CHALLENGE/DISCOVERY

Education is a journey, not a destination, at The Prescott Institutions. CHALLENGE DISCovery

Programs designed to "make the men to match the mountains."

Nature can neither cheat nor be cheated and is, therefore, an outstanding teacher. That is the philosophy which caused Prescott College to turn to the wilderness areas of the National Parks as a compelling form of education.

The value of the National Parks to Prescott College cannot be measured. Without them one of the most powerful educational aids the college has could not be used.

When a student hangs by a rope down the side of a mountain to rescue a fellow man, it is difficult to measure how much that student has grown.

A student making a decision on how the rest of the group will run a rapid in the inner gorge of the Grand Canyon is assuming a greater responsibility than any football or basketball player ever takes and greater than any college profession can ever expect of him.

It is the belief of Prescott College that through the mountains, the canyons and the rivers of National Parks, the qualities of style, compassion, integrity, responsibility, bility, and leadership can be fostered and encouraged. Values formed in the wilderness are realistic. They will stand the abrasion of time.

During the years since the beginning of its Outdoor Action and Orientation programs, Prescott College has received national acclaim for its bold new educational techniques and has been publicized widely for its unique use of the wilderness environment as an educational tool.

Public response was instantaneous and benefits to students so obvious that Prescott College has been asked repeatedly to make this experience available to persons outside the college community. The need made itself particularly apparent in the last two years as man became more and more aware of his environment and less and less sure of his basic educational direction.

To meet this need two programs were developed: Challenge, for the young man between 14and 16-years-of-age; and Discovery, co-educational for all other interested persons including college undergraduates, who are at least 17years-of-age.

Prescott College as an educational institution is probably better qualified than any other comparable body in the United States to conduct this style of program. Its faculty has been responsible for expeditioning on the land, sea and rivers of five continents. Students and faculty from Prescott College made the first crossing by kayaks of the Sea of Cortez from Baja to the Mexican mainland. The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon has been negotiated on several occasions by both rafters and kayakists from the College. Mountain ranges as far north as Mt. Rainier and as far south as Mexico City have been visited and major ascents made. Such experiential programs are an integral part of the College's educational philosophy, and College staff members will conduct Challenge/Discovery.

Participation in every phase of the program is required of all students. You do not have to be a super athlete to succeed. What you do need is determination to put out everything you have from the day you arrive until the day you leave. You don't have to be a technical rockclimber, a kayakist or be able to tie a bowline. You will learn these things, and more, as part of the program.

In introducing the student to mountaineering, kayaking, ecology, and the realm of experiential education, much more can be done than teaching a skill. The individual may discover the potential he really has, both physically and intellectually.

Challenge/Discovery programs are not restricted to any location or environment. They will be conducted in the wilderness mountain ranges and on the rivers and seas of North America.

Pervaded by a sense of the future, Prescott College believes that education is a journey, not a destination. It is devoted to education in the truest sense of the word, and is striving for achievement. New concepts are explored. Nontraditional techniques are used. The goal is always the same; education, a realistic education, one with lasting values. Skills are not an end in themselves, but they are necessary to travel, exploration, and adventure. Modern, urban, industrialized life has separated man from many skills which, in the past, he used to express his creativity and feelings. A major emphasis during the Chal-lenge/Discovery program will be to train students in particular skills, such as kayaking and mountaineering. The knowledge will be of value throughout the future as an avenue to adventure, in a creative and re-creational sense.

Specific objectives of the Challenge/ Discovery Program:

Challenge/Discovery is completely mobile. Students depart from base camp on the first day of the course, and do not return until 26 days later. Instructors stay with the group for the entire period.

THE STAFF

The Challenge/Discovery staff are men and women of exceptional ability. They have a feeling for people and a flair for adventure that transcends the normal. Their achievements in education have produced results that have received national acclaim.

