Check out what Adventure Treks Instructor Orientation is all about…
We have a phenomenal team of instructors at Adventure Treks. We don’t say this lightly but we think this may be the strongest team of Adventure Treks instructors in our 21 summers! It’s been a great orientation and we are excited for you to meet the great role models who will be your instructors this summer. Our instructor team spent seven days of training together in southern Washington where we covered the big picture of all that being an outstanding Adventure Treks instructor entails. From applying recent trends in youth development to an outdoor environment, to refreshing medical skills, to risk management, to van driving, to community development, we all learned and shared a lot. We also played and shared a lot of games. First and Foremost, Adventure Treks is a lot of fun – and if instructors are having fun so are our students! We also formed a powerful and inclusive community which will be the basis of the excellent communities we hope to form with our students on all of our trips.
The Adventure Treks 2014 Instructor Team at Orientation
On Monday, June 16, we divided into our six-person staff teams and headed to our trip destinations. During this second full week of training, our instructor teams will be focusing on mastering the hundreds of small details that take an Adventure Treks trip from being merely good to being exceptional. Our instructors will also be scouting trail heads, refreshing their back country skills on an overnight hiking trip, shopping for food, learning about their students, and planning the final details of your trip.
We are excited to see you at the airport when you arrive on your opening day.
It’s finally summer – get ready to have a lot of fun and visit some incredible places!
Dock, Dmac, Josh, Emily, Jan, Joan, Holly, Rachele and your Adventure Treks instructors
AT Director DMac shares a lesson about perfecting the micro details which lead to a successful trip.
The Adventure Treks Leadership retreat is in full swing. Beginning June 4, Our leadership team gathered in a cabin near Mt. Hood, Oregon next to the Salmon River for 5 days of senior staff and leadership training prior to our full staff orientation which begins on June 10th.
Our 14 Trip Leaders and 4 Regional Directors hail from 11 states, average 29.8 years old and have 128 collective years of Adventure Treks experience (Average 7.3 years of AT experience each). Three of these folks were former Adventure Treks students. This is an incredible group of mentors and role models. They will be training and inspiring our new instructors and overseeing the success of our trips. As an Adventure Treks parent myself, I am thrilled to have these fabulous role models interacting and inspiring my own kids!
Besides building our leadership team community, we are applying leadership theory to Adventure Treks. (This year we did a case study on explorer Ernest Shackleton and how his successful leadership style can apply to leading an Adventure Treks trip.) We are also learning and relearning the specific details of each trip itinerary, and use this time together to all get on the same page regarding safety and the policies and procedures that lead to the most successful experiences for our students. Together, we share tips and tricks that make all of our trips better. We go over the many nuts and bolts which enhance our trips beyond the average as we work towards making every single trip exceptional.
Happy Action Fun Time! Taking time for some outdoor fun.
As we prepare for our big group orientation which begins on June 10th, I thought we would share what we have been reading this winter. It’s our job to stay on top of the latest youth development trends and literature so we can make sure that the Adventure Treks program remains relevant to parents. Besides being a ridiculous amount of FUN, we want Adventure Treks to be a tool that helps kids develop the skills, mindset, optimism, confidence, character and resilience that will help them become happier and more capable adults.
Topics from these and other books will be featured in our instructor orientation sessions as we try to facilitate the best possible learning and growing experience for your child. Below are our 2014 suggestions for the best 2014 youth development literature for those who share our obsession for helping teenagers grow:
Harvard Professor, Edward Hallowell gives us a wonderful five step program we can keep in mind as we give our kids a childhood that creates a footprint for them to become happy adults. In the Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, Hallowell, promotes childhood as a time to provide opportunities to feel connected to others, to play and be joyful, to practice and attain mastery in numerous activities, to fail and build resilience and to receive recognition. We use Dr Hallowell’s model in our staff training and wrote a BLOG about how his model applies to Adventure Treks. We love this book!
In Mindset, Stanford Researcher, Carol Dweck explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success–but whether we approach challenges with a Fixed or a Growth mindset. She makes it clear that praising intelligence and ability isn’t the best way to foster self-efficacy and confidence, and may instead actually jeopardize success. Understanding that the brain is malleable and that we are all works in progress leads to the development of a Growth Mindset. By praising effort and hard work rather than innate talent, we can better motivate our kids to more eagerly approach new challenges with vigor while building resilience in the process. We use Dweck’s book in instructor orientation to make staff aware of ways through our language and leadership, we can encourage our students to develop a mindset focused on continuous growth rather than accepting that our talents and abilities as fixed.
