River Navigation, Service, Whitewater Canoeing, Rock Climbing
PRICE
$7,995
PROGRAM
High School
AGES
16-18
LENGTH
30 Days
SEASON(S)
Summer
SKILLS
TECHNICAL
Basic Paddle Strokes
Belaying a Climber
Campcraft
Constellation Identification
Knots
Map and Compass
Navigation
INTERPERSONAL
Character
Empathy
Independence
Leadership
Positive Risk Taking
Problem Solving
Responsibility
Self Awareness
Self Confidence
Service
SHARE
Course Stories
This course has been the absolute hardest days of my life; physically, mentally, and emotionally. But, although I struggled a lot, cried a few too many times, and am now covered in bruises, scratches, and bug bites, I have learned so much about myself and how strong I really am - when I believe in myself. I used to think that weakness and strength were polar opposites, but in my weakest hours, I proved myself to be stronger than I had ever believed, and that alone has changed my outlook on everything. My instructor told me, “You can choose to be miserable or you can choose to be strong” and that really stuck with me and encapsulates my big takeaway. Moving forward, I will choose to be strong even when I feel weak. – Julia, age 17
In our longest and most diverse summer course, explore all that Maine has to offer from the rocky shoreline and spruce-covered islands to mountains, lakes and rivers.
Take a deep dive traveling through the unforgettable wilderness of Maine on this 30-day three-element course. Maine sailing, backpacking and canoeing expeditions traverse a variety of wild and rugged environments—from the granite shores, intricate rivers and dense islands of the Maine Coast, the peaks of the northern Appalachian mountain range and to the Rangeley Lakes, and/or the Moosehead region of Maine’s Northwoods. At sea, a 30-foot open sailboat serves as both home and classroom. In the mountains and lakes regions, you’ll learn to camp and travel across the wilderness, relying on your group, the supplies you have on hand and the skills you learn as you go. You’ll learn coastal navigation, small boat seamanship, woods craftsmanship, weather observation, anchoring and campsite selection, as well as beginning, intermediate and advanced skills in lake navigation, paddling technique and river hydrology. Leadership and responsibilities become shared during the journey, and group communication grows as each day’s plan is decided and challenges are discussed. Every crew member is integral and by living and working closely together trusting bonds are formed alongside independent accomplishments. The habits learned and strengthened through this sailing, backpacking and canoeing expedition will serve you for life, and for whatever challenge is next.
NOTE: For the health and safety of students and staff in the COVID-19 pandemic, students may be required to travel to course start by private transportation. Please work directly with your Course Advisor for your course for the most up-to-date and regionally-focused travel options. All students and staff must provide a current negative COVID-19 viral test result before arrival to course and/or consent to having a COVID-19 test administered at course start. Outward Bound requires students and staff to follow COVID-19 protocols for 14 days prior to course start and while traveling including physical distancing, wearing a mask in public, and frequent and thorough handwashing.For complete “Health and Safety Practices for Outward Bound Expeditions,” click here.
This course starts within the next week. Please call us at 866-467-7651 to assess the possibility of applying for this course!
Classic Courses
Are you ready to take a journey that will change your life? You won’t look at day-to-day drama the same way after you’ve conquered a high mountain ridge, made a boat obey your command in windswept waves or slept under the stars watching bats swoop overhead. Joining an Outward Bound expedition changes you. Your crew, your Instructor, your route and your adventures will have a profound and lasting impact on you as you rise to meet exhilarating natural challenges in some of the country’s wildest places.
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.
Demonstrate 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 High School students, the opportunities to carry more weight (literally and figuratively) and make impactful decisions with accompanying consequences fills the expedition as you go through numerous trials and triumphs. It’s all about independence.
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.
Sailing
Traditional 30-foot sailboats encourage teamwork and leadership like no other classroom. On an open boat with no cabin and no engine, the group will live closely together using only wind and oars to power their way. As they rotate responsibilities during this expedition, students learn the crafts of maneuvering under sail, coastal navigation, rowing and living aboard a small open boat. At night, students sleep on deck under a tarp, taking turns at anchor watch under brilliant night skies.
