Classic Courses

Do you ever want to unplug, step away from the daily grind to take on new challenges? Are you ready to conquer harder skills and remind your senses (or discover for the first time) what it’s like to crest a mountain peak, hear the echoes at the edge of a vast canyon or feel the rush of white water spray on your face? Take a break from your routine, radically change your surroundings and test your tenacity. Put some “firsts” in front of you and find moments of unexpected discovery along the way. Experience Outward Bound as an adult and prepare for an injection of adventure, awareness and adaptability that sticks with you long after you unpack your backpack.

• Build skills, form connections: Meet like-minded peers and make connections as you work through priorities and adventures together, learn outdoor skills at the hands of expert Instructors, and earn every good night’s sleep.
• Value strengths and strengthen values: Re-discover your inner strength, renew your natural leadership abilities and practice adapting to new environments. Tap in to your trust and compassion as you tackle obstacles with a support crew standing beside you.
• Demonstrate mastery: As you awaken your wilderness skills and dig deep to rise to the physical and mental challenges, the bulk of the expedition’s leadership and decision-making responsibilities transfer from the Instructor to the crew. Work together to achieve team goals, solve problems and succeed both individually and together.
• What you’ll learn: Watch, try and share more difficult outdoor skills that you’ll master on your expedition. Discover and then remind yourself that there’s more in you than you know. Having taken the risks, learned from and adapted to all sorts of new situations and environments, you’re ready for whatever life hands you going forward.

Return home with newly expanded wilderness acumen, an energized outlook, a rekindled allowance of empathy into situations and relationships and an eye toward the future.

Solo

Students will engage in Solo, a period of solitude, where they can rest and reflect in a designated spot near the campsite. Instructors will set the tone and help students prepare for this unique opportunity to reflect on their current experience and personal growth as well as the application of their experience to their learning and social environments. While on Solo, students have food, drinking water, appropriate clothes, a tarp for shelter, sleeping bag, journal, as well as a whistle with which they may alert their instructors in the unlikely event of an emergency. Instructors also conduct periodic check-ins with each student. In many ways, solo is what makes an Outward Bound wilderness expedition so unique.

Outcomes

During this multi-element leadership intensive course, students will use the course area to develop and hone leadership and community-building skills. Students will demonstrate proficiency in technical backpacking and canoeing skills and demonstrate the self-awareness and emotional intelligence needed to become a compassionate leader who builds relationships and strong bonds with their crew. As they work together as a team, students develop trust, apply newly acquired personal and group skills, and recognize and demonstrate sound principles for being a successful and efficient crew. 

Course Area

Appalachian Trail/Delaware Water Gap

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area encompasses 67,000 acres of mountain ridge, forest and floodplain on both sides of the Delaware River in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. From the southern end of the park, you can view the S-shaped chasm of the Delaware Water Gap, where the river cuts a twisting path through 1,400-foot Kittatinny Ridge. Within the river watershed, you'll discover steep wooded-and-rock slopes, bountiful rhododendron, dark hallows, tinsel-like ravines and tumbling waterfalls.