The Author who brought us Mean Girls and Queen Bees and Wanna Bees, Rosalind Wiseman, has now written the definitive book on boys, Masterminds and Wingmen. Using a panel of over 160 boys, Wiseman exposes us to the world of teenage boys and gives us great insight into the lives our boys are experiencing, the rules of boys world and how male teenage power structures work. She introduces the “Act like a Man Box” and the effects attempting to live up to these expectations have on young male behavior. As school and the economy change, we are concerned that boys are falling behind and we hope the culture we create at Adventure Treks will help give our male students enhanced succeed.
One of WSJ’s “most important reads for 2013”, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Child and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, discusses how technology is affecting family relationships and how parents’ involvement with technology at home affects family connections. Renowned clinical psychologist and author, Catherine Steiner-Adair explains that families are now in crisis around this issue. Not only do chronic technology distractions have deep and lasting effects, but children desperately need warm, interactions with the adults in their lives. Drawing on real-life stories from her clinical and consulting work, Steiner-Adair offers insights and advice as to how parents can achieve greater understanding, and confidence as they come up against the tech revolution happening in their living rooms. When our Adventure Treks students have an amazing experience and succeed beyond all expectations outdoors without any technology, they are often given a unique perspective on how technology fits into their lives. Read a recent BLOG we wrote about her book
https://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/tl-retreat-3-300x225-hOJxuf.jpg225300Amanda Foxhttps://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AT-logo-white-NEW.pngAmanda Fox2014-06-07 21:54:082025-02-28 14:06:54Greetings From the Adventure Treks Leadership Retreat and What We are Reading 2014
One of the joys of an Adventure Treks summer is becoming close friends with people from beyond your school and hometown. This year, we will welcome students and instructors from 43 different states and 14 countries. It’s great to discover the differences that culture and geography can have on our perception of things as well as the similarities we all share as part of our human experience. When we share a unified vision for the success of our Adventure Treks trip, it’s easy for a diverse group to come together and work towards a common goal. Together we can create a community that fosters a culture of kindness, inclusion and respect.
This year our twenty – one trip communities will include approximately 40 students who live overseas. This is about 8% of our student body. Several of our international students are Expats; American families who live and work overseas. And many are internationals, coming to the states to experience our incredible mountain scenery and become immersed in our wonderful AT culture. We have 7 students from France, 6 from China, 5 from Italy and 4 each from Canada and the Dominican Republic. We are amazed how many of our international students come back for multiple summers and consider AT their second home!
Our map may expand a little as we add our last few students. This year, for the first time, New York has edged out California as our most represented state. North Carolina is 3rd followed by Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, Maryland, Texas and Oregon. We are still desperately hoping to welcome a student from North Dakota – over the last 20 years, North Dakota is the only state from which we have never had a student!
Remember to get in your best possible shape and break in those new boots! The first Plus-Delta of the summer will be at trip leader retreat near Mt. Hood, OR on June 4.
Whether you are from Addis Ababa, Paris, New York City or San Diego, we can’t wait to see you on your opening day and welcome you to Adventure Treks. Good luck with your final exams. See you soon!
https://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2014_Global-Community-n0FGWJ.jpg500795Amanda Foxhttps://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AT-logo-white-NEW.pngAmanda Fox2014-05-30 10:50:052025-02-28 14:06:54Our Global Adventure Treks Community
Being in the outdoor industry for almost 16 years, a question that I hear time and time again is: “Is Adventure Treks safe?” That’s an impossible question. Really the question should be, “How does Adventure Treks effectively minimize risk while maximizing the growth that can occur on our trips?”
Somehow, we have created an expectation over the last few decades that life is supposed to be safe. But even with social security, insurance, and the Consumer Products Safety Board, we still live in a world where risk is part of daily life. For example, in 2012, 2.3 million toilets had to be recalled due to risk of explosion. (And 14 people were actually injured when their toilets burst!) And while we think nothing about getting in a car (and hopefully won’t text and drive), there are 35,000 fatalities a year in the U.S. alone from driving. And sometimes our safety obsession does more harm than good. As a nation, we have taken playgrounds, made them colorful and plastic and built so much safety into their design that older kids no longer use them. Yet, despite this safety obsession, playground injury rates remain the same as back in the day when playgrounds were fun.