Staff experiences include: ascent of the notorious north face of the Eiger in Switzerland; ascents of Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and the Mountains of the Moon in central Africa; explorations on the Vatnajokull Glacier in Iceland; the difficult first ascent of the north ridge of Alpamayo in Peru, South America; extensive mountaineering in most of the European Alps; the first ascent of the north face of the Troltind Wall in Norway; first crossing of the Sea of Cortez in kayaks kayaking the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon; sailing in British waters, the Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean; travels over the African continent from Cape Town to Libya in North Africa; leadership of numerous Prescott College expeditions and orientation programs. Extraordinary men and women-willing to share an extraordinary experience.

SKILLS

Challenge/Discovery activities are designed to stretch the physical and mental capacity of every student. Everything you learn is relevant and has an immediate application. Your instructor will show you the intricacies of currents and eddies from a vantage point high above the river; 15 minutes later you will be negotiating the white water rapids with your group, but in your own kayak. In the morning you will learn about ropes and knots and the technical equipment necessary for climbing; in the afternoon you will be on the end of a rope, scaling the rock face. Your introduction to these activities will be at a pace that matches your capacity. You should enjoy and appreciate the mountains and rivers, yet, at the same time, you must be able to give much to the effort.

Physically, the pace will be demanding, but the greatest growth will be intellectually. Your instructor will confront the group with problem-solving tasks that will require personal initiative and some degree of leadership. You will have responsibility on different days for managing the affairs of your group while on the river and on the mountains. In the evening your group will critique your leadership. For those students who already are teachers, or have aspirations to teach, these experiences can be invaluable. You will be totally immersed in living with nature.

In addition to climbing, mountaineering and kayaking, students will learn mountain rescue, map reading, emergency medical aid, night navigation, expedition planning, basic ecology and leadership training.

Through these types of activities, which are real, unavoidable, concrete and definable, a student truly begins to understand what integrity, compassion, responsibility and leadership mean. These experiences allow a student to adopt attitudes and form values which are realistic and can stand the abrasion of time. The inner person is revealed and becomes known.

More important than activities is the student's assessment of himself. The student measures his achievement only against his own potential, not against his peers. Above all, willingness to try counts far more than any other factor.

EXPEDITIONS

Expeditions present the student with the challenge and opportunity of exploring some of the remoter reaches of the high mountains and little-travelled rivers. Skills learned earlier will be necessary to make long approach treks through wilderness terrain; to make bivouacs on high mountain ridges, sometimes in snow caves, in order to make pre-dawn approaches to scale the summits of 14,000 ft. peaks. The sociological problems and benefits of people living closely together, enduring similar experiences of joy, fear, laughter, fatigue, frustration, happiness and accomplishment will more clearly be appreciated and understood as the group welds itself into a team.

SOLO

Toward the end of the course, a period of time is devoted to being alone with oneself and with nature. This is a period of reflection, loneliness, peace, and introspection.

For information about The Prescott Institutions and the CHALLENGE/DISCOVERY programs write to Mr. Hogan Smith, Office of the President, Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona 86301.

The location for both the CHALLENGE and DISCOVERY courses for 1972 will be on the western slopes of the Colorado Rockies. This location gives access to thousands of square miles of wilderness terrain, with fifteen 14,000 foot peaks in the immediate vicinity. Many peaks have snow on their northern flanks until late August. Alpine lakes dot the area. The rivers provide some of the finest kayaking in Colorado.

The Institute Prescott, Arizona

APRIL 1972

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

Inspection. It will be one of the few times in your life when you will be free of the demands and diversions of society and free of the psychological crutches which society provides. The beauty of Solo and a great part of its value lies in the idea that each participant actually determines the meaning, the value, and results which he derives from his experience. Each Solo, therefore, is unique and different from all others. Yet, there remains a pride in achievement common to all who participate in the experience.

CONSERVATION ECOLOGY/SERVICE

The preservation of our natural environment is not necessarily insured by establishing wilderness areas and national parks. Only education and motivation of the users, fortified with knowledge of the proper techniques and methods, can achieve that goal.

