Teen Advocates USA Recommends Outward Bound Programs

[Anonymous]

It's nice to see others are finally realizing this

[Lacey]

WTF

http://www.troubledteensprograms.com/pr ... og_id=2352

Thompson Island Outward Bound

Brad M. Reedy, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.

 Phone: (435)738-2040
Fax: (435)738-2046
Email: [email protected]
 
Brad began his studies at Brigham Young University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Family Science.  Next, he attended Loma Linda University where he received an M.S. in Marriage and Family Therapy.  He returned to B.Y.U. and completed his Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy.  During school, Brad?s clinical experience included work with sexually abused children, domestically violent offenders, and adults/adolescents with Substance Abuse and Dependence.

Research and clinical interests include treatment with sexual abuse victims, family trauma and associated processes, chemical dependence, personality disorders, sexual perpetrators, and developmental psychology.  Brad works with a variety of populations which often include students with dual diagnoses or gifted I.Q.?s.

In the public sector, Brad worked with young victims of physical and sexual abuse at Loma Linda University Hospital, domestic violence victims and perpetrators at Riverside Family Service Agency, and sexual perpetrators at Center for Family Development.  In private practice, Brad has also worked with individuals and families with eating disorders and other addictions.  Brad later worked as a field therapist and Clinical Director with Aspen Achievement Academy and Aspen Ranch.

Brad currently serves as one of the principal partners at Second Nature Wilderness Program and is the supervisor for the Clinical and Admissions Departments.

Born and raised in Orange County, California, the middle of three boys, Brad was raised by his mother.  He grew up surfing, listening to Bob Dylan, and causing his mom a great deal of grief.  Brad is married and has three children.  He enjoys golf, wakeboarding, snow skiing, motocross, and running.  He is an avid fan of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Anaheim Angels and can be easily engaged in a debate on any sports-related topic.

 
 

Dude, that guy was my best friend in treatment's counselor when she was at Second Nature. Wierd.

[Anonymous]

Teen Advocates USA

Social Newbie

Posts: 7



Joined: 2005-07-20

 User Profile  Subject : RE: Brat Camp
Posted : 2005-07-30 10:08 PM
Post #5790 - In reply to #5788

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Originally written by AtomicAnt on 2005-07-31 1:43 PM

Rusty,

I'm not willing to dismiss your anecdotal evidence as easily as others. If your son and other relatives had positive experiences then that is great. I'm really glad it worked out.

For me, the coercive part is the most objectionable aspect. It's the concept that a group of people can force an ideology onto someone against their will. In the case of Brat Camp, it is difficult to understand my objections. Who can object to turning drug abusing teens into well behaving teens? But did you know that some of these camps are designed to force a 'Christian' perspective on the students? Did you know there are camps that are designed to force gay kids into being straight? These kids are also in these camps against their will (parents can do this in the USA).

I watch the show and cringe thinking of how I would have reacted to these counselors and this form of therapy. My core values are not popular and often misunderstood. I formed these values during childhood. They are not my parents values. Had I been sent to one of these camps and forced to act in a certain way to progress through the program, knowing that if I did not give in, the chances would be good that I would end up in one of these oppressive boarding schools, I honestly think I would become either homicidal or suicidal; the tragic result of which the program would call my 'choice.' To me, this process is too close to 'A Clockwork Orange' and too Orwellian in nature to be ethical.

Even the language used. "We are giving these kids the opportunity to change." That implies choice where there really is not choice. The student must accept the program, period. The program will not the student go until he submits. That is coercion, which to me is intrinsically wrong. The ends does not justify the means.



Personally? I think parents would be very wise to steer clear of any so-called troubled teen program that equates CHANGE with INDOCTRINATION.

Second, as an outdoor enthusiast myself, I have no problem with kids learning wilderness survival skills such as those taught by the OUTWARD BOUND programs.

In fact, my best advice to parents considering sending their child to a wilderness therapy camp is to look into the INDIVIDUAL and FAMILY wilderness adventure programs and experiential training offered by Outward Bound. Strictly VOLUNTARY, these programs have an excellent safety record and are reasonably priced.

http://www.outwardbound.com

Barbe
TAUSA


[Edited by Teen Advocates USA on 2005-07-30 10:11 PM]

[Anonymous]

http://www.sociopranos.com/forums/threa ... &start=401

Anybody bother to read the other posts?  Might help to put things in perspective.  These were parents boasting about how forced wilderness therapy programs savedtheirkidsfromdeathorjail and in that context, the recommendation to those parents to consider alternatives like Outward Bound doesn't look like a referral for profit as you are trying to allege.