One of the greatest things about taking people into the outdoors is that there is a high degree of perceived risk (which provides wonderful opportunities for growth), while the actual risk is significantly lower. Let’s take a look at the comparison of the activities we do at Adventure Treks versus school sports. While the outdoors may seem dangerous, historically there are 0.52 rock climbing injuries per 1,000 program days. (A program day is one person participating for one day/practice.) Compare this to cheerleading practice, where there are 1.0 injuries per 1,000 days (and this is just practice). Most striking is football: In the U.S., there are 12.09 injuries per 1,000 program days. Thus, you are 24 times more likely to get hurt playing football than you are rock climbing.
At the heart of our safety obsession is an assumption that children are too fragile or unintelligent to assess the risk of any given situation or worse that children cannot be trusted to find their way around tricky physical, social, and emotional situations. And there is some merit to this. Children don’t have a life full of experience. Good decisions tend to come from experience—from practice and from learning from mistakes or better still watching others make bad decisions and learning what not to do.
So our goal at Adventure Treks is not to completely eliminate risk (that’s impossible) but to help students learn to manage risk by modeling conservative risk management decisions. We begin with role models who emphasize being safe. Almost like an apprenticeship, we take the time to teach our students to assess risk and potential outcomes, look at the probability of an accident and potential consequences, and then engage them in the decision-making process. Our goal is to not only bring all of our students home in one piece, but also to give them tools to make better decisions after they return home!
But back to the original thought; is Adventure Treks safe? The answer is not simply yes or no. We have been fortunate in our 20-plus year history to not have had a significant injury. But this is not a guarantee for the future. I had been driving for 17 years without an accident, but in early February 2014, I was hit by another driver. It was not my fault, but in the end, it was still in an accident. We cannot rest on the fact that we have been fortunate, as something could happen anywhere, to anyone, doing anything. (Even sitting on the toilet.)
The key to effectively managing risk is to have an excellent team of instructors, train them well, and have an organizational culture that emphasizes and models safety. It’s also about getting our students to “buy” into our culture of safety. Our instructors come to us with years of experience working in the outdoors, and we are fortunate to have the highest staff retention rate in our field. By being excellent role models, they are able to transmit our values of acceptable and reasonable risk. By devoting ourselves to hiring an incredible team of instructors with an average age of 27 (with more developed brains than the 21-year-olds that many other programs hire) and by spending two full weeks in orientation before our students arrive, we are investing in the good and wise decision-making which increases the probability of a successful experience.
We are excited to announce our 2014 Instructor Team. For summer 2014, we will have a total of 73 instructors. They average 27 years old, hail from 21 different states and collectively have over 221 years (or over 3 years) of Adventure Treks experience apiece. Over 60% of our 2013 instructors will be returning this year. (Our return rate has exceeded 60% for the past 19 years.) Every instructor has at minimum a Wilderness First Responder medical certification and several instructors are trained as Wilderness EMT’s. All have significant experience working with youth outdoors. Most importantly, they are impressive role models.
This video is from Summer 2013 but most of the great folks in this video will also be part of summer 2014!
Eight of our instructors were former Adventure Treks students. Virtually every instructor is a college graduate and thirty percent hold or are working towards an advanced degree. During the rest of the year our instructors are teachers, graduate students, ski instructors, professional ski patrollers, professional mountain guides or work for college outdoor programs or outdoor education and science schools. We have instructors who have biked across the country, paddled the entire Mississippi River, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail and biked the Great Divide Trail. They have lived, worked and traveled all over the world.
We began with over 600 applicants to hire the 33 instructors who will be new to us this year. Each new hire had three separate interviews, four reference checks and a thorough background check. We are excited to welcome these folks to our Adventure Treks community. They are an impressive group and have much to add to our team. I am excited to watch these outstanding and committed role models inspire our students.
Our senior staff; trip leaders and regional directors begin a four day retreat near Mt Hood in Oregon on June 4th. Our entire instructor team meets north of Portland on June 10th for 7 days of intensive orientation. On June 17th our instructor group breaks into their 6 person staff teams to do an additional week of trip specific training before they greet their students.
Our 2013Adventure Treks Instructor Team
There is something about the camaraderie of Adventure Treks instructors that makes us friends beyond the summer. Being role models, we know that the energy we invest in building close friendships with each other and the kindness and respect with which we treat each other filters down to our students. One of the reasons we have a lengthy orientation is so we can build relationships that will help us work better together during the summer. When we watch our students treat each other with great respect and form close communities, we know we have done a great job modeling.
We will publish tentative instructor assignments to specific trips shortly. Please understand that instructor teams may change as we balance and match the best possible combination of instructor personalities and skills to each Adventure. We are excited for the summer to begin!