Conservation and ecology are topics that will arise and be dealt with. Practical conservation will be practiced throughout the course.

It has been observed that in time of crisis and danger, those who invariably prevail are the men and women whose primary concern is the care and welfare of others.

Service is essentially an attitude of mind along with the necessary skills to perform effectively.

During Challenge/Discovery, and depending on the program environment, students will learn emergency medical aid, lifesaving and mountain rescue. Should an emergency arise in the area, the group will become a search and rescue unit, working in close liaison with other organizations.

In a less dramatic way there will be involvement in service projects which may mean helping to clear or build a trail in a national forest, or packing out someone else's litter from a remote campground.

We live in an age when man literally is reaching for the stars while on earth vast problems of pollution, urban blight and poverty threaten our being and absorb our energy. If man is not only to survive, but to prevail in this and future ages, it will be through the strength of the individual. It is this individual strength, this personal understanding, which Challenge/Discovery seeks for its participants.

INTRODUCTION TO EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION

Experience is valuable within itself, but if it is to have a deeper, more lasting meaning, then what experience teaches must be made to apply to other situations. Experience must, in other words, be transferable.

This is a basic goal of experiential education, and underlies much of the educational approach of Prescott College. As the College developed this concept for its own purposes and gained national recognition in the process pressure for participation in Prescott's outdoor programs began to increase, pressure from the general public.

Challenge/Discovery is, therefore, open to the public, and will provide its participants with a real, definable introduction to a specific application of experimental education.

CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK

COVERING THREE LEVELS, the park divides into: Island in the Sky, a high mesa with an elevation of 6,000 feet, that is surrounded by a mezzanine, the 4,400-foot high White Rim, which in turn overlooks the flat river valleys 500 feet below. Passenger cars can approach only to Grandview or Dead Horse Point. From Elephant Hill, the going is by foot, horse, trailbike, or jeep.

THE TORTUOUS COLORADO RIVER cuts a twisting gorge through the park. One spectacular convolution, where it nearly crosses its own path, can best be viewed from Dead Horse Point, just outside the park boundary.

THE WHITE HOUSE National Park Centennial Year

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

In John Colter's saga of adventure, we find the genesis of an idea which was to change man from nature's ancient adversary to its friend and preserver. In 1806, this guide and trapper for Lewis and Clark left the expedition on its return journey and set off on a series of exploits that brought him, alone and on foot, into an unknown wilderness of majestic splendor. He carried back tales which prompted scoffing disbelief, then awe, and finally an unending cavalcade to the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. Years later, on March 1, 1872, in an Act signed by President Grant, Colter's discovery was established as the first national park for the people of the Nation and of the world.

A century has come and gone, and in that time the National Park System has grown to include 280 areas embracing the most magnificent examples of America's natural and historical heritage. In every time and season, our parks give of their joys and beauties. They have enriched the citizens of this land beyond measure, and have inspired more than 100 nations to set aside over 1,200 national parks and reserves. Truly, "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin." And this past year, through the Legacy of the Parks, we have embarked on a new era of bringing parks to the people with the opening of vast new tracts of wilderness and recreation land, a fitting close to the first 100 years of our National Park System and a proper beginning for the next 100 years.

As directed by the Congress in a joint resolution of July 10, 1970 (84 Stat. 427), the Secretary of the Interior has requested me to issue a proclamation designating the year 1972 as National Park Centennial Year in recognition of the establishment in 1872 of Yellowstone National Park, the world's first national park.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICHARD NIXON, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the year 1972 as National Parks Centennial Year.

I urge appropriate Federal, State, and local government officials to cooperate in the observance of that year with activities that will not only honor the past, but will provide a focus for understanding the increasing importance of the National Park System in the lives of all Americans, establish an atmosphere of cooperation among private citizens and local, State, and Federal governments regarding the national park concept, and encourage our citizens and our friends beyond our borders to participate in Centennial activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 5th day of January in the Year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-sixth.