Also, if any of you read Help At Any Cost, you may be interested in the author's recommendation that Outward Bound might be appropriate for kids who have an interest in nature and want to participate in one of their programs.  It's in the back of the book.  Would you consider that a referral for profit or an alternative resource?

There is a big difference between wilderness therapy programs like Brat Camps and Outward Bound.  Nobody was recommending the OBW programs for troubled teens, but even there, they don't take kids who won't go voluntarily so that eliminates teens taken by forced escort.  All outdoor programs have risk.  In this case it sounds like the staff is to blame and that OBW will be held accountable.

If you're really that worried about it write to the people who offer scholarships to high school students like Elisa.  She was awarded a scholarship to attend the program along with hundreds of other kids in certain parts of the country who also attended one of their programs.

http://www.summersearch.org/s.php

[Anonymous]

Aren't you worried about it? Why haven't people taken this very seriously, two kids died in one program due to negligence, all within a month. Seems like something you'd want to address.

[Anonymous]

What do you suggest we do?  Outward Bound will be held accountable for that girl's death in Utah.  That's obvious and what one would expect in light of the circumstances. The other one is a different kind of program all together.   It's for juveniles in trouble with the law.  That program contracts with Florida's juvenile justice system.  It's not a voluntary adventure type program.  Kids are court ordered there instead of a jail, I gather. If you read the news stories, they aren't sure who is to blame, the program or the hospital who examined the boy and is the one who released the kid back to the program.  If they are to blame, Outward Bound will have to accept responsibility and make changes or get out business. Seems pretty straight forward to me.  They are ONE of many companies contracting with the state of Florida juvenile justice system. What else would you suggest anyone do? There is an advocacy group in Florida who is active in pushing for reforms in juvenile justice system.  Why don't you join that group and help them?  Or Write to Summer Search as suggested?  In fairness, it's easy to point the finger at others but a lot of good that does since it's these companies who are responsible. Fornits is a good place for parents to get info. so in that sense, people are doing something.  There are many many subjects here that are valuable to building parent awarenesss.  If you don't think that's important, well, you are free to pursue other options.  Have you written to the outfit where that adult died?  Its a company in Colorado called BOULDER OUTDOOR SURVIVAL SCHOOL.  He died the same week the girl did.  Point is these are two different companies,  2 different programs (in case you didn't realize that). He was a grown man but no excuse for dying because they didn't give him access to water in the Utah desert.   It's good you are concerned but not real productive blaming people who had nothing to do with any of these deaths.  The girl was referred by her own high school and Summer Search.  The boy was placed by the Florida Juvenile Justice system.  The 29 year old man signed up for the course offered by Boulder Outdoor Survival School on his own.

[ZenAgent]

The Teen Torture industry isn't kicking our asses, it's just a Hydra -you lop off one head and go for another, the old one pops back up.This is still grassroots. There will always be gullible, ineffective parents who'll send little Alphonse off for "Tough Love"  to save him from cigarettes and his passion for greased midget porn.  

One good thing...I know one abusive shithole facility in Tennesee is getting an unnanounced inspection as I write this.  I know, because I called the State gov't team that's administering what I pray is a brutal, loveless cavity search on every psycho-staffer and Sado-counselor who's ever assaulted a teen. The dep't head called and said they had started, and I'm hoping to talk to a patient there I've been missing.  Those uneducated, abusive fat bastards thought they were above the law, now they're nose-deep in shit .

[Anonymous]

Good for you, Zen!

[Deborah]

http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?p=259462#259462

[Ursus]

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adven ... bound.html


After heatstroke claims a student in Utah's Canyon Country, the 46-year-old institution faces America's shrinking tolerance for risk.


THE temperature had hit 104ºF (40ºC), yet the students continued down Lockhart Canyon to the Colorado River, where boats waited to take them into the cool of the water. To Elisa Santry, who had rarely been west of Boston and never known wilderness, Lockhart Canyon must have seemed a strange place.

The walls were mudstone, formed in the Triassic period, the soft kind of rock that erodes into drips, blobs, grotesqueries: Here were ogling beasts the color of red wine or old blood, and troglodytic dwarves, and men with no necks, necks with no heads. The heat was nauseating, disorienting. It sucked at the resolve of 16-year-old Elisa, who was fair-skinned and thin-armed. The pack she wore, at 40-some pounds (18-some kilograms), was nearly half her body weight, but according to her letters, she was proud of carrying it. By dusk that day, July 16, 2006, Elisa was supposed to have completed the 16th day of a 22-day trek across the wilds of southern Utah as a student with Outward Bound, the premier wilderness school for young Americans. She was proud of that too.

