2011 Schedule

The summer Adventure Experience is one of our passions and specialties. We believe that developing strong personal values can come from making various choices in the natural environment. The key objective is to encourage the teens to develop an understanding of their choices. Our goals are to dissolve patterned barriers, accept a fuller sense of self-confidence, and gather perspective to one's relationship to others.

The Adventure Experience provides teens with the opportunity to examine the consequences that they create and to develop an understanding of their underlying motivations. The program's aspects promote self-awareness, accountability, empowerment, and teambuilding. The focus is on the whole person emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual.

This adventure program is an experience rather than a routine. It goes beyond primitive skills to build confidence. The goal is to stick with a challenge and work until it is mastered. Seeing a challenge to the end is one way these struggling teens build self-esteem. This is done with activities that build on the traditional backpacking with activities such as peak and rock climbs, snowshoeing, cross country skiing biking and river trips, and whatever else the incredible northwest Montana has to offer.

This experiential learning program triggers a diverse range of emotions. The at-risk teens make assumptions about themselves that are non-working, self-limiting, and often not true, but they perceive these faulty ideas as truth. Through experiential learning the teens break through these assumptions. Instead of responding with anger and fear, they learn to make appropriate choices, work with cooperatively with others, and value the ability to make decisions from a broader perspective. They move from the viewpoint of resistance to one that embraces life with new energy.

RiverView’s Adventure Experiences work to serve the teen and the family. Parents are invited to attend a 5-day mother-daughter father-son river trip at midpoint. There is a family workshop at the end of the program.

All during the adventure experience a licensed therapist works with the child and the family. The various activities promote experiential learning, which is dedicated to do what is best for the teen and their family.

28-Day Adventure Assessment Experience

This program goes out every 30 days. It is more intensive and challenging in order to make a valid assessment concerning the teen’s issues and possible solutions. The program is individualized to fit the needs of the teen. The plan is to develop activities that will assist in creating an evaluation that works to support the child and the family.

PEAK EXPERIENCES
Contracted by RiverView
Dan Ward, Director

• 27 years of experience with youth at risk programs
• owner of Peak Experience for the past 9 years, running coursework for group homes
   and boarding schools
• credentialed as a wilderness first responder
• a back-country level II guide with PSIA
• swift water rescue technician
• volunteer member of the local search and rescue team
• partnered with a adventure travel business called Wild Rockies Tours for eight seasons
• an adventure sports athlete who pursues his passions in the mountains or on a river