The High Adventure Program
Why should High Adventure be part of your troop?
Adventures in the wild are at the heart of scouting.
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Keeps the scouts excited and engaged
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Retains youth as they grow older
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Provides enormous opportunities for learning and advancement
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Builds confidence, team building, and leadership skills
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It's FUN!
How do we get scouts interested in High Adventure?
Several techniques exist to help broaden the minds of young scouts and motivate them to want to take on high adventure experiences.
Patches, medals, and more PATCHES!
There is a robust reward and recognition program built around high adventure activities. These awards are sponsored by local councils and apply to backpacking, rock climbing, canoeing, canyoneering, trail building, SCUBA diving, peak bagging, ... and on and on and on. All of these awards are built around specific high adventure themes or activities that scouts can get excited about and pursue.
Check out the Awards section on this website to begin exploring the possibilities.
Shown above is an "Eagle Board" from Troop 1210 built around the high adventure awards earned over the scouts time with the troop. Troop 1210 presents these boards at Eagle Court of Honors, which helps to both recognize the new Eagle scout and also motivates younger scouts to want to achieve similar "cool" outdoor goals.
Themed Class B Shirts designating high adventure achievement levels
Some troops implement achievement levels for their scouts via training and adventure completion milestones (e.g.: # of backpacking events, or miles hiked, etc). Different colored Class B shirts allow scouts to actively display their accomplishment, and help to motivate other scouts to strive to achieve the same.
Shirts shown above are from Troop 733's High Adventure program
Use Court of Honor events to showcase high adventure activities.
Reserve a portion of the Court of Honor to specially award high adventure patches & medals - making a big deal out of the accomplishments each scout achieved in earning them.
Ask the troop Scribe or Webmaster to create a slideshow of all the quarter's amazing events - themed to music. and sit back as the photos of these great activities inspire and advertise themselves.
Sit back and relax as scouts in the audience see themselves (and their friends) on the big screen. Before you know it they'll be clamoring to do more!