Around 6 p.m., as the other students in her group made their way under the fading sun, instructors noticed that Elisa had disappeared. A search ensued, and for five hours the five remaining students and several instructors combed the canyon, donning headlamps after darkness fell. Finally, around 11 p.m., the instructors found Elisa facedown not far off the trail, her pack still shouldered. She was a half mile (one kilometer) from the river.

Elisa was the first Outward Bound student to die in almost a decade and the 24th fatality in the nonprofit's 46-year history in the U.S. (most of those deaths occurred prior to 1980). The organization's response was a near-total silence about the specifics of the case, but a small group of insiders broke form and spoke out, warning that Outward Bound's safety standards had fallen disturbingly low. When I contacted Elisa's mother, Elisa Woods, a few days after her daughter was found, she was outraged. "They told me my daughter was going to be well supervised . . . and she obviously wasn't," she said. "They killed my baby." The organization allowed no such notion: The wilderness killed Elisa Santry, spokespeople for the group told me, and, as a senior instructor in Moab put it, that is sometimes to be expected—a hard-line ethic perhaps, but one that Outward Bound says will not change as a result of Elisa's death.
 
Named after the nautical term for a boat leaving its pier, Outward Bound was the brainchild of a progressive German educator named Kurt Hahn, who wanted to raise survival rates among sailors at sea during World War II. His hope was to toughen young men's resolve through teamwork and compassion and a sense of shared mission. When Outward Bound came to the U.S., in 1961, its curriculum was adjusted to meet the American landscape head on: Every student in Elisa's nine-person "patrol," for example, would summit a high peak, rappel a cliff, climb a rock face, live for weeks in the wilderness, and, as the climax of their experience, sojourn alone for two days in the rite of passage known as the "solo."

The success of Outward Bound in the U.S. spawned scores of imitators (I attended an Outward Bound type program when I was 14), and it remains the ur-wilderness school, with more than 680,000 participants to date. Elisa, a gifted student from the Southie neighborhood in Boston, had won a scholarship from Summer Search, a national nonprofit, to attend one of Outward Bound's most popular programs, combining mountaineering, canyoneering, and rafting. Elisa was to hike and raft some 180 miles (290 kilometers) over three weeks, through alpine tundra and hardwood forests into the red-rock canyons and the rivers beyond.

Her mother objected, worrying for a city girl's safety in a desert 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) away. In a family of three boys, Elisa, who had blond hair and was born with a lazy left eye, was the only daughter and the youngest child. "My miracle baby," Elisa Woods said. "I spent ten weeks in the hospital with that baby. She wasn't supposed to make it." Elisa's oldest brother, Michael Woods, 32, was thrilled for his sister, whom he had taken hiking in the green hills outside Boston. Michael reassured his mother that Elisa would be in good hands. "My excitement for Elisa," he said, "was that she was going to have a truly wild experience in the American West."

They began the course in the La Sal Mountains east of Moab, nine teenagers and two instructors, dropped off by van at 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) in the aspen forests. Here there were black bears, rumors of cougars, and the sign of elk in the pine beds. A pounding rain and bleak thunderheads barred their way to the region's tallest peaks, so the group was forced to settle for a 11,600-footer (3,536-meter) they called "Mount Tapatío" (after a hot sauce they'd come to love).

According to a letter that instructor Rob Neilson, 26, later wrote to her family, Elisa was intrigued by the tools of survival. She learned how to route-find, use a compass, read a topo, march by starlight—to lead and trust to be led. She liked knots: the trucker's hitch and clove hitch for lashing her tarp as shelter in lieu of a tent, the figure-eight follow-through and water knot for tying into a top rope. She learned how to jury-rig a harness out of webbing, how to attack a rock face, and how to belay. But as the students experienced true wilderness for the first time, the instructors also taught them to be wary of it. This was key to the lesson, according to Outward Bound: to watch out for the health of the group, to recognize the signs of hypothermia and dehydration and heat sickness.

