Build Your Own High Adventure

High Adventure trips are generally thought of as long-term camping experiences in remote or otherwise remarkable areas for experienced Scouts and Scouters.

There are three heavily promoted National High Adventure Bases - Florida Sea Base, Northern Tier (Minnesota), and Philmont Scout Ranch (New Mexico). In addition many Councils have established High Adventure Programs. The other option is developing and leading your own high adventure trips.

Inspired by other 'home brewed' high adventure trips our Troop is planning it's fifth annual trip this summer. We will take eighteen Scouts and Leaders on an eight day canoe trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.

There are several factors that make developing our own trips attractive;

• Cost - our trip is just about half of the current fee for our Council-led contingents to the BSA bases.
• Planning and Preparing - building your own high adventure program is more involved than the somewhat canned experiences available at the BSA Bases. This calls for crew members to be much more involved with the process and therefore makes the trip all that much more worthwhile. Scouts derive great satisfaction and valuable experience when they do it for themselves.
• Flexibility - We can schedule trips in a much more flexible time frame and suit the challenge to the participants. We can also plan our pre-trip shakedowns and meetings to suit our schedules.
• Crew Dynamics - Council contingents fill predetermined crew sizes. The good news is that you may get to spend a week or so with Scouts or leaders you don't know. This may be a chance to make new friends or a real ordeal. Filling a crew from a single Troop where everyone is familiar with one another makes the outcome more predictable.

The necessary specialized skills, knowledge and experience are not that difficult to develop. Consulting with other Scouters, searching the web and reading up on the place and activity your Troop chooses is half the fun.

Here are some resources to get you started:
Selden's High Adventure Resources - Some of the links are dated but this collection of information is bound to be useful. There is a great collection trip logs  on the web from Troops and Crews that  have designed their own high adventure experiences.
AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership - A solidly well-written and thorough guide that merits close study by anyone leading groups in the outdoors.
Expedition Canoeing - No other book was more helpful in making our canoe adventures a success.

Comments

[David]

That looks amazing !

[btphelps]

Speaking of canned programs, what is your opinion of the National Junior Leader Training program? It looks very "canned" to me, in that all of the meaningful content is presented using DVDs and a digital projector. There doesn't seem to be much of what Baden Powell said in "B-Ps Outlook" in 1913:

"The Scout method by which this aim is achieved, suggests attractive games in the primitive outdoors, giving challenges which a Scout learns to solve by himself."

Even the entry on Wikipedia suggests boys learn best by doing:

"Self-learning. Education in Scouting should give a Scout the ambition and desire to learn by himself, which is more valuable than only instruction by leaders."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_method

Any thoughts?

Brian Phelps
Moderator
Junior Leader Training Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JLT_training