Outdoor Education

List of 7 items.

• Alpine Tower Challenge Course

  Every third and fourth former attends a ropes course challenge day at Woodberry’s Challenge Course. Led by student Ropes Course Instructors — selected through a rigorous process and extensively trained to handle the responsibilities of leading groups and ensuring safety — the boys participate in low ropes challenge activities and tackle climbing the Alpine Tower and the Carolina Climbing Wall.  At the end of the day, boys have bonded with classmates, learned problem-solving techniques, and gained the confidence that comes from challenging themselves and succeeding.

• Indoor Climbing Team

  With both Varsity and JV teams offered, Competitive Indoor Climbing challenges boys mentally and physically. Woodberry's indoor climbing gym, located on the lower level of the Leonard Dick Memorial Gymnasium, gets renewed frequently to challenge team members with new routes. Team members work on strength, flexibility, and technique so they can match their skills in "comps" at climbing facilities around the region against other teams in the Washington Area Interscholastic Climbing League.

• Expedition Week

  Why Expedition Week?
  
  

  Fostering Authentic Connection

  • The most essential ingredient to the Woodberry experience is transformative relationships.
    
    
  • Woodberry’s graduating seniors and alumni overwhelmingly confirm that meaningful off- campus learning opportunities are invaluable to the development of transformative relationships.
    
    
  • Character, trust, and teamwork are built when students and faculty engage in alternative programming and break the script together.
    
    

  Creating Space to Unplug

  • Constant exposure to social media is a leading cause of stress, social anxiety, and negative health outcomes in boys today.
    
    
  • Expedition Week creates space for students and faculty to put away their devices in order to focus on the connections that matter most.
    
    
  • Focused, alternative curriculum in a novel setting reinforces the development of curiosity and adaptability on campus.

  >>>View the Expedition Week Program in detail

• Mountain Biking

  Mountain bikers train both on nearby dedicated mountain biking trails and a team-built pump track for races against other teams in the Virginia High School Mountain Bike Series. The team competes in both the fall and spring. Sporting custom biking jerseys, boys learn the techniques and get the conditioning they need to shave time off their rides and have fun out on the trail.

• WFS Outdoors Program

  This fall and spring afternoon activity lets students get outside to enjoying hiking, fishing climbing, paddling, and skeet shooting. Participants might take a day hike along Perimeter Trail or go on an outing to nearby Shenandoah National Park. After learning kayaking safety skills in the indoor or outdoor pool, they take their boats out on the Rapidan's smooth waters or the Rappahannock's rapids. And climbing, belaying, and knot-tying are learned on rock faces both on and off campus. 
  
  The program makes great use of Woodberry's 1,200-acre campus and world-class facilities.

• Skeet Team

  Some boys spend their fall at the Julius C. Smith III '40 Sporting Clays Field and Pavilion as members of the skeet team. With friendly intrasquad competition, safety, and skill improvement as team goals, skeet has been an enduring tradition at Woodberry. Members of the skeet team also participate in the WFS Outdoors program.

• Adventure Literary Collection

  Containing 160 titles and housed in the William H. White Library, Woodberry’s Adventure Literary Collection offers boys a chance to experience outdoor adventure through literature.  A bookplate inside each book reads, “Gift of Herb Kincey, WFS class of 1953; To inspire readers to take on physical challenges, to seek out adventure, and to explore wild places.”
  
  Adventure Literary Collection Titles