Outdoor camps offer kids exciting learning opportunities. A subsector of outdoor camps, called adventure camps, provides an even more rigorous, daring experience, including rock climbing, horseback riding, backpacking, mountain biking, rafting, kayaking, canoeing, wilderness fishing and sailing. While a bicycling camp might last one week, adventure camps are usually structured as longer-term sleepaway camps that hone skills over a series of weeks or even months.
The DMV and the East Coast provide camps aplenty, with options across North Carolina, Virginia and New England, but if your child is ready, camps extend to Alaska, Canada and abroad. From climbing 100-foot pitches to barreling down steep mountainsides on two wheels, adventure camp offers your child exciting learning opportunities and technical skills galore. It can be difficult to gauge whether your child is ready for adventure camp, and if so, which camp to choose. Here are a few considerations when selecting your child’s camp experience.
Deciding Whether Adventure Camp is Right for Your Kid
You as a parent may have reasons for wanting your kiddo at adventure camp. Maybe they’re too attached to screens and video games, and you’d like them to benefit from fresh air and exercise. Perhaps you’d like to get them away from the city and into a more rural environment, or to teach them the skills of cooperation, consensus and leadership. Maybe you went to adventure camp yourself and it was the best summer of your life, learning to ride horses and building campfires together.
“Sign your kid up for camp if you want your child to have fun and develop skills at same time,” David Bell, camp director at Mondamin Camp in Tuxedo, North Carolina, says. “If your first grader has slept at a friend’s house, they may be ready to go to a five-day camp.”
Find out which camps offer programs your child might already be interested in, but don’t limit your search to those. Determine where your child fits as far as age requirements – there are adventure camps for as young as 4 to older teens. Visit camp websites with your child or teen: talk about the information there, look and photos and watch camp videos. Next, submit an inquiry or interest form on the website, or schedule a call with camp staff. If possible, tour the camp virtually or in person together with your child. If you’re planning far enough ahead, you may be able to tour when camp is in session; otherwise during the school year will work.
Last, trust your child when they say they’re not ready, it’s not of interest or they’d like to see one or two more camps before deciding. While it may be positive to push your child to have new experiences in certain situations, empowering them to select their experience may help their passion for the outdoors to blossom.
If your child is neurodivergent or disabled, check to see which adventure camps focus on an inclusive and equitable experience. The National Ability Center offers a four-night camp for neurodiverse teens at a Park City lodge or a Camp Oakley yurt in Utah, while SOAR takes kids with ADHD and learning disabilities to the Blue Ridge Mountains, Florida Keys, Wyoming, California and Belize for trekking, horsepacking and canoeing camps for kids and adults aged 8 to 25.
Which Adventure Camp is Right for Your Child?
There’s a camp to suit almost every child, but finding the right one may take some research, as well as trial and error. First, look to see whether the camp accepts all genders, or only one, and ensure your child fits the age requirements. Check camper-counselor ratios and consider how much attention your child needs in learning a new activity (a 3-to-1 counselor to camper ratio offers a more attentive experience from a 10-to-1 ratio). Examine the device and screen time policy, ensuring it aligns with your own philosophy.
Next, study the different types of adventure camps. While Surf Camp, Sportrock and Mulford Riding School focus on sharply honing one outdoor skill, others offer a wide variety of outdoor expeditions and experiences. “What our type of camp does is give kids an opportunity to start coming at a young age and be exposed to these activities, and continue to come for five, six or seven years, growing and developing outdoor skills continually for those years,” Bell says.
Location and camp options are important, as you may want to stack camps for a kid looking for multiple adventures or for dropping off one kid while picking up another. Some camps, like Maryland and Virginia’s Calleva, offer dozens of options for both day and overnight camps. A sample week at Calleva – learning surfing, spelunking, camping, kayaking, rafting, fishing and mountain biking, plus outdoor filming and art in nature – might be just the thing for your first-time or unsure camper. As Calleva administrative director Julie Clendenin notes, “Adventure camp selection can seem overwhelming … and [this] will give them an opportunity to test a variety before jumping into a full week of one activity.”
Take a look at the well-rounded fun of Terrapin Adventures in Savage Mill, Maryland, which offers an aerial adventure course, zip lining, archery, kayaking on the Chesapeake Bay and hiking on the Appalachian Trail. At western North Carolina’s Rockbrook Camp for Girls, where you’ll get most of the same outdoor activities as Terrapin, plus white-water rafting.
Other camps are more adventurous, even offering rappelling, mountaineering and rock climbing. At Adventurelore, based in Danville, New Hampshire, campers can mountain-bike up to 45 miles a day on a multiday journey on the back trails of Maine from the Canadian border to Acadia National Park, or sail, canoe and kayak the islands of Frenchman Bay, Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park. Camp Pinnacle in Flat Rock, North Carolina, offers a two-week camp that includes expeditions, with every camper learning to whitewater raft, summit a mountain, mountain bike in the forest and camp out overnight. For your junior marine biologist, Sea Turtle Camp in Wilmington, North Carolina brings a hands-on experience to your teen fascinated with science, conservation and scuba diving.
Some camps are more rigidly structured, while others allow children to choose programming on the fly, or on the particular day.
Choose the length of camp, from five days to several weeks or even a couple of months. Consider also whether the adventure camp can accommodate your child’s allergies and dietary needs, such as Rockbrook’s vegetarian and gluten-free options. Perhaps the adventure camp has a religious focus or a sustainability pledge, so debate how important that is to you and your child.
You may also want to consider which camps have leadership programs, which allow campers to grow those skills as they become teenagers. “They’re in that transition age when they’re starting to want a little more responsibility and are showing a knack for leadership, so at 13, 14 and 15 they can start learning leadership skills by becoming aides,” Bell says.
How to Prepare for and Adjust to Adventure Camp
In the first week or two, your child may experience an adjustment period, including sadness or homesickness. This is normal–up to 90% of young people away from home feel sadness.
In the weeks leading up to camp, reading a book on homesickness and discussing what to do if you’re feeling it may be helpful. Bug Bites and Campfires: A Story for Kids About Homesickness by Frank J. Sileo is a great choice. If you as a parent are struggling with letting your child go to camp, consider checking out Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow by Michael Thompson.
Adventure camp isn’t easy: It’s often very challenging. Failure may be a big part of your child’s experience, which can be tough for perfectionist or sensitive children. Prepare them by discussing how failure teaches you resilience.
“Adventure is activity on one’s personal frontier,” Bell says. “Many kids are coming to camp with no experience at all, so the first summer may look very different from the fourth summer.”
Prepare kids by teaching them that the first summer of learning outdoor skills may be tough, but that in subsequent years they may find themselves teaching new campers what they once struggled to do.
Once your little kids, big kids and teens have mastered local camps, they may be ready to travel further. In that case, check out Sail Caribbean, where no experience is necessary to learn how to sail, but campers must know how to swim; global Adventure Treks for preteens and teens in Alaska, Norway and Colorado; ActionQuest’s sailing and scuba in the British Virgin Islands, Australia, Iceland, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean; or Bold Earth, which includes European, African, Asian and Latin adventure experiences.
Happy camping!
Dakota Kim is a food, parenting, travel and lifestyle writer. In a past life, she owned a diner and made delicious patty melts. She considers herself an expert in cranky old cats, distracting a frustrated baby during tummy time, Gilmore Girls one-liners and cleaning various substances off her microfiber sofa.
