Tag Archive for: Instructors

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Announcing our 2012 Adventure Treks Instructor Team

We have completed staff hiring for summer 2012. Again this year, we are ecstatic about the quality of our instructor team. For summer 2012, we will have over a 70% instructor return rate. (The 18th year in a row our instructor return rate has exceeded 60%). This summer our average instructor will be 27 years old.  Virtually everyone is a college graduate and many hold masters degrees. Simply put, these folks are not camp counselors, they are professionals and you’ll usually get six of these incredible folks on your trip!   Having personally interviewed every new instructor, I can’t wait until instructor orientation to watch these folks shine.

Read the biographies of our 2012 instructors here. Please do understand that this list of 76 instructors will change slightly. Instructor trip assignments will not be officially finalized until staff orientation as we balance our staff teams to insure that we’ve created the best group of outstanding instructors for each trip!

There is something about the camaraderie of Adventure Treks instructors that makes us friends for life. Being role models, we know that the energy we invest in building close friendships and the kindness and respect with which we treat each other filters down to our students. When we see students treating each other with respect and forming close communities, we know we have done our job!

I’d like to relay a recent incident that exemplifies our instructor camaraderie.  Last Saturday eight of our instructors ran the Nashville marathon together.  They came together from all over the country to have a wonderful reunion (and they just happened to run 26.2 miles in between their socializing!) Several folks who ran were not originally committed runners.  But they set a goal. Agreed to do it together, held each other accountable, supported each other and committed themselves to success.  All eight of  our instructors finished the race (never in doubt)  and all said that though achieving the goal was important, the camaraderie and sharing of the goal was a far bigger highlight.  (And a lot more fun than actually running 26.2 miles) Congratulations to Niki Gaeta, Amanda Cencak, Tracy Roberts, Chrissie Mongahan, Tessa Dawson, Liz Golembeski, Mike P., and Steph Bryant for your wonderful achievement.  Most people don’t think a marathon is fun.  By making it a social event, these folks made it fun! Job Well Done!

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Open the Heart of an American Teenager

Honorable Mention: Instructor Story

I have at last come full circle, though it has been a process of realization and understanding that has taken most of adolescence and early adulthood. I should start by saying that I am writing from a small hotel perched high on a cliff above the sometimes tranquil, but more oftentimes white-capped waters of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. I watch the sun rise every morning above the volcano visible from my left-most window and the sun set every night behind the volcano visible from my right-most window. In between, I run, read, write, and reflect upon these past months of journeying throughout Central America as a faculty member with a traveling American boarding school—aptly named The Traveling School.

You might be saying about now: what is all this talk about Guatemala and The Traveling School—this is supposed to be a story about an experience at Adventure Treks! Read more

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Bridge Jumping

Honorable Mention: Student Story

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Happy screams filled the air as we rafted over eight-foot waves and six-foot drops. The White Salmon River of Washington flowed clear and blue around us, splashing me with the occasional tidal wave. Even though it was a mid-July afternoon, the water temperature hovered around a refreshing forty degrees. I was at Adventure Treks summer camp on our last full day together. Over the course of the past fifteen days, I’d made seventeen new best friends and done some amazing things, such as backpacking for miles along the Olympic coast and scampering up tall granite cliffs in Icicle Canyon. Our rafting trip down the White Salmon was the grand finale – everyone was happy to have a fun break, as we’d just come down from climbing to the summit of Mt. St. Helens the day before. I’d been having a fantastic time all day, but the experience was tinged with sadness – the next day, our entire group would be at Portland International Airport, flying back home.
After plummeting down a small waterfall, Seabass, one of our instructors, yelled, “Forward!” Read more

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Be Your Best Self

Top Runner Up

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Be Your Best Self

Seventeen guys, four girls and six instructors left on the Western frontier for twenty days… “What goes on?” one might wonder? Well, twenty days packed with adventure, excitement and, most importantly, memories. My story begins under a starry sky in Utah, possibly the most spectacular night sky on the planet. It was pitch dark due to lack of light pollution, and two girls were falling asleep on top of a tarp beside the Colorado River. They were just falling under when one girl feels something crawl across her arm. She taps me, did I mention I was one of these girls? I turn on my headlamp and shine it on what looks like a cockroach. It was huge, at least the size of a mouse. We screamed and then realized the rest of the camp was sleeping. We jumped up and hopped in our sleeping bags to the opposite side of the tarp. This is called the caterpillar. We both started saying the name of one of our instructors first quietly, then a little louder until we were squealing “Pete! Pete! Pete!” Pete ran over to see what all the commotion was about. By this time the bug was crawling frantically across the sand. Pete let out a manly scream and grabbed the concrete block holding our tarp down. He threw it on top of the roach, but that roach was a fighter – it started hissing. That was one of the more frightening noises I have ever heard. Pete lifted up the block. Read more

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