Why Wilderness?

We Create Wild Connections

Discover places that connect you with the roots of your soul. Feel your heart beating against your chest as your raft plunges into over rapids. Swoop down singletrack through a stunning aspen grove on a mountain bike. Trust your partner as they lower you down an alpine cliff face. Stride along the Continental Divide. Watch eagles soar from your sleeping bag at 11,000 feet.

Over the course of several weeks during a wilderness experience, separated from the pressures and distractions of life back home, something special happens. Living in the wild with a tight-knit team of new friends, you communicate and share with each other on a deeper level. You meet the challenges of backcountry travel as a group, succeeding as a group and sharing in individual accomplishments.

With a Deer Hill wilderness summer camp, you’ll go on real  expeditions, deep into the wilderness, not day trips. Our destinations are based on three decades of living and working here on the Colorado Plateau. We don’t go where the tourists, or even other teen wilderness adventurer camps go. For weeks at a time, you will be living closer to the Earth than you ever thought possible, getting to know these landscapes intimately, and using Leave No Trace techniques to minimize your impact.

What you get out of your wilderness adventure depends on what you put in to it – that’s why we seek participants who are eager to experience new places and new ways to test themselves. But, almost every Deer Hill participant has more than a good time in the wilderness – they have unforgettable wilderness and adventure experiences that will shape and guide their lives.

“Sometimes I forget that wilderness areas like this even exist, where you can’t even hear a car, and you can’t because there are no street lamps. Then I get out here, and it seems like this is all there is.” Dan, Brookline, MA