by Adam Kaplan
Since its creation, Camp Nebagamon has been on the forefront of offering boys truly unique and life-changing experiences in the wilderness, and countless alumni through the decades trace their passion for the wilderness, and for camping, to those formative experiences at Camp Nebagamon.
For years Nebagamon has provided foundational hiking and canoeing trips. There are the wonderful hiking trips that venture 
into the Porcupine Mountains, or those that explore the majesty of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, or amazing two-week adventures that circumnavigate the incomparable Isle Royale National Park. Then there are those unbelievable canoe trips that access Quetico Provincial Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, considered to be the very best canoe country on the planet. (By the way, many of you simply know these trips as Sawbills. But did you know that Sawbill is just one of the more than one thousand lakes in the BWCA that have been paddled by Camp Nebagamon campers?) For almost nine decades, our campers have hiked the same trails and paddled the same lakes as those that came before them. The trip program connects us to our history and to these truly unique places.
Our trip program has evolved over time. With an eye towards broadening the trip program, a bicycle tripping component was added that allowed the boys to explore some of the amazing roads and parks in the area. Later still, campers were offered big boat sail trip opportunities on Lake Superior. And more recently, the opportunity to take a sea kayak trip and explore the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior has been added to the menu.
Now, one might think that will all of these options, we would stand pat and be satisfied with these myriad excellent choices. But that is not how things work at Nebagamon; we are always looking to improve. This has never been more true than in the past few years of our tripping program. In our constant quest to offer the boys as many special tripping opportunities as possible, we have added several new adventures to the tripping docket. Like any new program at Nebagamon, these programs were thought through carefully to make sure they made sense with our program and who we are as an institution.
So….when we built our climbing wall in 2009, we did it with great excitement, knowing that there are some truly spectacular climbing venues along the North Shore of Lake Superior. The plan was for us to develop a cadre of competent climbers for the first few summers and then begin to offer the boys the chance to challenge themselves on the sheer rock walls that tower 200 feet above the austere beauty of Gitche Gumee. These climbing trips began two summers ago and are, needless to say, incredibly popular.
Likewise, when we created three miles of mountain biking trails through camp and replaced all of our road bikes with mountain bikes, we did this looking ahead to the time when our boys would be able to get out and experience some of the finest mountain biking trails in the Midwest. For the past three summers our boys have been testing their peddling prowess in the Chequamegon National Forest, known as the Singletrack Capital of the Midwest. On these three day trips, the boys set up a base camp and then explore the more than 300 miles of trail in the area.
For many years our 9th grade campers have been spending most of the last two weeks of their camper careers paddling around Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. Unlike the days of yore in which there was only a single Quetico trip for seven lucky boys, these days, virtually every 9th grade camper heads north for the big adventure. In fact, this past summer we had five separate Quetico Big Trips. In addition, last year, we upped the ante and offered the boys an even BIGGER trip—the Long Trip. We created a three-week excursion that allowed the campers to explore Quetico for two weeks and then finish with a week-long Grand Portage adventure. The Grand Portage follows the trail of the Voyageurs who traveled with their bounty from the Boundary Waters into Lake Superior. It tracks the beautiful Pigeon River and eventually culminates with a nearly nine-mile portage into Lake Superior. (I know….nine miles with a canoe on your back??!!! By choice?!?! Who says kids today are soft?! Nebagamon kids aren’t!) What better way to wrap up a Camp Nebagamon tripping career than with a paddle and hike from the Boundary Waters into Lake Superior? We expect the Long Trip to become a mainstay for the hearty tripping corps of Camp Nebagamon on into the future.
If Camp Nebagamon is known for any one thing in the camping world (besides the 10,000 other things that make us the best camp on the planet!) it is our wilderness tripping program. We are proud of what the program started out as, what it has become, and will continue to evolve into. Keep on trippin’!!
