Building confidence in the backcountry

Dave Plain has his hands full, but it certainly appears he can manage it.

Plain is the new executive director of Meet the Wilderness, taking over for Joe Schmitt.

Plain and Schmitt don’t look too much alike at first glance, but both are enamored with the backcountry and experiences that spending time in the wilderness can yield.

Plain’s the corporate guy with a background in manufacturing plastics. He hails from Indiana but has been vacationing in Vail since 1969.

His first taste of wilderness education came when he sat on the board of a wilderness program, camping and educational foundation in Cincinnati, which ran summer programs in northern Minnesota.

In 2001, he took over as executive director of the foundation of Camp Kootch-I-Ching.

Earlier this year, Alice Plain, a golf pro at Eagle Ranch, sent him a Vail Daily where he saw an article on Meet the Wilderness. It caught his eye, and now he’s here heading up the nonprofit organization.

“I enjoy working with youth,” Dave Plain says. “Specifically at-risk youth and underprivileged kids who don’t have the opportunity to get into the back country, where we teach life skills like self-reliance and self-confidence.”

Meet the Wilderness was founded in 1974 by Jim Himmes and Greg Earle. Himmes had been working on ski patrol and needed a summer job. He targeted inner-city youth in Chicago.

“Meet the Wilderness has been serving youth for 30 years,” Plain says. “It has longevity.”

Meet the Wilderness’ mission is to teach life skills by taking youth groups on camping and backcountry trips. The programs are meant to instill trust, self-discipline, self-esteem, teamwork, communication skills, leadership qualities, confidence and an appreciation for the natural environment, Plain says.

“Parents tend to enable their kids,” Plain says. “They won’t push kids beyond their capabilities. We push them further than they’ve been pushed before. We want to hear them say, ‘I accomplished more than I thought I could, and I feel better about myself.’”

For elementary school students, Meet the Wilderness’ programs include trips to Dinosaur National Park and Colorado National Monument, a summer rock-climbing club and 7-day backcountry trips.

For kids age 12 to 15 there are backcountry team-buidling programs. There are also team-building programs for corporate groups.

More than 2,500 youth have participated in Meet the Wilderness programs and 75 percent of those kids come from Eagle County.

And they still hold true to their roots — offering programs to at-risk kids and inner-city youth from Chicago and Phoenix.

The future will hopefully bring in more youth, more corporations, and more backcountry experiences. They also hope to purchase a moveable climbing wall, Plain says.

“The bottom line: If a kid comes to us for seven days and, after walking in the wilderness with a backpack, he feels better about himself, we’ve done our job,” he says.



Vail Daily, Vail, Colorado

Kids participate in a team-building program.

Students participating in the summer’s climbing club.

Parent volunteers at Dinosaur National Monument.

Dave Plain, Tom McCalden, Karen Hart and Aidan Fleming.





















Vail Daily, Vail, Colorado