The rigors of the expedition naturally wore on Elisa and her companions, enough that one of the girls quit on day four due to a stomach ailment. By day nine, one of the boys was forced to withdraw because of a nagging ankle injury. Another girl, a 17-year-old Californian named Karen, consistently lagged behind. For this, she was shunned by the four remaining boys with whom Elisa, on the other hand, had no trouble keeping pace. Karen was "not quite as intellectually and emotionally mature as the other students," Neilson wrote. Elisa remarked in her own letters that Karen had trouble tying shoelaces and sometimes sucked her thumb. Elisa took Karen under her wing "when no one else was willing to help," Neilson's letter said. "Elisa was always trying to coach [Karen] to do well, to be timely, and to work well with the group." She took weight from Karen's pack, helped her fold tarps, clean pots, tie knots. Perhaps she recognized in Karen something of her own experience, sensitized as she was to the condition of the outcast: As a child, Elisa was laughed at for her wandering eye and later underwent surgery to correct the condition.

If Elisa's letters home are to be believed, the group's overall dynamic was less than ideal. Weeks in dusty tents and around campfires with nine unwashed strangers either leads to group coherence—a sense of shared mission, a brotherhood, a sisterhood—or group dysfunction and the breaking apart into cliques. Elisa's patrol, it seems, quietly broke apart. The boys had too much "attitude" and seemed to share a contempt for the girls, according to Elisa in her letters home (Stan from Colorado "used to be nice"; John from Wisconsin had "his mood swings"). Elisa at the same time failed to bond with the other girls. "The girls hike really slow," she wrote. Tina from California is described as "soo mean and aggravating." As for Karen, she "always complains." "I complain also," Elisa wrote on the 11th day of the trip, "but try to stop."

By the 11th day, the kids had reason to complain. There was a heat wave across the Southwest, and in southern Utah the temperatures rose in tandem with the patrol's descent from the juniper forests into the canyons. In the fluted narrows and under the high rims of West Coyote Gulch, 17 miles (27 kilometers) south of Moab, the group settled in for the long loneliness of the solo. Elisa, per the Outward Bound tradition, was allowed only minimal food, water, a pen, a journal, a sleeping bag, and a sleeping pad—alone for two nights with her thoughts, the cliffs, the heat, the darkness. "She said that at night, solo was really hard," wrote Neilson. Of the many letters Elisa penned in this solitude, there was one that she was instructed to write to herself and not read until six months had passed—this was also tradition. The note was dated July 11, and, given that it was the last thing Elisa Santry ever wrote, her family would not share it.

On the morning of July 16, four days after her solo, Elisa didn't eat much—just some nuts and crackers, according to Outward Bound. It was probably the heat. That day was to be one of the patrol's most demanding and rewarding, a seven-mile traverse of Lockhart Canyon to rafts waiting at the Colorado River; the culmination of eight hard days in the aridness of the Canyonlands basin.

The hike down Lockhart would be completed as a group, but without instructors present, with only their maps, compasses, and wits. The route was a simple one, an old jeep road that followed the drainage of the canyon to the sun-smashed cottonwoods and stands of tamarisk along the river. Neilson, as lead instructor, would walk on ahead, while the second instructor, a woman who Outward Bound will only identify as Alex, would act as "sweeper," trailing the group far behind to ensure that there would be no stragglers. Neilson and Alex issued the standard protocol: The patrol was to stay together at all times. The kids were provided ample food and water. Neilson and Alex were also not the only adults in the area. Tina, who Elisa had found so intolerably "mean," had sprained her ankle on a rappel and had to be trucked out. To help with the evacuation, the organization's top man in Utah, Mike DeHoff, director of the Southwest Region Program, had piloted down the Colorado River by boat and was hiking up Lockhart Canyon.

By afternoon, however, the protocol in Elisa's patrol started to unravel. DeHoff, for his part, said he noticed nothing amiss when he passed by the group on his way up canyon. There were two girls remaining of the original four—Elisa and Karen—and four impatient boys. After DeHoff had passed, Elisa at one point started weeping, according to Karen, the only member of the group Elisa's family has been able to contact.

The Needles ranger station in nearby Canyonlands National Park marked a temperature of 104ºF (40ºC) that afternoon. In the furnace effect of the canyon, the temperature was likely closer to 110ºF (43ºC). The effort to walk under the roaring sun was apparently too much for Elisa. She'd eaten almost nothing all day. She asked to take a rest break. She then requested another. It was late afternoon, the crest of the day's heat. There were one and a quarter miles (two kilometers) to the respite at the river.

