by Claire Nelson, Mazamas Youth & Outreach Program Manager
This year marks the 6th year of Adventure WILD! Summer Day Camp, and its first year selling out in the Portland area! Some of you may be wondering what exactly Adventure WILD! is and how this program aligns with the Mazamas.
Since 2012, Mazamas partnered with Friends of Outdoor School to further our shared goals of providing meaningful, educational outdoor experiences to youth in the Portland area. Adventure WILD! Summer Day Camp is an exciting and evolving piece of this partnership. Historically, Adventure WILD! has served as a fundraiser for the Outdoor School for All campaign, supporting the popular Measure 99 to fund Outdoor School for Oregon’s fifth and sixth graders. With the passage of Measure 99 and funds allocated to OSU for Outdoor School programming, Adventure WILD! plans to become a full-fledged Mazamas youth program. We hope the camp continues to be a resource for the greater Portland area, along with our Mazama members and families.
Each summer, we welcome campers ages 4–10 from mid-July to mid-August for five week-long sessions. Campers experience their urban and wild natural environments through hands-on science experiments, art and play at the Mazama Mountaineering Center (MMC) and Laurelhurst Park.
Every Friday campers get to scale the MMC wall while being belayed by a Mazama volunteer. After all, it wouldn’t be a Mazama program without some rock climbing! This year, we also took three of our camp sessions to the Mazama Lodge to experience the mountain and historic Mazama building in person.
Every week, camp has a different theme, from art and imagination to mountains and glaciers. Campers engage in a number of creative activities including fish printing, constructing fairy houses in the park, modeling the layers of the earth with clay, and watching miniature volcanoes erupt. Campers also play games and just have fun being outside. During the heat wave this summer, a favorite camp game was Drip, Drip, Drop, a version of Duck, Duck, Goose, where campers dump water on each other’s heads!
Many Mazamas are already involved in Adventure WILD! This year four Mazama families joined camp, and we employed two Mazama youth. We also had eighteen Mazamas donate their time to help campers learn the basics of rock climbing and helped them participate in other camp activities. In total, Adventure WILD! brought one hundred and 68 people to the Mazama Lodge to experience the mountain this summer alone.
Youth programming is an important pillar of the Mazamas mission of, …”everyone outside enjoying and protecting the mountains.” Adventure WILD! exposes almost 200 young people a summer to the wonders of the natural world, the thrill of rock climbing, and the wild of our mountain. Experiences like these build a foundation of appreciation that can translate into a love for the outdoors and a desire to get out there and adventure. We can only guess at how many future Mazamas and outdoor enthusiasts come to camp every summer.
Adventure WILD! lets us engage in the community in a new way by offering programming to diverse youth. We also are exposing new families to the wonderful services and classes the Mazamas has to offer.
Thank you so much to the Mazamas community that supported or was directly involved in Adventure WILD! Summer Day Camp this year. We can’t wait for next summer!
We have received several requests for more information on how to get involved with our climbs and classes. If you have any questions about Adventure WILD! Summer Day Camp, please contact Claire Nelson, Youth and Outreach Program Manager, at claire@mazamas.org.