Congratulations to our many high school seniors who will soon be graduating and heading off for college or a gap year. Below is a list of the schools they will be attending. We know that steering through the college “sorting hat” has been difficult and we want to applaud you for all the hard work you have put into your successful high school careers. We hope you have chosen a school that is a good fit for your personality, abilities and interests. We believe college placement is all about the right match; it’s a shame that sometimes it gets turned into a giant contest.
We did it! High School is over!
We hope you will continue to pursue outdoor activities in college and join your school’s outdoor club. Time spent engaged in outdoor activities, besides being fun, active and great way to meet folks, is a wonderful way to stay grounded and gain perspective as you navigate the exciting whirlwinds ahead.
As you can see from the list below, Adventure Treks kids get accepted to amazing schools. This is because we begin with phenomenal kids. It takes a special person to choose an Adventure Treks summer and colleges understand that the communication skills, resilience, collaboration and contribution ethic fostered through an Adventure Treks experience correlates well with success at college. At a time when only 59% of entering full-time college freshman at four year colleges actually graduate from college within six years, we hope that the character, grit and resilience enhanced through the Adventure Treks experience, will help you thrive in college, and get out in FOUR!
Having talked to dozens of our AT graduates currently in college, we hear that their Adventure Treks experience, helped then feel well prepared:
Evening Meeting in Olympic National Park
“A.T. did a phenomenal job preparing me for the transition to college. I had the ability to adapt to new and changing situations. I knew how to meet people and how to work with different kinds of people. I have seen many of my friends struggle with the transition, but it’s been easy for me.”
—Christopher, University of Richmond
“A.T. made me more comfortable in my skin; so when I got to college I didn’t have to try and be anybody but myself – It was refreshing and empowering.”
—Max, Stanford University
“At Adventure Treks you learn how to help out and look out for others, how to thrive when things aren’t easy and how to see a bigger picture beyond yourself. A.T. gave me the confidence to lead a school organization my freshman year and it means I am always the one doing more than my share in project groups.”
—Jake, University of Nevada, Reno
“A.T. built my confidence and helped me become more outgoing. I learned that people liked me for who I am. I learned how to be a strong member of a community and how to thrive without electronics. When I got to college, I didn’t try to be anybody other than myself and didn’t get sucked into the endless video games and partying that dragged down many of my male peers.”
—Sam, Iowa State University
And here is The 2014 Adventure Treks College List: Noah Maggin – University of Richmond
Ruby Aresty – Wake Forest University
Teddy Levine – Bates College
Harry Templeton – Bowdoin College
Paul Ryan – Cornell University
James Purcell – Cornell University
Alec Redler – Elon University
David Cocoziello – Elon University
Eryn Lorberbaum – Muhlenberg College
Liam Arnade – Colwill – Yale University
Eric Kay – University of Vermont
Riley Erickson – University of Georgia Jack Cahill – Notre Dame University
Quinn Todzo – University of Illinois, Champaign / Urbana
Tyree Cowell – University of Michigan – Honors
Tylo Ward – University of Nevada – Reno – Honors
Ben Douglas – Kenyon College
Kim Davidson – Kenyon College
Andrew Plotch – Middlebury College
Nick Dillard – Georgia Technical College
Patrick Mahoney – Sacred Heart University
Adam Tigar – Carleton College
Miles Kelly – Gap year in Europe than University Colorado – Boulder
McKenzie Spooner – Whitman College
Merrit Geary – University of Montana – Honors
Nick Small – University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa
Zach Schaja – Emory University
Kyle Heiner – University of Oregon – Honors
Haley Weiss– University of Pennsylvania
Ben Zervitz – Ithaca College
Abigail Daniel – US Military Academy – West Point
Max Klein – University of Florida
Annie Pharr – Appalachian State University – Honors
Aidan Long – Warren Wilson College
Andrew Jacober – UNC – Chapel Hill
Michael Lipsitz – SUNY- Binghamton
Sean Moore – University of Texas, Austin- Honors
Isabella Bingen – University of Seattle
Tory Farrelly – Berry College
Hannah Gallogly – Wesleyan University
Ches Goodall – Tulane University
Jack Sollee – Haverford College
Emily Anderson – Case Western University
Ella Imes – Lewis and Clark College
Again, Huge Congratulations and very best wishes from all of us at Adventure Treks. We look forward to working with many of you at our Camp Pinnacle summer camp after your freshman year!
https://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/P6290266-300x225-DQKjPd.jpg225300Amanda Foxhttps://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AT-logo-white-NEW.pngAmanda Fox2014-05-06 02:08:202025-02-28 14:07:08A.T. and College – Where our 2014 Grads Will Attend
Hear Q and A’s from our team of Adventure Treks Directors as we explain the ins and outs of the Adventure Treks program and answer parent questions LIVE. Learn about our talented 2014 instructor team and the intention behind the adventure at Adventure Treks.