On this course, students:
Learn to navigate using a map or a chart and a compass to arrive accurately at the day’s destination over mountains and across open water.
Adjust sails properly for sailing at different angles to the wind, and execute sailing maneuvers like tacking and gybing, which turn the boat through the wind.
Move the boat under oar power, coordinating all the rowers' movements so that the oars splash as one, precisely maneuvering in and out of secluded anchorages.
Live (cook, eat, sleep, work and learn) with the group in the backcountry, contributing energy and ideas, sharing tasks and responsibilities and relying on each other.
Backpacking
Backpacking is an ideal combination of team and individual elements. The mountains of Maine are jagged and densely wooded, and the trails are remote, narrow and often steep. Students travel on wilderness footpaths, navigating on and off trail throughout the journey. From atop the mountain peaks, if the weather cooperates, the group’s hard work is rewarded with spectacular views. Living and traveling with just a backpack is a simple existence, in which small choices can make deceptively great differences. To live well in the wilderness, all crew members must share the chores that turn a camp into a home, including setting up tents and tarps, creating a kitchen area, taking turns fetching water and cooking satisfying meals.
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Canoeing
Wilderness canoe expedition skills are the mark of a New England outdoorsperson. In the foothills of Maine’s mountains are networks of remote lakes and rivers. Students learn to maneuver canoes using paddle strokes such as the sweep, draw, pry and J-stroke. To get from one waterway into another, students portage (carry the canoes on their shoulders) and line (guide the loaded canoe down the sides of un-runnable rapids). In learning to work, communicate and coordinate efforts as paddling partners each day, students discover the power of truly working together.
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Rock Climbing
Among the mountains of Maine are rocky crags that offer beginning, intermediate and challenging rock climbing. After learning to use climbing equipment, tie knots and belay each other, students test their balance, control and mental strength on the vertical rock faces. In addition to stretching the limits of what they think they’re capable of, climbing hones their coordination, flexibility and grace on the rock. Depending upon the expedition route, technical rope activities may include a “via ferrate” or “Tyrolean traverse.” Climbing presents many individual challenges for students, while the team must work together to set systems up, communicate clearly and support each other throughout the climb.
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Service
Service projects are often incorporated into Outward Bound courses through coordination with local land managers, conservation groups, government or social service agencies. While in the wilderness, students are encouraged to practice service to the environment and their team by sharing responsibilities and following Leave No Trace ethics throughout the expedition.
Solo
The Solo experience provides an important break from the rigors of the expedition to give students quiet time to reflect on the Outward Bound experience. With the basics of food and equipment, and with safety a top priority, students will take some time away from the group to be alone at sites of their own choosing, using the wilderness skills learned during the first parts of the course. Often located along beautiful lake shorelines or peaceful rivers, Solo sites are chosen to offer as much solitude as possible (yet be within emergency whistle-signaling distance of other group members). Most students spend their Solo time journaling, drawing or just thinking and resting as they process lessons learned and focus on their goals for the future. Instructors check on each participant at regular intervals. The time students spend on Solo depends on the length of the course. On courses longer than three weeks, Solo is up to 72 hours long.
Outcomes
Students in high school are undergoing many changes. At the beginning of the high school experience, it’s an exciting time for seeking freedoms and shouldering new responsibilities as they get closer to becoming an adult. As teenagers enter the final years of high school it’s more about transition, developing learning and life skills while preparing for what’s next, be it college, a career or a gap year adventure. To get ready for increased independence, older teens must be impelled to step up and make choices that have real consequences for themselves and others, with the support and supervision of knowledgeable and compassionate adults. Outward Bound Instructors on high school courses specialize in coaching students to meet challenges and make good decisions, independently and as a group. Students need only to be physically fit and motivated to learn and work together. No previous wilderness experience is necessary—all travel and leadership skills are taught from the beginning, and each phase of the expedition builds on the previous one. The longer the course, the greater the impact because of the deeper degree of transferable learning, so students are encouraged to take the longest course that will fit into their life — the initiative, teamwork and problem solving skills that they take away from their course will help them reach any horizons they strive for.
