By Josh Goldbach, associate director

Name: Alex Coffin

University Attended: Alex holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Mathematics from Colgate University.

Years with AT: This will be Alex’s 2nd year with Adventure Treks. 

Favorite AT activity: Rock Climbing

What do you do when you’re not working for AT? I am a high school math teacher. This is my second year teaching at a public high school in Peabody, MA. I teach geometry and algebra to freshman and sophomores. I also tutor math at a nearby college.

What’s your favorite AT memory? My favorite memory happened last summer at evening meeting. After a fun day of mountain biking and climbing, everyone was tired. Our TL Kaitlin surprised everyone with a high energy game that ended in an epic dance party. It was a great way to end a day with smiles and laughter, instead of slogging though the evening.

What keeps you coming back to AT? The community. The students and instructors I had last year formed a phenomenal group. Obviously, being an AT instructor involves a lot of long days and hard work, but most of the time it felt like I was just hanging out with friends, doing activities that I love. It was rewarding to see the group bond and individual students grow. It also gave me the opportunity to explore a part of the country that I had never been to before.  

What’s your favorite outdoor activity? Rock climbing!

What’s your favorite personal adventure that you’ve ever taken? I went canyoneering last April in the Canyonlands of Utah, which was a mix of anchor building with natural materials and clambering through tight slot canyons. We were in a fairly remote area, so I felt like I was the first explorer to set foot in the area. The canyoneering felt a lot like caving, but even better because the canyons were warm and light. I’m also a huge fan of the desert landscape.

Tell us something unique about you. I’ve had the hiccups for the last eight years; however, I only hiccup once or twice an hour. Also, I know how to ride a unicycle.

By Amanda Fox, marketing director

Unless you’ve spent any length of time in western North Carolina, it can be hard to imagine why so many folks—from north and south AND west—flock to this region in warmer months. Outside magazine gets it: In their recent annual Best of Travel’s “30 Best Trips of 2015,” they named North Carolina as the “Best Domestic Adventure Hub.”

Though this snippet touches on the state as a whole, they give a particular shout-out to the region in which the Adventure Treks office is located: “In the west, there’s world-class singletrack and road riding in the Blue Ridge mountains… 96 miles of Appalachian Trail, and some of the country’s best whitewater at the Nantahala Outdoor Center.”

While the Appalachians may not sound as exciting or exotic as California or Alaska, here are 5 reasons Adventure Treks loves the southern tail of the Blue Ridge mountains, why our leadership team lives here, and why the Blue Ridge Explorer trip is one of our favorites.

1. Though the highest summit in the Appalachians, Mt. Mitchell, tops out at just under 6,700 feet, during their formation more than 300 million years ago, the Blue Ridge Mountains were among the highest peaks in the world. On the Blue Ridge Explorer trip, students will get to hike in the Shining Rock Wilderness, the largest protected wilderness area in the state. They’ll traverse several peaks over 6,000 feet, including Black Balsam Knob (6,214 feet, pictured), from which they’ll be able to view several other impressive summits like Mt. Mitchell, 45 miles to the northeast, on clear days. What’s most awe-inspiring, however, is the panoramic view of the lush, vividly green rolling hills of the Black Balsam range.

2. Waterfalls, waterfalls, waterfalls! There are as many as 1,500 waterfalls in North Carolina, and the other area in which we backpack, Panthertown Valley, houses at least eight of the prettiest ones. Students will have the chance to stop and swim around beneath the larger falls, including Schoolhouse Falls (pictured). There’s no better way to cool off on a hot day than having “splash wars” in crystal-clear swimming holes next to sandy beaches! Panthertown, a 6,700-acre tract of gorgeous wilderness, also contains huge granite domes, validating its nickname “Yosemite of the East.”

3. More water! Just as impressive as our host of waterfalls is the sheer volume of rivers running through western North Carolina. Known as a hotbed for boating enthusiasts, our students spend five to six days inflatable kayaking, canoeing, and whitewater rafting the great waterways of the region. The Chattooga River, the first river east of the Mississippi to be designated a Wild and Scenic River, has some of the most exciting rapids we paddle. They’ll also hop into inflatable kayaks, aka “duckies,” down the Nantahala River, culminating with the optional drop down the dramatic, class 3 Nantahala Falls. Finally, Blue Ridge students will learn and hone canoeing skills on either the serene Lake Santeetlah (pictured) or the French Broad River, which is the third-oldest river in the world!

4. Chances are your teenager has seen the movie The Hunger Games, and it’s also likely that your teenagers knows that filming took place all over western North Carolina. On the Blue Ridge Explorer, our students mountain bike through DuPont State Forest, where some of the more memorable movie scenes take place at Triple Falls (pictured) and Bridal Veil Falls. DuPont’s single-track trails attract mountain bikers of all skill levels, and many of its trails offer something that most Appalachian forests don’t: slickrock, i.e. smooth, wind-polish rock trails, that wind through beautiful waterfalls and rare habitats like high-elevation bogs.

5. Last but not least, the wildly diverse ecological systems of North Carolina help make the Blue Ridge Explorer trip so memorable. Students will have a birds-eye view as they zipline through the Green River Gorge, whizzing through deciduous forests down 1,100 vertical feet. This gorge has some of the most dramatic landscapes of any area we visit in North Carolina, and is bursting with plant and animal life as one of the most bio-diverse regions in the eastern United States. This zipline is one of the fastest in the United States—the perfect end to a wonderfully fun trip.