Cool Fact: Craig’s left arm is a 1/2 inch shorter than his right due to a few broken wrists when he was growing up.
What do you do for work when you are not with Adventure Treks?
I currently work as a sixth grade science teacher in Atlanta, GA, but I will be attending UNC – Chapel Hill in the fall to earn a masters in biostatistics.
Do you have a most treasured piece of outdoor gear?
This would have to be my pack. It fits like a glove and can easily carry 60+ pounds, but it is nice and lightweight and very durable.
Do you have a dream travel destination?
I would love to spend a few weeks backpacking and climbing in Patagonia. I’ve never been to South American and am jealous of all the pictures I see from friends!
So you have worked with Adventure Treks for 4 years, what keeps you coming back?
The students and the instructors keep me coming back year after year. It’s an honor to work with and lead such amazing outdoor professionals, and to get to spend my summers with the awesome AT students ! One of my favorite parts of an AT trip is the Mexi Cook Off after the first backpack. It’s amazing to see how much the students have already started to come together as a community at this point and how excited they are to reunite with their friends who were in the other backpacking groups.
Finally, the questions we have all been waiting for… If you could cannonball into a swimming pool filled with anything, what would it be?
Obviously cotton balls. The amount of fluff would be both staggering and amazing.
Thanks Craig, we are excited for another awesome summer!
I never thought I’d be a soccer dad… I always envisioned that weekends with my four kids would be spent hiking in the woods or mountain biking. Instead, Jane and I spend spring and fall weekends dividing and conquering as we figure out how to get our four kids to different soccer games in multiple locations. These parental challenges are not unique.
My kids love soccer and I applaud the many good things soccer brings. I like the friends my children have made through soccer and their families. I like the conditioning and emphasis on activity and health. I like the camaraderie, focus, and the teamwork my kids are learning. I love the fact that my girls look up to Tobin Heath and Heather O’Reilly and not Miley Cyrus or Rihanna.
On Any Given Sunday!
But while soccer is a great activity, I worry about too much of a good thing. Finding a passion, working hard to attain skills and being able to measure one’s growth through competition is a great way to build the confidence that will serve one throughout life. But now, we feel pressure from coaches and other parents to focus on soccer exclusively. This past fall, the day that travel soccer season ended, we were encouraged to begin winter soccer which began three days later! (We passed)
Whether this quest for specialization is driven by parental dreams of producing an elite athlete or simply the lure of an elusive scholarship to beat the skyrocketing costs of college, I feel that this pressure to specialize in a single sport is ultimately not in my kids’ best interests.
The bar has been set ridiculously high for those who wish to excel. Globalization has created a world that rewards the specialists at the expense of the generalists. We can all quote Malcom Gladwell’s statistic that it takes at minimum 10,000 hours of practice to be great at anything. That bar keeps getting raised. The level of play in high school or even middle school sports has never been higher, but has anyone stopped to question if this is ultimately important? Is there any correlation between the actual caliber of play and the life lessons we can learn from sports?
I was surprised to realize that most of this pressure to specialize comes not from kids but instead from coaches or parents. In fact, less than 5% of kids actually drive the decision to specialize. (Ginsburg, Durant and Bakltzel) It’s often the athletes of average talent that are “asked” to specialize because “these kids are on the bubble.” Specialization creates an opportunity to make an elite team roster and play at a level that wouldn’t be accessible if they divided their time between multiple interests. A varsity roster helps differentiate kids in college admissions, and the “right college” gives kids an “edge” in an increasingly unequal world.
But is this giant “sorting hat” healthy?
When a youngster focuses on one sport year-round “it becomes a job, not a pastime.” By 9th grade, 70% of kids who started a sport at age 8 or younger have given the sport up because they were “bored, burned out or didn’t make the team.”
Besides the mental toll, specialization has a physical cost. Despite a warning from pediatricians that growing kids should cross train rather than specialize; overuse injuries are now responsible for nearly half of all sports injuries to middle school and high school students.