Photo courtesy
of Hannah Baker
Course Area
The coast of Maine, with its intricate and indented shoreline, is a unique segment of the North Atlantic seaboard. It is renown among sailors for its picturesque beauty, iconic lighthouses, abundant bays and harbors, rocky islands, and quiet coves. Our sailboat cruising area covers nearly 200 miles of the Maine coast, with countless rivers, bays and islands to explore. The rocky, spruce-covered islands are the summits of a prehistoric mountain range, and generations of inhabitants have made their livelihoods here. Evidence left behind on the islands reveals the historic presence of indigenous Abenaki camps, pre-colonial fishing communities, post-colonial timber and farming operations and early 20th century granite quarries. Cold, nutrient-rich waters flow from the Canadian Maritimes, making the Gulf of Maine home to a wide range of sea birds, seals, porpoises, and whales.
The mountains of western Maine and northern New Hampshire comprise the northern end of the Appalachian mountain range. Within this region, the White Mountain National Forest, the Appalachian Trail, the Carter-Mahoosuc Range, the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, the Grafton Loop Trail and the Caribou-Speckled Mountain Wilderness all offer classic backpacking terrain. These spruce-fir and hardwood forests are home to hundreds of species of birds as well as moose, deer and black bear. Rushing waterfalls, clear twisting streams and spectacular views from rocky summits reward backpackers ready for adventure.
The upper reaches of the Androscoggin, Penobscot, Kennebec, and Allagash watersheds are fed by Moosehead Lake and the Rangeley Lakes. Indigenous Abenaki peoples used these waterways as both a means of transportation between winter habitats inland, summer living on the coast and as a source of food. The great rivers of Maine were used to move logs to mills downstate during the logging boom of the nineteenth century. These days, the lakes and rivers are used primarily by canoeists, fishermen and other recreationalists. Some of the portage trails here, such as along the Rapid River, have been in use for centuries. These regions are the ancestral lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which includes Abenaki/Abénaquis, W∂last∂kwiyik (Maliseet), Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy nations.
SAMPLE ITINERARY
DAY 1
Travel to course, welcome, equipment issue and check, introduction to camping at our Newry Basecamp
DAY 2-8
Backpacking expedition: situational leadership, risk assessment and management, conflict resolution
DAY 9
Transport to the Rangeley Lakes region, begin canoeing
DAY 10-14
Canoeing expedition: paddle techniques, campcraft, map and compass, group development
DAY 15
Transport to Wheeler Bay base camp to begin the sailing expedition
DAY 16-25
Sailing expedition: navigation, maneuvering under sail and oars, seamanship, leadership and communication. A solo and rock climbing experience may be part of this section.
DAY 26-28
Final expedition challenge: test skills and knowledge, self-reliant problem solving; return to base camp
DAY 29
Personal Challenge Event, equipment clean-up and de-issue
DAY 30
Course graduation, depart for airport
Course Stories
This course has been the absolute hardest days of my life; physically, mentally, and emotionally. But, although I struggled a lot, cried a few too many times, and am now covered in bruises, scratches, and bug bites, I have learned so much about myself and how strong I really am - when I believe in myself. I used to think that weakness and strength were polar opposites, but in my weakest hours, I proved myself to be stronger than I had ever believed, and that alone has changed my outlook on everything. My instructor told me, “You can choose to be miserable or you can choose to be strong” and that really stuck with me and encapsulates my big takeaway. Moving forward, I will choose to be strong even when I feel weak. – Julia, age 17
If you are ready to enroll on a course click the enroll button next to the course you wish to select or you can enroll over the phone by speaking with one of our Admissions Advisors (toll-free) at 866-467-7651.
To secure your spot on a course you must submit an enrollment form and $500 deposit that is applied toward the total cost of the course and includes a $150 non-refundable enrollment processing fee.