We’d like to share an observation that we have made over the years, a phenomenon that often happens to students between their first and second summer of Adventure Treks:

1. After the first adventure ends, a student enthusiastically registers for next summer and a brand-new adventure destination. They are excited to come back to see their friends, their instructors, improve outdoor skills, and see new places. That student might have had a few challenging days of adjustment to outdoor life at the start of the trip, but ended up proud of everything they had accomplished, thrilled to be part of a close community experience, and even “camp sick” when it was  time to return home.
2. Several months later, the same student comes to their parents and says, “I’m not sure about returning to Adventure Treks.” The parents are confused; what has changed?
3. Sometimes, those parents shrug their shoulders and consider cancelling the trip. They don’t want to “force” their child to return.

Number 3 is a loving and understandable reaction, but we want to suggest an alternative.

Before we do so, let us describe what is actually happening. This is what we call the “warrior/worrier” story. In short, we believe that everyone has a warrior who lives on one shoulder, and a worrier on the other. The warrior wants to embrace opportunities, try new things, and go on adventures. The worrier, on the other hand, wants to avoid anything uncomfortable and fears the potential for public failure. We suggest students listen to their warrior, and not the worrier.

The student who wants to return is listening to the warrior, thinking about new friendships, new outdoor adventures, and the caring and cool instructors. But as the year goes on, the worrier starts to whisper: “Remember those days without a shower?” or “That one hike that was really hard.” Or “do you really want to sleep in a tent instead of your bed?” Sometimes, the worrier changes the memory of the Adventure Treks experience, and suddenly, the confident and excited student begins to believe that they were homesick most of the time, and the struggle from that hard hike or challenging activity starts to loom larger than the successes and resilience achieved from overcoming obstacles.

At this moment, parents have an interesting choice. The easy one is to simply say, “I do not want to force my child to return.” Another—what we suggest—is more nuanced: “I want to feed my child’s warrior and weaken the worrier.”

This does not mean ignoring your child’s concerns, but it does mean helping redirect thoughts to the fun, friends, and growth at Adventure Treks. Ask your child about what they loved at AT. If you know who their favorite friends and instructors were, ask about them. Look at the photos or 2015 summer memories video.

Here are some good questions:

• What was your favorite memory of AT?
• Tell me about ________ [a  great AT friend] again.
• What was your favorite activity?
• Tell me about a favorite instructor?
• How is what you learned last summer helping you out at school and home?

We also encourage you to call us and ask any questions if you have any lingering concerns or want advice. If you do think that your child encountered an issue that is concerning, we want to partner with you to turn this concern into an opportunity for both of us.

We hope this blog helps prepare you for an event that is not rare, and can be initially alarming. Hopefully your student won’t have any second thoughts about the summer of 2016. As always, we strive to be partners in the parenting process.

The boarding announcement interrupted a nice conversation in Portland. Our last student of 2015, Gaetan, quickly hopped on his Delta plane to Paris and just like that… the summer was over… and so was the magic of Adventure Treks. This summer ended as strongly as I can remember. The students formed close and inclusive communities, and we aren’t quite ready for it all to end.

Our staff teams have returned to our Portland area base camp—landing from adventures in Alaska, California, Colorado and British Columbia. We admit it—we are tired! But it’s the good kind of tired; we are exhausted from giving it our all over an extended period. But the hard work has paid off. We are ecstatic about what has been accomplished and what a safe, successful and growth-filled summer it’s been for all of us. We hope our students now consider Adventure Treks a “second home,” a happy and joyful place where they could be themselves and escape from some of the pressures of being a teenager. We believe our students have seen their best selves and are excited about the young adults they are becoming!

We would like to compliment and thank you as parents. It takes a lot of courage to send your child across the country into the great unknown and to trust leaders whom you’ve never met. We greatly appreciate your trust and hope that the benefits your child has received by stepping out of their comfort zone this summer has made choosing Adventure Treks one of your better parenting decisions. We hope to continue to be your partner in assisting you as your raise great kids and we appreciate your support.

We hope the power of living outdoors, free from technology, surrounded by incredible scenery and impressive role models in a shared community has been slightly life-altering. Our students have experienced the give and take of living in a community and have seen that they can accomplish more than they thought possible, especially with the help of their friends. We hope your kids have come home happy, more independent, confident, and full of great stories. They definitely have laughed a lot and stood in awe of incredible scenery. They have thrived without electronics, and, in most cases, had so much fun they barely missed their smartphones! I hope it will take a long, long time for the smiles to wear off their faces and that their new confidence never fades.

Our instructors have done very strong work, and I’m extremely proud of their commitment, rapport with teens, hard work, and dedication. I’d also like to give a shout out to the folks behind the scenes who have made this summer run so smoothly. Our directors have worked tirelessly solving small logistical snafus before they became problems. They’ve driven delayed bags hundreds of miles to campsites, they have filled in for instructors who have had family emergencies, and they’ve burned thousands of airline miles helping to open and close every trip. They’ve delivered extra food and special treats; they have set up rock climbing sites at 4 in the morning; and they’ve done whatever it takes to set our students up to have incredible summers. I’m also proud of our office staff. They have checked and rechecked every flight, posted trip blog after trip, and reassured a nervous parent or two. I’m grateful for all they have contributed this summer and indebted for our team’s commitment to Adventure Treks.

It’s been a privilege getting to know your children this summer. We’ve tried to treat your kids as our own, and we believe we have had an impact. While there are still things we can improve and we will work hard do that for 2016, I’m very pleased with the summer—we gave it our best.

Though we are eager for a rest, there is a lot more still to do! We begin instructor orientation on August 24 for our second season, consisting of outdoor education and science programs for schools. Over the next 10 weeks, we will keep 24 of our instructors on staff as we work with 15 different schools from eight different states, giving almost 800 students a small dose of Adventure Treks.

We sure are going to miss our great students. Thank you for being part of Adventure Treks 2015.