Dates: July 15-22, 2012 Price: $1649 Location: NOC Nantahala Outpost
Our River Leadership Camp is designed to help young paddlers develop the necessary skills to be leaders on the river. It is important that young paddlers learn hard skills such as swiftwater rescue and wilderness first aid early in their paddling career. During this process it is equally important to learn the soft skills such as good judgment, decision making, awareness, and leadership. During this camp we will combine seven days of whitewater kayaking with a Swiftwater Rescue and Wilderness First Aid certification course and each day practice using both the hard skills as well as the soft skills in river based scenarios. Our goal for this camp is to develop highly trained youth paddlers who will become role models in the sport.
Itinerary Overview
Our experienced guides can tailor each day to the goals and needs of the group. This is a general outline of the typical week, although it may change due to water levels, goals and skill levels. If paddlers need to take a day off, they will have plenty of other supervised activities to round out the adventure.
Days 1 & 2: Safety is every great leader's number one priority. The first two days of camp, participants will learn skills to prepare for being outdoors and enjoying the river while always keeping saftey in mind. The Wilderness First Aid course and certification includes classroom participation and hands-on scenarios addressing injury assessment, treatment and prevention.
Days 3 & 4: Swiftwater Rescue skills are essential to boater safety. In these two days you will learn about hydrology, river classifications, self-rescue, swiftwater swimming and shore, boat and in-water rescues.
Days 5, 6 & 7: The three remaining days of camp will be spent paddling many of the areas fun yet challenging rivers. We will focus on scenarios and paddling techniques and skills. Participants will also build soft-skills including judgement, awareness, teamwork and decision making.
