Dates Announced For 2015 North Carolina Women’s Wilderness Initiative

If you believe being in the backcountry allows for a freedom that can’t be found anywhere else, or that backpacking and river rafting by their very nature sets a subtle but intentional pace that’s good for your soul, then our September 7-13, 2015, Women’s Wilderness Initiative course in North Carolina is tailor-made for you and what you stand for.

The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education’s Women’s Wilderness Initiative is a one-of-a-kind backcountry experience enabling women of nearly all ages to ditch a spouse, kids, job and/or college coursework for seven days focused just on themselves. That’s because your role on a Women’s Wilderness Initiative course is to unwind from your day-to-day tasks, focus on setting personal objectives, develop new technical and leadership skills, and have fun in the Great Outdoors with a group of like-minded women.

By the time you show up for our North Carolina Women’s Wilderness Initiative course, we’ve handled all of your logistics. You food is purchased, meals are prepped, the van is gassed, and the route is already vetted and selected.

Feel a little intimidated by the thought of hiking in unfamiliar territory or navigating rapids along the French Broad River? Not to worry. Our North Carolina Women’s Wilderness Initiative is perfect for women who are not regular rafters and backpackers. The trails we navigate are mostly flat and the river is easy to navigate.

Our all-women team of certified instructors wants you to walk away from this trip with a keen sense of what it means to have reconnected with yourself and reestablished your own personal path to happiness. Also equally important is for you to feel confident enough in your outdoor skills to move on to your next outdoor adventure without our wonderful staff.

With that in mind, our instructors/guides start things off by conferring with you and the other women on the course to see where everyone’s ‘at’ when it comes to outdoor skills, and we then allow you and your course mates to choose your challenges individually. All the outdoor and technical skills needed are taught so that you can ultimately navigate the backcountry on your own.

You’ll learn to cook in wilderness, set up camp, paddle the river, make heads or tails out of a topographical map, and acquire other skills as new challenges present themselves. When we’re not hiking or rafting, you’ll be involved in our unique leadership curricula, practicing yoga, sharing stories, journaling, making art or just napping under the trees.

And if you’re worried you might not fit in because you’re too young or too old, consider this: We limit each trip to about eight women with two professionally trained guides. Our youngest participant last year was 20 years old and our oldest was 61.

If this sounds like a great way to get away for a week and charge your mental, physical, emotional and social batteries, please check out the North Carolina Women’s Wilderness Initiative online course listing or call our co-founder and director of operations, Celine Adair, at the NCOAE Office at (910) 399-8090 for more information.