The four boys later told Outward Bound investigators that a group decision was made at 4:45—the patrol would disband. The boys headed out and left the two girls to be swept up by Alex in the rear.  

Elisa and Karen proceeded for a short while. Then the story clouds up. According to Karen, who was the last person to see her alive, Elisa now opted to strike out down canyon alone. Alex says she found Karen around 5:15 p.m., wandering down the middle of the jeep road.

As for Elisa, we can only guess what happened. We know that she had enough food with her and that she started the day with two bottles of water. What is most perplexing is the route she chose after she left Karen. She abandoned the jeep road altogether and walked a quarter mile south into a side canyon. Was she lost? The jeep road and drainage is clearly blazed at that point in the canyon. Had she lost her ability to reason? Heat exhaustion can lead to disorientation; heatstroke guarantees it. Both conditions result from a rise in the body's core temperature, and both can strike even if a hiker is hydrated, though heatstroke is deadly. Elisa walked up the side canyon with its weird mudstone walls, the rocks too hot to touch. Then she fell to her knees and pitched forward onto her face. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth. There she died, probably within minutes. The medical examiner later ruled "probable heatstroke" as the cause of death.

A day later, on July 17, a 29-year-old man named David Buschow died, reportedly of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, on a wilderness survival program in Utah run by the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, of Boulder, Colorado. The two fatalities, one right after the other, made national headlines, and in the Santry case led Utah officials to review Outward Bound. Utah regulations prohibit compulsory outdoor programs that treat delinquent or troubled individuals from hiking in temperatures above 90ºF (32ºC), but groups that run voluntary programs, such as Outward Bound, function beyond the state's purview. "We took another look at Outward Bound," says LJ Dustman, supervisor for the licensing of Utah's outdoor programs. "But by definition they operate outside of our jurisdiction."

Richard "Rocky" Grossack of Boston, one of the lawyers hired by Elisa's family, sees an avenue for litigation, despite the fact that students and their parents are required to sign an extensive release form. "My goal," Grossack says, "is to get the family money. Why were the campers hiking in those conditions when the regulations suggest that you shouldn't? Having a kid hike in 110-degree (43-degree Celsius) heat, in a canyon, with a backpack that's nearly half her weight, without appropriate supervision checking in on her is gross negligence—and by that I mean negligence that was disgusting." Mickey Freeman, president of Outward Bound Wilderness and its top official fielding press inquiries about the incident, counters that the organization has "been operating similar trips in the same area during the same time of year for about 25 years without a heat-related fatality or, to our knowledge, a serious heat-related incident." He later elaborated, saying, "Our instructors made the right decisions and acted within our policies and guidelines."

Still, investigators with the San Juan County sheriff's office, which has jurisdiction in the Santry case, say that Outward Bound "has been less than cooperative." At press time, the organization had refused to divulge to investigators the names of the other students and the instructors—the key witnesses to what really happened in Lockhart Canyon. Nor would Outward Bound share the results of their own internal probe with the sheriff's investigators or Elisa's family. The sheriff's office considered issuing subpoenas to Outward Bound in late 2006. As of mid-March 2007 the organization still had not disclosed the results of its February 12 internal investigation.

Nonetheless, John Read, the president of Outward Bound USA, says the incident has deeply impacted his organization. He now has a picture of Elisa Santry hanging in his office. "A day doesn't go by that we don't think about Elisa," Read wrote in an October 2006 email to Elisa's brother Michael Woods, who has spearheaded the family's own investigation. "We have remembered her and celebrated her life and grieved her loss in so many ways."

Yet avowed sorrow does not translate into an admission of wrongdoing, nor apparently will it catalyze sweeping change at Outward Bound. After the organization completed its internal investigation, Freeman insisted that the report, whose purpose "was not to assess whether anyone acted negligently or was at fault," recommended "that we reexamine our heat-related travel protocols." And even in regard to temperature limits for travel, Freeman noted, "we want to carefully balance setting absolute limits versus relying on instructor judgment."

This, according to former and current Outward Bound employees, may be flawed policy in light of current training procedures. A former high-level Outward Bound program director who asked to remain anonymous says that after the organization's Pacific Crest and Colorado Schools merged in 2003, its risk-management procedures were pushed to the margins. The staff from the Colorado School, which for years had a higher accident rate than other schools, according to the former director, assumed control of training at the new entity, now called Outward Bound Wilderness. "Instructors need to know how to corral students to a safe zone, how to manage big groups on a top rope, how to persevere in a state of trouble, how to assess equipment, terrain, weather," says the former director, who resigned in the wake of the merger. "These things seemed to be missing from Outward Bound Wilderness. There was no sense of mentorship. There was no interest in maintaining an institutional standard for the application of written support material such as course area guidebooks and instructor manuals. And there was a huge lack of assessment of instructors' competence."

