Classic Courses

Are you ready to take a journey that will change your life? You won’t look at day-to-day life the same way after you’ve spent time up close and personal with nature. Joining an Outward Bound expedition changes you. Your crew, your Instructor, and your discoveries are just the beginning of a lifetime of fun and adventure in the wilderness.

• Build skills, form connections: Learn and practice wilderness, teamwork and leadership skills. Find connections with your crewmates based on support and respect (and fun too!), and in the thick of challenges, discover there is more in you than you know.
• Value strengths and strengthen values: Uncover your unique character strengths, develop your leadership abilities and learn how to let compassion in to everyday life by pushing your own limits and working alongside your peers.
• Approach mastery: As you gain confidence in new skills, take on more decision-making responsibilities. Work together to achieve team goals, solve problems and succeed both as individuals and as a group.
• What you’ll learn: For Elementary School students, heading away from home means taking on new responsibilities and expectations with crewmates who are strangers when you first meet and trusted teammates by the end of your expedition. It’s all about confidence.

After you come home, many of the character, leadership, and service traits you uncovered on your expedition stay with you, helping you navigate your daily life with more resilience and success.

Benefits of a Similarly-identifying Peer Group

These courses are designed to support a cohort of students who identify anywhere on the gender spectrum in an all-boys or all-girls patrol structure (open to all students who identify in that gender). This allows you to be yourself and find your voice as a leader in a supportive and similarly-identified peer group.

Service

Service is an integral part of every Outward Bound course. Elementary school courses introduce the idea of service to others through a chore rotation. Students will also do an age appropriate service project with a community partner. This might include picking up trash at a picnic area or helping to feed trout at a fish hatchery.

Solo

Solo is an opportunity for rest and reflection. Outward Bound believes that reflection is necessary in order for learning to occur. Solo is closely supervised, lasts roughly 90 minutes, and includes journaling, drawing, or a craft project. Students will have snacks, water, and enough shelter to keep them out of the elements. Solo is a great opportunity to practice being present in nature.

Outcomes

Students will learn the basics of backcountry living, including building shelters, sleeping, cooking, and travel. Students will build an appreciation for the environment through lessons in navigation and ecology, and build social skills like communication and teamwork through a variety of group challenges.

Course Area

Located just outside the historic town of Leadville, Colorado, the Leadville Mountain Center is our main Colorado basecamp. The property is over 600 acres at the base of Mount Massive. Students will have a backcountry experience sleeping in our developed campsites and opportunities to explore forests, fields, and wetlands. Our basecamp is perfect for giving students a taste of the wilderness while still providing a higher degree of support and comfort to our youngest students.