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Southwest Alpine Backpacking, Canyoneering & Rafting

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LOCATION

Southwest

EXPEDITION TYPE

Backpacking

Canyoneering

Rafting

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

Alpine Backpacking, Canyon Backpacking, River Navigation, Service, Whitewater Rafting, Rafting

PROGRAM

High School

LENGTH

22 Days

START LOCATION

Grand Junction, CO

END LOCATION

Grand Junction, CO

SKILLS

TECHNICAL

Belaying a Climber
Campcraft
Food Preparation and Cooking
Knots
Leave No Trace Methods & Ethics
Map and Compass
Natural History
Navigation
Rappelling
River Reading
Self Care
Sheltering Strategies
Travel Techniques
Water Safety and Rescue

INTERPERSONAL

Character
Communication
Conflict Resolution
Empathy
Independence
Leadership
Positive Risk Taking
Problem Solving
Resilience
Responsibility
Self Awareness
Self Confidence
Service

This 22-day alpine backpacking, canyoneering and rafting course is ideal for individuals ready for a classic river trip and the adventure and challenge of canyoneering in Utah’s dramatic landscapes.

Work with your crew to become a team and maneuver your raft through Class II and III rapids. Build your muscles and skills paddling flat-water sections between the rapids. You’ll learn how to coordinate your positioning and spacing and time your strokes to help and protect each other as you go. In the mountains and the canyons, traverse over high passes, descend into lush, vegetated valleys and attempt several summits, learning to rely on and help each other at every step of the way. You’ll leave with an increased sense of self, leadership and backcountry knowledge.

NOTE: This course requires that students submit proof of "Up-to-Date" COVID-19 Vaccination status as defined by the CDC. For questions regarding this policy please see this page or call us at 866-467-7651.

UPCOMING COURSES

This course is closed for the season.

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.

Outcomes

This 22-day course, like all Outward Bound expeditions, is focused on building character and leadership skills. Short courses are a great option for students looking for an introduction to the outdoors or for those who need a quick recharge.

On longer courses, Instructors progressively hand over more of the decision making and leadership of the expedition to the crew, allowing each person to test the new technical and interpersonal skills they’ve learned. Through the dynamics of an evolving group setting, students have more freedom to investigate who they are and how they want to develop personally. All along the way, students experience a wide variety of some of the most beautiful wilderness in the US and the world.

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Ashley Perry

Photo courtesy of Scout Sorcic

Photo courtesy of Scout Sorcic

Photo courtesy of Scout Sorcic

Photo courtesy of Dave Erbe

Photo courtesy of Hunter Stafford

Backpacking

The course begins with lessons in basic travel and camping techniques. Along the way, students learn Leave No Trace¨ techniques, map and compass navigation, camp craft and get a feel for the human and natural history of the area. Students backpack in the canyons and out across the mesas, camp on vast expanses of desert slickrock and stop along the way to explore amazing ruins and interesting geology. Most importantly, students get to spend time in an incredible area of the desert, sleep under the stars, feel the sunshine on their face and watch the sunset over this simple but magical landscape.

Canyoneering

With their crew, students will journey through the intriguing and difficult-to-explore canyon country, taking in the infinite shapes of the arches, towers, buttes, amphitheaters, overhangs, and domes. While doing this, students will carry a 45 to 60 pound backpack which will have all that's needed to thrive in the wilderness. Sometimes students will shed their backpacks for smaller daypacks to navigate into narrow slots or explore thousand-year-old cliff dwellings and rock art. Crews camp on expansive rock slabs, stopping along the way to explore microclimates and canyon ecosystems. All the while, students continue learning how to use maps and compasses, to cook meal, negotiate slickrock obstacles, find water, and live comfortably in the immense canyons. The days can be long and hard, but the canyons reward students with their jaw-dropping beauty. Students will spend time in an incredible area where life becomes more in tune with the essentials of traveling through a landscape of rock, sand, sky.