The merger, according to some former employees, also depressed morale, spurring an exodus of senior field instructors and program directors, who were replaced by younger staff. "People just saw the quality deteriorate," says the former director. "I believe in Outward Bound. I was a student at 18 and it changed my life. Risk in nature is an incredible teacher—it teaches boundaries. But today Outward Bound isn't teaching boundaries. And the dangers have spiraled out of control."

In December 2006 Arthur M. Blank, chairman of the board of Outward Bound USA, announced plans to donate one million dollars to fund a professionalized training institute for field instructors. According to Outward Bound, plans for the institute were underway prior to Elisa's death, and the donation was unrelated to the incident. "This will help us build a deeper instructor bench," says Freeman. "We'll start to see the work this year."

Still, the question remains: Even with a renewed commitment to risk management, has Outward Bound's wilderness philosophy, a philosophy forged in the American wilds in the 1960s, fallen out of step with society and, in particular, the risk aversion of modern parents? A 1991 study found that the radius around the home where parents allowed nine-year-olds to wander had shrunk to one-ninth of what it had been in 1970. Fear of risk—and of litigation—drives suburban homeowners to abide by "covenants" that prohibit basketball in streets, marbles-play on sidewalks, and fort-building in nearby woods. In California, Girl Scouts are often restricted from climbing trees at camp. The notion that accidents happen—especially fatal ones—is simply at odds with what most parents today are willing to accept.

"This is much larger than Outward Bound; it's what is happening to us as a society," says Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods. "For almost the entirety of human history, children spent most of their time either playing or working in nature." That era, says Louv, may be coming to an end in the U.S. For this reason alone, supporters argue, Americans need Outward Bound now more than ever.

Elisa's family could not agree less. They want to know why she died, and they have yet to receive a clear answer from the organization's executives. Though Freeman continues to insist that "Outward Bound's number one priority is safety," even current employees disagree. "Outward Bound doesn't have a culture of safety," says a veteran instructor. "The leadership of Outward Bound is not being held accountable. In turn, they aren't holding the program directors and instructors accountable." Elisa's brother Michael asks an anguished question in this regard: Where were the instructors when Elisa was dying in Lockhart Canyon?

[Anonymous]

This is criminal negligence by Outward Bound and the individual trip leaders who decided to take the group from the higher elevations to the desert floor in mid-July. Those who live in the desert southwest have a healthy respect for the extremes of this climate, as well as a basic understanding of how the temperature changes with elevation and how heat exhaustion can kill you no matter how much water you've drank.

I have no problem with voluntary wilderness adventures, but the organization and individuals leading these expeditions have an obligation to exercise reasonable precautions. The American southwestern deserts are quite unique and exploring them can be a mystical experience -- best done in the late Fall through early Spring. In the summertime, smart people only do this kind of outdoor exertion above 6 or 7 thousand feet, where the daytime temperatures aren't deadly. Outward Bound and it's staff know this -- or they damn well ought to know it.

[nimdA]

Stupid that they had those kids out hiking in the middle of the day. They could have done the same seven mile trek in the early morning hours before the bulk of the heat hit. For sure they should have been doing regular hydration stops. Doesn't sound like that happened at all, and if anything the young lady was basically baked dry on her solo and progressively worn farther down each passing day until she simply collapsed.

[Anonymous]

This entire philosophy and industry is based on "making kids uncomfortable", of course some of them are going to get hurt or die.

[nimdA]

true that.. sadly though.

[Oz girl]

This entire philosophy and industry is based on "making kids uncomfortable", of course some of them are going to get hurt or die.

The shame of it is outward Bound has a long standing history and reputation outside of the US in numerous countries which has nothing to do with this industry. Outward Bound Australia, for instance has family options as well as kids ones. While it is designed for those who like a challenge, it is not punitive necessarily.
The Model of outward bound which has been so shockingly bastardised by this industry has been used at some prestigous private schools like Gorunstound in scotland or Timbertop in Australia. Even the few programs here based on its model that do take delinquent or disadvantaged kids do not take anyone who does not want to go.

it is a real shame that Outward bound in the US seems to have allowed its standards to drop so much because it is a well regarded international organisation.