SALTASH MOUNTAIN
MIXED GENDER
AGES 11-14
THE WONDER OF LIVING IN NATURE
Skits, Music and Backcountry Adventures
Located on more than 4,800 acres of undeveloped and conserved woodlands on Lake Ninevah, Saltash Mountain Camps is a place of skits, creativity and exploration.
Campers learn to accept each other, celebrate their individuality and work cooperatively in community. Living together in open-sided cabins, they play guitar, piano and sing, they swim, learn outdoor living skills and participate in work projects at camp.
Our backcountry trips also provide our youth with adventures in rock climbing, hiking, and canoeing as they gain an appreciation for each other. Campers enjoy all the creative arts as they fall in love with wild places! The activities are thoughtfully guided to build confidence in backcountry skills where campers progress from 3 day to 6 day trips in each session.
Campers build a powerful community in nature where every day adventures await!
With significant memories of my first school play at 11 and my first backpacking trip at 13, I was no end of thrilled to find that such experiences come together for campers at SAM. Whether undertaking an artistic production or a wilderness expedition, SAM campers have amazing opportunities to engage their unique creativity, develop resilience in the face of challenges, and stretch beyond their comfort zones.
While my professional path to SAM Camp has largely wended its way through wood and over water, my theatre training at Williams has always been a core influence on my approaches to community, to work, and to teaching. As a production person–lighting design–I'm excited to celebrate and elevate every facet of process and performance.
I'm so excited to be joining SAM and F&W in 2022, as we all look forward to this and future summers together with renewed reflection on the importance of our values. Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equity, And Sustainability may seem hard to come by in the wide world these days–these all clearly abound at SAM Camp.

Session 1 | June 29th - July 22nd |
Session 2 | July 24th - August 14th |
Housing: The cabins are all open three-sided wood structures with individual bunks and storage for each camper. As we build community, it’s important each camper still has their space and campers enjoy personalizing their bunk. When on wilderness trips, Saltash Mountain campers begin each morning together in tents or shelters in the New England woods.
Facilities: Shared facilities are nearby for all their hygiene needs, including fresh water and hot showers.

WHAT OUR FAMILIES SAY

Explore Life At Saltash Mountain Wilderness Camp
Every day there are creative and collective activities to challenge our campers as they explore the excitement and adventure of the Vermont wilderness.
On the Trail: Saltash Mountain campers spend a substantial part of each session out on the trail! Every camper goes on one 3-day cabin trip and one 6-day long trip during their session at Saltash Mountain. Life on the trail affords the perfect opportunity to practice living simply, with everything you need carried on your back! The campers rely on their community, while learning to appreciate all nature has to offer. A challenging day’s hike is rewarded with spectacular mountain top views with new friends, feeling a sense of accomplishment that can only come from carrying yourself to new heights on your own two feet.
Back at Camp (Ninevah): No two days at Saltash Mountain camp are alike! The Saltash Mountain community is big enough that campers have plenty of opportunities to make new friends and small enough to get to know each other. Over the course of each session campers learn to live, work, and play together in harmony. Campers choose from a variety of activities in the creative arts, music, swimming, sports and work projects. Outdoor living skills are fun and spontaneous and can range from the typical to the playfully ridiculous. Meals are shared in the open air under the food-shelter, followed by the entire camp community gathering for time spent “singing on the hill.” Evenings are spent playing all-camp-games in the field, exploring their wilderness surroundings.
Skits: From a silly 90-second skit about how to use a Kybo, what we call our composting toilets, to the end-of-summer fair skit which is performed in front of hundreds of eager audience members! Our theater and skits are an integral part of programming at Saltash Mountain. Whether you like to be center stage delivering lines, singing your heart out in the choir, writing the script, composing music, playing in the band, designing costumes, or building the set, every community member’s contribution to our culminating project is welcomed and essential. Campers also host a square dance each session for the community.

