There is never a typical day at Adventure Treks! I write this from 30,000 ft on a Delta Jet, eventually heading to Sacramento to greet the incoming California Challenge 2 students who begin their Adventure Treks experience tomorrow. Then it’s a night flight to Alaska to welcome our Alaska 2 students.

Today we have 238 students in the field. This goes up to 261 students tomorrow when we open Cal Challenge 2 and Alaska and bid a tearful goodbye to our wonderful Blue Ridge experience students.

As I write this the Blue Ridge students are zip lining over the Pigeon River, they did a cool night hike last night after watching an incredible sunset from Max’s Patch on the Appalachian Trail. The Pac NW Experience students are climbing Mt St Helens. Their trails are still buried under seven feet of snow, but they will give it the AT Try! Leadership Summit is taking their wilderness advanced first aid course and improving their judgment and safety skills in the process. Cascades Challenge is on a 4 day rafting trip on the Snake River (switched from the Lower Salmon due to high water levels.)

Meanwhile in British Columbia, one group is backpacking in the Trophies while another is canoeing on crystal clear Clearwater Lake. In New England, our students are beginning an ascent on Mt Washington, while in Utah, students are starting a three – day mountain biking trip near Moab.

Great news from California Challenge 1! Yesterday, 22 of 23 summitted Mt Shasta under a sunny sky. Today, they are rafting the Upper Klamath! I am eager to hear from our California Adventure students as they come off their 4 – day backpack on the Lost Coast today. And up in Alaska, one group finishes their five-day sea kayak, while another group puts in for a six day backpack in the Talkeetnas.

Every group is facing different age appropriate challenges and sharing incredible scenery. But more importantly, despite their different activities and locations, all of our students are learning the same things:

That you can accomplish more with the unconditional support of your friends
That doing more than your share is a good thing.
That happiness comes from being part of something bigger than oneself.
That effort and reward are related.
That you can accomplish more than you think.
That you can have the time of your life without a computer, a cell phone, a video game or facebook.
And that good friends are a lot more important than stuff.

All of our students are enjoying being immersed in a community based on a culture of kindness and inclusion that minimizes cliques and teenage drama while maximizing laughter, fun and friendship.

I’m also very excited about the role modeling your children are getting from our instructors. In a culture that celebrates the fall of too many public features, your kids are hanging out with solid, dependable adults who are modeling your values. Somehow they listen a lot better to folks in their 20’s than they do to us parents!

Thanks for your trust and support. You are sharing a wonderful group of kids with us. All of us in AT land are going as hard as we can to help your child have an incredible experience.

Best regards,

John Dockendorf
Director

I am very excited for your child to meet the outstanding role models that comprise our 2011 instructor team! This is our strongest team of instructors ever. (And I don’t say this lightly!) Each six person Adventure Treks instructor team has a great balance of fun and engaging personalities with the right mix of “hard” and “soft” skills so they can lead an exciting and effective trip and connect with every single student. I wish my own children were old enough to spend time with these wonderful role models. Please watch our recent video so you can meet just a random few of our many incredible instructors.

We’ve just completed 7 days of Instructor orientation and our instructor’s enthusiasm for creating indelible and incredible experiences for youth far exceeded my extremely high expectations. It’s a privilege to have so many returning instructors with multiple years of Adventure Treks experience at orientation to help model the Adventure Treks culture to our new instructors. At orientation, we share the big picture stuff… Safety, and Adventure Treks standards, policies and procedures. We also discuss trends in youth development and education and how to successfully reach children who are raised as digital natives. In many ways, we run orientation so it feels like an Adventure Treks trip. We want our instructors to know what it feels like to be a fist time Adventure Treks student.

Our instructors are now spread out across the country in their six person teams. From New Hampshire to North Carolina to Utah to British Columbia to California, each staff team will spend the next week, breaking in their brand new 2011, 15-passenger vans, learning their trip logistics, organizing food, meeting with outfitters, and assessing snow and trail conditions. Of equal importance, they will be working on their communication and community so they can effectively model a culture of kindness, caring and open communication to their students.

If I were to sum it up, Adventure Treks is the place a person comes to be their best self. One can focus on the activities, the outdoors the great scenery and the fun events and be completely satiated; but Adventure Treks is much more than outdoor activities. We want our students to feel great about themselves and realize how capable they are. Our instructors are bringing “their best selves” to your child’s trip. We are excited for the magic to begin.

Best regards,

John Dockendorf
Director

We look forward to seeing you soon!  Enrolled students, you can log in to access all of your travel information specific to your trip.  You can also learn lots of tips and hints about flying or driving to Adventure Treks on our Traveling to Your Adventure Webpage, which features our latest video:
 

 

Greetings from 30,000 feet.
Though our first students won’t arrive until June 22 and despite the fact that we have been working with school programs since May, Adventure Treks officially begins today.

Today, our senior staff, consisting of our trip leaders and regional directors begin a five day retreat.  This is an exceptional group of folks with years of Adventure Treks experience, several of our trip leaders began their AT career as students.  Five years of Adventure Treks tenure is the norm here and several staff have spent more than seven years with us.

Here we get ourselves on the same page, share tips for success, revisit all the details that make an Adventure Treks program successful, examine trends in today’s youth and youth development,  revisit policies and procedures and prepare for the massive job of staff orientation which begins on June 10.

It’s also a social time.  This group of folks truly loves one another.  We have been together for a long time. This is time they have together before they change their focus to training and leading new instructors and leading and role modeling our students.

Creating a strong community of our senior staff sets the basis for the rest of the summer.   We can’t facilitate a strong and caring community, where students become their best selves; if their leaders aren’t doing the same.  When our senior staff exudes  genuine warmth, a culture of kindness, a culture of competence and strong communication, it’s picked up by our new instructors and ultimately our students.

We have been preparing for summer 2011 since last November.  We have done all in our power to make it the best summer ever.  It’s game time now… and we are very excited.

We can’t wait to meet your child in the days and months ahead.

Best regards,

John Dockendorf