What Exactly is Outdoor Adventure?       | Goals | Safety |

What is its purpose? Mindfulness.

What do you do in S&R? S&R groups decide on S&R activities. Here are a few choices:

• Rock climbing (top-rope climbing, rapelling).
• Hiking the hills and valleys of New England.
• Camping, usually in the White Mountains.
• Orienteering or map & compass work.
• Backcountry first aid.
• Ropes course, including a 350 foot zip line.
• Initiative and problem-solving challenges.
• In late fall, early spring, and during the winter, CHILL OUT often makes ascents of peaks covered with ice and snow.
• In the winter, groups hike and camp in the snow in sub-zero conditions, make ascents of ice and snow covered mountains that may include the use of ice axes, snowshoes, crampons, cross country skis and sleds or toboggans.

Click here to get a visual look at S&R

How does an Andover student get in to S&R ?
S & R is offered every term, Fall, Winter, and Spring. Phillips Academy students elect it just as they would any other sport, during the corse selection process.

JUST OUT, the core program, meets on the average 4 times a week, from about 3-5 p.m., and normally involves at least one weekend overnight trip and one weekend day hike each term. JUST OUT introduces a wide range of activities and skills.

WAY OUT is the same, but more, Higher, deeper and better. WAY OUT may take 2-3 weekend trips, with comp time during the week.

ROCK OUT focuses on advanced climbing, setting anchors, and refining belay and rope skills.

OVER & OUT (sea kayaking) meets fewer times per week for longer periods. This is a larger time commitment, equal to a varsity sport.

In the fall, OVER & OUT takes sea kayaks out to the archipelago off the Maine coast, testing skills developed in navigation, climate, tides and island camping.

CHILL OUT (winter S&R) takes 4 trips and trains and plans for a few hours each week prior to developing skills in snow shoeing, ice climbing, and winter hiking and camping.

WORKING OUT is a WAY OUT group with a focus on community service. This group welcomes local school and community groups to S&R activities and works out in the local community.

SOLO OUT is a small number of qualified seniors who are eligible to undertake a solo overnight as a culminating exercise.

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Goals The overall goals of Search & Rescue are to strengthen each student and to involve each student in caring service to the group and  community.

Specific goals are many; their diversity suggested to us that listing some of them might be helpful to future leaders, students and passersby. None of us can achieve all of them in each of our groups; we may focus on some one time, others the next. It depends on us, our groups, and the experiences we share. Here is our list, from students and faculty:

Environmental Goals	Personal Development Goals
To help us find environments where we are directly affected by forces of nature in the hope that this may rekindle or reinforce respect for the natural world that exists beyond human control. To savor the elemental sensations of a mountain climb, a silent night on an island in Maine, a river rapids run, a sky full of stars. To encourage ourselves to meet life directly ("if you want to move, walk!"), without the filters of headsets, drugs, or merely intellectual abstraction. To instill an awareness in each of us that "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World". To teach the protection of the environment. To observe the impact of people on the earth in order to encourage lifelong habits of environmental responsibility.	Through physical and psychological challenges, to encourage us to confront our hesitations and fears, thereby finding strengths and becoming more secure in our individual identities, more confident in our selves. To encourage us to cope confidently with both success and defeat. To strengthen each group member's ability to solve problems; to learn to negotiate the unknown. To welcome periods of silence for reflection and observation. To help each person develop confidence in his or her ability to cope with future challenges and to relate effectively and meaningfully with other people.
Learning Goals	Interpersonal Goals
To create an atmosphere where we learn experientially, experimentally, and together. To develop skills necessary for safe travel through the natural world. To bring intellectual knowledge to bear on the natural world. To provide a context in which we learn how groups function.	To encourage appreciation of others for their differences as well as for their similarities; to understand the richness in true diversity. To help develop bonds within a group where success is dependent upon each member's help and effort; to encourage concern for others. To HAVE FUN!

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Safety   Climbing or rapelling a 50' tower involves risk. But in almost 40 years S&R has never experienced a serious injury doing those activities. Just as there are degrees of difference between a perceived risk and the actual risk, so there are skillful and foolish ways to approach a challenge. With awareness and knowledge many high obstacles can be climbed, rivers run and summits reached. It  takes desire, perception and skill. Our activities require knowledgeable instructors and receptive students who understand that they are responsible for their own actions and behavior, and that their own safety and that of  their S&R Group depend on them. 

S&R's instructors are qualified in each activity they undertake.  All have appropriate medical training, have studied backcountry emergency situations, ocean rescues, hypothermia, and many other hazards possible in remote locations.

We ask each student and his or her guardian to sign a form that acknowledges that there are dangers on rivers, on mountains, and in some of the activities we do. We ask each student to understand that there is no substitute for his or her own common sense and good judgment, that indeed we expect to draw on those resources. 

We have great times in S&R and a superb safety record because we take care to manage risks, plan ahead, learn skills before we need them, and watch for the unexpected.  Each one of us does this, learns to do this.

• Mayo Clinic First Aid, includes movies: controling bleeding, Rescue Breathing, CPR, burns, trauma, more.
• Active First Aid Online, Parasol EMT (Australia).
• Sustaining Health & Performance in the Cold: Environmentsl
  Medicine Guidance for Cold-Weather Operations, from the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, MA.
• What is Hypothermia?

Historical Overview
	In the early '60s, Josh Miner worked with Kurt Hahn at Gourdstown. When he returned to the states and came to Andover (as a faculty member and Director of Admission) Josh and Headmaster John Kemper invented what became Phillips Academy's S&R in order to  implement some of Hahn's ideas at this independent school. The concept of experiential learning was so successful that Miner and Kemper founded several of the first Outward Bound centers.
	Outline of the development of experiential education, including the influence of Hahn and Miner on outdoor education, mountaineering, scouting and teaching. Sketch of Hahn's life and contributions, with some bibliographical information. Atlantic Challenge's Kurt Hahn page Short article on Kurt Hahn by a coalition of schools.

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