaching, Joe worked at REI where he enjoyed assisting folks plan their own outdoor adventures, plus leading and teaching many classes for its Outdoor School in hiking, backpacking, cycle touring and snow sports.

As if he weren’t busy enough, through the years, Joe has enjoyed the pleasure of volunteering his time to provide presentations to the Boy Scouts of America, coach the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Xtreme Hike, and lead trips for the Women’s Adventure Club.

Joe is looking forward to introducing folks to the opportunities that abound in Penn’s Woods.

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