Building Adventure Through Activities Youth Love

Scouts do things. They build, they play with purpose, they make friends and work together. They set goals and clear them. They go places—physically, mentally, and spiritually. These life-changing experiences—and the confidence they provide—become bricks in the wall of childhood. Bricks that eventually form a foundation that a Scout can stand on to embrace opportunity and overcome obstacles. For the parents watching in awe, it’s not a question of where their Scout will go, but where won’t he or she go.

As they have for more than 100 years, Scouts headed outside in 2014. In all, nearly 1.1 million Scouts spent at least one night outside during the year at the BSA’s thousands of day and summer camps, including 57,354 at our high-adventure bases in New Mexico, Florida, Minnesota, and West Virginia. In all, Scouts camped a total of 6,027,435 nights during the year.

At the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve (SBR) in the mountains of West Virginia, thousands of campers from across the United States became the first to experience the new facility’s inaugural high-adventure program. Throughout the summer, Boy Scouts and Venturers arrived at SBR’s Paul R. Christen National High Adventure Base for days filled with rafting and kayaking; climbing, zip line, and ropes courses; shooting sports; and mountain biking, skateboarding, and BMX options. In addition, each group staying for the weeklong program performed a service project, designed to give back to the state of West Virginia.

Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico—the BSA’s first high-adventure base and its busiest—saw the 1-millionth attendee complete a trek since the first camping season kicked off in 1939.

At the Florida Sea Base, the final inspection was passed and the first divers began using the new Sea Base Scuba Complex shortly before the last crews departed for the summer. Plus, the opening of Sea Base St. Thomas allowed Scouts to choose from even more options when plotting their sea-borne adventures.

At Northern Tier­—the BSA’s gateway to adventure in the Great Northwoods, where Scouts can explore millions of acres of pristine lakes, rivers, dense forests, and wetlands from three wilderness canoe bases in Northern Minnesota, Northwest Ontario, and Northeast Manitoba—a group of 18 U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen worked as interpreters for the summer season.