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Cara Befort

Photo courtesy of Ashley Perry

Photo courtesy of Dave Erbe

Photo courtesy of Dave Erbe

Photo courtesy of Dave Erbe

Photo courtesy of Dave Erbe

Rafting

Each day on the river is spent learning to recognize and navigate various obstacles and hazards in the river, and how to anticipate the forces of the current from far enough upstream. Students work to become a team, coordinating spacing and paddle strokes. Each student will have an opportunity to be the captain of their raft and practice new skills as they maneuver through adrenaline-filled rapids and flat-water sections.

In places, the canyon rims rise thousands of feet above, enclosing participants in a remote world of rushing water, delicate ecosystems and unbelievable beauty. Most courses get the opportunity to take day hikes away from the river and up to the canyon rim. These hikes provide amazing views, a change of pace and often the chance to see Native American ruins, petroglyphs, pictographs and strange but beautiful geological formations.

Final Expedition

The course ends with a Final Expedition, during which the crew heads back into the field to put all of their newly acquired skills into practice. Depending on the team’s ability levels, instructors step back during this section and allow the crew to take over decision-making responsibilities for navigation, time schedules, communication and general leadership.

Photo courtesy of Matt Nuñez

Service

Service to people and the environment is a core value of Outward Bound and is integrated into each course. Participants follow Leave No Trace ethics as service to the environment and do acts of service while leading and supporting fellow participants. As they see the impact of their actions firsthand, students develop a value of service and transfer this desire to serve their communities back home. Past projects have included working on a goat farm, building trails, cleaning trash and debris from natural spaces, working with a local community garden and removing invasive species.

Solo

In order for profound learning to take place, there must be time to reflect on the experience. Weather and time permitting, Solo provides an important break from the rigors of the expedition and gives students the opportunity to reflect on their Outward Bound experience. Many students use this reflection time to make decisions about their future, journal and enjoy the beauty of their surroundings unencumbered by the constant external stimulation of modern life. Solo is that opportunity, and that time can range anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours or more, depending on the length of the course as well as the competency and preparedness of the student group.

With all the food, skills and supplies they need, participants are given a secluded spot to reflect alone and are monitored by Instructors at regular intervals, as safety is always a top priority. Students find that Solo provokes profound and powerful learning in a short period of time and often becomes one of the most memorable parts of their Outward Bound experience.

Course Area

La Sal Mountains, Utah

The La Sal Mountains rise dramatically out of the desert, towering 9,000 feet above the surrounding canyonlands and the sporting mecca of Moab. The La Sals are known for their groves of aspen, rich amount of wildlife, high summits and incredible views overlooking Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and the Four Corners area. Hidden lakes dot the landscape. Peaks in the La Sals range from 10,000 feet to just under 13,000 feet. These regions are within the ancestral lands of the Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) nation.

Canyon Country, Utah

The most spectacular aspects of the Utah landscape are the hidden treasures found within its vast canyon networks, formed by millennia of wind and water. The canyonlands of Southern Utah are still as stunning, mysterious and wild as they were for the ancestral Puebloan and Fremont Native Americans who roamed these lands over 800 years ago, and whose ruins and rock art still abound in the canyons. The canyons are composed of a spell-binding labyrinth of alcoves, fins, pinnacles, buttes, towering walls, ledges and arches just waiting to be explored on canyon backpacking courses. Canyoneering courses also venture into narrower, deeper chasms two feet wide with walls several hundred feet on each side. These sandstone slot canyons are a geological playground for scrambling, teamwork and rappelling. These regions are within the ancestral lands of the Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) and Pueblos nations.

San Juan River, Utah

The San Juan River flows 83 miles through the deeply-incised sandstone slick rock country of the Colorado Plateau in many tight bends. The San Juan is world-renowned for archaeological sites of the Fremont and Anasazi cultures, featuring both petroglyphs and spacious cliff dwellings accessible on side hikes from the river. The San Juan River is also well known for its exquisite natural scenery as you’ll soon find out once you are deep within the towering canyon walls. These regions are within the ancestral lands of the Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), Diné, Pueblos, and Hopi nations.

SAMPLE ITINERARY

DAY 1

Course start

DAY 2-9

Alpine backpacking, peak attempts, hiking, Solo, resupply canyon day

DAY 10-15

Canyon backpacking

DAY 16-21

Launch on Cataract Canyon, whitewater rafting, hiking

DAY 22

Final Challenge Event and course end