EXPERIENCE LIFE IN THE OUTDOORS
Activities
Trail clearing, impromptu jam sessions, swimming and canoeing – falling in love with wild places!
Outdoor Living Skills
Saltash Mountain campers and teens learn knot tying, knife and ax safety, plant and animal identification and other outdoor skills in the beauty and ruggedness of nature. Older campers work up toward their “WA” (pronounced “Wah”) experience including a 24 hour solo.
Trips
Teens and campers learn how to pack food, maintain gear, and plan their routes for their big trips! They learn to read a compass and a map. They practice the “Leave No Trace” ethic on all trips as well as bear-bagging and other essential skills.
Creative Arts
Campers and teens make puppets, props for skits at all camp gatherings, bandanas and art for “appreciations” for fellow campers and staff.
Waterfront
Beckoning waters of Lake Ninevah refresh campers and teens as they cool off on hot summer days. Canoeing is also a favorite pastime!
Work Projects
Giving back is an important aspect of Saltash Mountain camp. On outings, campers and teens participate in service trips including trail clearing and singing at senior centers.
Music
From singing before meals to impromptu jam sessions in the cabins, Saltash Mountain campers and teens are surrounded by musical creativity.



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Latest Posts from Saltash Mountain Camp
Campers returned from their long trips on Monday night and regaled us with tales of the trail. We heard about trail dinners cooked over an open fire, awesome swimming-hole stops, and some interesting through-hikers eager to share tips and tricks for living on trail. After sleeping in for an extra half-hour the next morning (the trail really tires you out!), campers jumped right into their final-week activities, the most impressive of which is perhaps the handcrafted gaga pit. The gaga pit was made by SAM campers and staff over the past week and was finished just this morning and unveiled in the “Gaga Gala” and ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The hot, sunny weather this week–which has almost made us forget all about the colder beginning of the session–was the inspiration for SAM’s end-of-session skit projects. In a typical summer, SAM camp performs an original skit in front of the rest of the Farm and Wilderness community to kick off our end-of-summer fair. Even though we won’t be able to celebrate the end of this special edition summer with a fair, SAM campers are still writing, directing, and starring in their very own skits. Each of our two pods is writing and preparing a skit to perform for the other pod on the last day of camp, as a way to kick-off our end-of-session banquet. Skit creation is a great opportunity for campers to collaborate on a creative project–whether you’re into writing, directing, singing, crafting set pieces, or designing costumes, everyone has a part in this pod-wide group project. On Tuesday, campers brainstormed the plots points for their skit, using the theme of “light” as a jumping-off point. Over the next few days, campers will work on various aspects of their skit by splitting up into smaller working groups within their pod. Although I can’t wait to see the final products on the last day of camp, the close of the summer is coming a little too soon!
Miles Crabtree
The second week of SAM Camp started with a round of activities, including fairy houses, Wilderness Adventurers (shelter building and wet-weather fire building), woodworking, candle making, gymnastics, Rube Goldberg machines, fashion design, quilt squares, comic writing, and of course games and swimming every day!
This year, we have 4 cabins divided into two pods and each pod gets to choose between 2 activities during each block. We generally get time together as a whole camp in the evenings, when we participate in an event we call Identity Night, or the Variety Show in which campers and staff get to show off their many talents to the group. This year’s Variety Show included a three-headed all-knowing person, many musical acts, jokes, stories, juggling, and a water drinking performance.
We welcomed our second session campers with a round of name games, first-night spaghetti, and a mad lib created by the campers as they arrived:
“Welcome to SAM Camp! We’re so excited, we want to shout “Hot Dog”! We hope you have a sunny time this summer. The staff has been swimming and talking for 421 days to make sure that the camp is gorgeous and soft for you. We even fixed that annoying car by installing new Gucci bags in the trees! You all came from so many places, from New York to Los Angeles, bringing all sorts of cute alligators and plenty of geese along the way. Because of that, we have to be extra careful about health and safety, especially in quick times like these. We know that the COVID protocols can be a pain in the leg, but they’re here to keep us safe so that we can have fun. Just like my friend always said, “When times get squishy, you have to plant and fall with your cheekbone held high.” And we can too! Let’s squat sloppily and choke on vestibules to make this the best summer ever!”
The first three days at camp are spent getting acquainted with each other and the space, learning what activities we have to offer, and preparing for the first three-day backpacking trip of the session. Campers jumped right in to a regular day at SAM camp, including Silent Meeting, Singing on the Hill after every meal, swimming, and so much more. Some campers got to put on a fashion show with items from our Macaroni Outback (mac-o-back, where all the hiking gear lives), while others did collage, played tetherball, a game invented by SAM staff called “Say What?”, amongst others. We ended the first night of camp with a classic, noodle tag!