Outcomes

During this multi-element leadership intensive course, students will use the course area to develop new and hone existing leadership and community-building skills.  Students will recall and demonstrate proficiency in the technical skills from backpacking and canoeing elements and demonstrate self-awareness and the emotional intelligence needed to become a compassionate leader who builds relationships and strong bonds within their crew.  Through the experience and practice of working together as a team, developing trust and applying progressively learned personal and group skills, students will recognize and demonstrate sound principles for being a successful and efficient team. 

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.

Service

Service to others and to the environment are core values of Outward Bound and they are integrated into each course. Participants follow Leave No Trace ethics as part of their service to the environment. Students develop an ingrained appreciation of service, seeing the impact of their actions firsthand, by multiple small acts of service with and for their crewmates while leading and supporting each other throughout the journey.

Solo

Outward Bound believes in order for profound learning to take place, there must be time to reflect on the experience. Within a course, solo is that opportunity. It is a chance to experience solitude in the wilderness without distraction while also taking a break from the physical rigors of activities. Students are separated from their group for a period of time that time can range from an hour to 48 hours, depending on the course length and Instructor assessment of the group’s capability.  Solo sites chosen by Instructors to provide as much solitude as possible (within emergency whistle-signaling distance of other group members). Participants have all necessary equipment, food and water during their Solo time, with safety being a top priority.

Course Area

South Central Pennsylvania/Appalachian Trail/Delaware Water Gap

Pennsylvania remains one of the most forested states in the nation. It includes some of the most intact and bountiful hardwood forest lands accessible to modern, urban, city life, as well as being second only to Alaska in navigable waterways in the United States. The Appalachians, which includes the Alleghany, Blue, Blue Ridge and Pocono mountain ranges, are some of the oldest mountains in the world. The range is mostly located in the United States, but extends into southeastern Canada.  This Outward Bound course will take place in the south central region of Pennsylvania along the Appalachian Trail, passing through multiple state forest and park lands including Michaux State forest and Pine Grove State Park. Students will also experience the Delaware River through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area, and its 67,000 acres of mountain ridge. The river cuts a twisting path through 1,400-foot Kittatinny Ridge and within the river watershed, students will discover steep wooded-and-rock slopes, bountiful rhododendron, dark hallows, tinsel-like ravines and tumbling waterfalls.