An exclusive focus on sports also takes away the opportunity to have special and spontaneous family days, the kind of activities that build memories and family camaraderie. It also affects the diversity of potential friends. Soccer kids are great but it’s also important to have friends with different interests and perspectives.
Taking a Break on a Hike Up Looking Glass Rock
I don’t believe specializing is mentally healthy, either. I think our brains develop better when challenged in multiple areas with multiple activities. In fact, sports psychologists report that the most successful athletes are the kids who are “the most balanced and centered,” not the one’s who train the most or work the hardest (Ginsburg, Durant and Bakltzel) A study of elite Olympic competitors found that successful athletes grew up in an environment where fun was emphasized over winning until the teenage years. Personality qualities inherent and consistent in medal winning Olympians were ability to focus, self – confidence, optimism, resiliency, mental toughness, work ethic and of course sports intelligence and natural athleticism.
I don’t expect my kids to play soccer in the Olympics. As parents, we don’t have the commitment, even if our kids have the talent. Instead, I hope to be able to raise well rounded, balanced kids who will gain competencies in many different areas. If they get asked to do something like go sailing, play bocce ball or go to a symphony – I would hope they would have at least a working knowledge of each so they could be an eager participant. I want my kids to peak in their sixties not their late teens. I wouldn’t want them to look back at their high school sports career as the highlight of their life, but rather just one of many valuable growing experiences that helped prepare them for an engaged life filled with continuous growth.
Despite our family’s love for soccer and the inevitability that a future coach will attempt to gobble up their summers with lures of endless soccer programs and practices, one thing my kids will never sacrifice is summer camp. I know that my kids have so much fun and enjoy their “Camp” friendships so much that they wouldn’t easily sacrifice Adventure Treks for soccer. Summer programs also provide a much needed mental break from the pressures of daily life. 2013 research by the American Psychological Association shows that teens are now more stressed than adults, and Adventure Treks is just one way that we can help to reverse that trend.
Hiking in Colorado
At Adventure Treks, campers acquire skills in several activities. These small successes lead to bigger successes. These successes build confidence and self – efficacy. These are the same traits found in successful athletes. At summer camp, one can generalize rather than specialize and learn life and activity skills they will be able to use into old age. While instructors don’t have names like Cristiano Ronaldo or Hope Solo, they are realistic (and larger than life!) role models who engage in two-way conversations. Sure I love soccer, but I know my kids learn more about teamwork, character and leadership at Adventure Treks than they do on the playing field.
Every summer I see kids turning away from Adventure Treks and other great camps because of sports commitments. These are usually good athletes. They are frequently pressured by their coach and worried that if they don’t devote their summer to the same sport they practice the rest of the year, they will fall behind and miss out. It’s a decision real in the moment but usually regretted in retrospect. Sure sport has lots to teach, but so does Adventure Treks and summer camp in general. In the sports vs. Camp equation ultimately it’s about balance. We hope the concept of becoming a Renaissance person will again make a resurgence, after all we want our kids to peak in their 60s!
https://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2016_Bri_Rick.jpg900900Amanda Foxhttps://www.adventuretreks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AT-logo-white-NEW.pngAmanda Fox2014-03-31 16:00:342025-02-28 14:07:08Manifesto of a Soccer Dad – Adventure Treks vs. Organized Sports
Julia, what do you do when your not at Adventure Treks?
Right now, I spend most of my time being a graduate student at Lewis and Clark studying to get my license as a School Counselor. I work in a high school interning as part of my program. It is a great opportunity to help students with academic and personal issues as well as give guidance with college and career planning.
Do you have a favorite A.T. meal?
Mexi-cookoff, duh. Beans! Beans! They’re good for your heart…
How about a nickname, is there something that people call you besides Julia?
In the first two years of college everyone called me Schleifman because I lived on the same floor as the basketball team (and it was standard to call everyone by their last name). In my last year of college my best friends called me Juice(box) and still do to this day!
What has been your favorite part of working for A.T?
I love when I hear students say “This is the most beautiful/spectacular/awesome/sick place I have ever been!” I also loved swimming in Fontana Lake in North Carolina. The water is clear and warm and the lake is surrounded by the lush and green Smokey Mountains!
What’s your go-to activity when it rains?
There are a lot of rainy days here in Portland… and most of the time I wish I was snuggled up with my dog, reading and making chili in the crock-pot.
Any final words of wisdom Julia?
My favorite quote: “A ship in harbor is safe – but that is not what ships are built for.” – John A. Shedd
