Leadership camp teaches life skills
The YMCA’s Camp Chief Hector, located in the Rocky Mountains near the mountain hamlet of Exshaw, is one of southern Alberta’s most renowned sleep-away camps. The camp is a rite of passage for many younger children, often representing their first extended stay away from their parents. While the camp certainly offers a memorable experience for children ages 7-15, teens can take the Camp Chief Hector to the next level by participating in one of the camp’s Summer Leadership programs.
The Leadership camps, exclusively for youths who are 16-years-old, aren’t designed to shape future councilors (though many participants do return the following year to take CCH’s Leaders in Training camp which prepares them to become camp councilors after they graduate from high school). Rather, the camps are meant to encourage the children to become “leaders in life” and develop the skills that they’ll need to succeed in their post-secondary educations or later on in the workforce.
“The leadership program isn’t really exclusively about tripping or outdoor skills,” says Rob Brown, general manager of Camp Chief Hector. “It isn’t about creating tomorrow’s guides, it’s about creating tomorrow’s adults, or really high-functioning young adults.
CCH’s Summer Leadership camps all run twice over the summer — each session is 27 days long, giving participants enough time to truly feel independent out in the wilderness. Traditionally, CCH has offered three different streams, each built around one of the camp’s core activities: hiking, canoeing and horseback riding.
Each camp has its own special features — hikers do short hikes as well as an 18-day backpacking trip, canoeists experience 13 days of paddling, and horse campers set up their base at CCH’s remote Gray Jay site and also do an 8-day backpacking trip.
This year CCH is also introducing a fourth stream called Mountain Arts, specifically for youth who may not be attracted to the intense tripping elements of the more traditional camps. Mountain Arts will include short hiking and canoe trips as well as an eight-day backpacking adventure, but the focus will be on art creation and instruction in disciplines such as photography, drawing and painting.
“Mountain Arts is all natural world focused and will be very much immersed in the Bow Valley,” Brown says. “There will be some overnight trips involved, but it’s not about getting miles under your boots, it’s about spending time in the natural world and exploring the craft you’re pursuing.”
Whichever camp a youth signs up for, the programming is intentionally designed to help build group leadership, risk management and outdoor living skills. All camps are also co-ed, giving the opportunity for younsters to also hone their social skills and develop maturity and a sense of respect for others.
When located on the main CCH site, Summer Leadership campers also get a chance to mentor younger campers and throughout the entire camp, part of the ultimate goal to get participants to act as natural teachers rather than just following the pack.
“Teaching a younger kid leadership is as simple as manufacturing a situation so that the children can practise their skills,” Brown says. “There’s not a lot on the line. But in the Summer Leadership camps we put them in the role of teaching a lot more. They’ll be out on a hike and peer teaching each other firstaid skills. They’ll peer teach each other food preparation skills. There’s a lot more of that happening in the Leadership program.”
Registration for the YMCA Camp Chief Hector Summer Leadership camps is now open. Learn more at ymcacalgary.org/ camps/camp-chief-hector or by calling (403) 269-6156.