Camino de Santiago Hike - O Cebreiro - SpainHigh Adventure.  One of the absolutely essential parts of Scouting.  Traveling internationally, living on the road, pushing your limits, learning to survive.  These are all things that cannot be taught in school and are taught in the outdoor program of Scouting through experiential learning. 

Not to toot our own horn too much, but at Troop 845 we think that we have the best high adventure program in the....well... United States.  Now I know people may claim that is a bold statement but if you ask the guys in our troop we think they'll agree.  We believe in the philosophy 'go big or go home' so when summer time comes around we try to think up things that sound absolutely incredible and what many people consider to be out of reach....all the more fun in our books.

In the past couple years we've sent crews to all the BSA high adventure camps in the US; Philmont, Sea Base, and Northern Teir and our next generation of Scouts is planning another full tour in the coming summers.  We've also had 2 crews bike across the United States, a 3700 mile 69 day ride from Maryland to Washington in 2007 and 2010 that are the longest trips in the history of the BSA.  When we hit the trail, we look for long, remote, and high, so in 2008 we had a crew thru-hike the John Muir Trail in California; a 221 mile trail from Yosemite to the 14,500 foot Mt Whitney which at the time was the longest backpacking trip in the BSA.  In 2011 we went on to break our backpacking record with a 543 mile 5 week hike across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

Nothing changes your perspective and makes you appreciate what you have like traveling internationally, especially to a third world country.  So in 2009 a crew went down to Coban, Guatemala and worked with Habitat for Humanity for a month to build two houses for families deep in the jungle covered mountains.  Afterwards they spent time hiking to the Mayan ruins of Mirador and snorkeling in Belize.  This was such a success that our next team going out with Habitat plans to head to Chile to build near Santiago and hike in Patagonia.