Girls Camp Opens in Colorado

At TrekkerGirls global headquarters, preparations are in high gear for an exciting new summer program in Colorado. Though the veil of snow has yet to lift from the high mountains surrounding its base, plans are being hatched and arrangements made for the camp’s best year yet, as well as for what is thought to be the highest altitude Jewish camp in America.

TrekkerGirls is the project of Raizy Hines, who spent spent much of her childhood with her family exploring the pristine wilderness and beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park, near Estes Park, Colorado. Though she developed a great deal of knowledge and love of the area, she longed to be able to one day share it others. TrekkerGirls Camp is a result of that dream, a camp that combines Chassidus and the Rebbe’s teachings with the unparalleled beauty of nature and the outdoors.

Started in 2011, TrekkerGirls aims to provide an environment of spiritual growth for campers, where girls can learn and experience spirituality in a pristine place, free from the distractions and hullaballoo of modern life. It draws on a deep vein of spirituality-in-nature that is found in chassidus, from the earliest days of the Baal Shem Tov. TrekkerGirls aims to teach both yiddishkeit and knowledge of the outdoors in a way that is deep, clear, and immediately meaningful. As the mountains reach up to touch the sky, so TrekkerGirls aims to bridge the spiritual to the physical, giving girls practical tools and energy that they can rely upon for the rest of their lives. The camp will be under the spiritual guidance and supervision of Rabbi Yisroel Engel, shliach to Colorado.

Rocky Mountain National Park and nearby Estes Park, the base for the camp, contains some of the most beautiful and iconic mountain landscape in the United States. Spread across 415 square miles, and surrounded by millions of acres of National Forest, the Park contains a natural beauty and wild experience that is difficult to find anywhere else. It is filled with a breadth of landscape and wildlife, from forests and meadows to craggy peaks and icy glaciers, alpine tundra covered with wildflowers, moose, mountain goats, and trout that leap from clear mountain streams. Though many come to visit the park every year, very few penetrate into the backcountry to experience it’s solitude and grandeur.

This year the camp will be expanding in many ways. The program has grown to include 15 lucky campers. Instead of 2 weeks, the camp will be a full 3 weeks long. There will be a comprehensive themed learning program, covering a single topic in depth from broad sources in Jewish thought. For the first time there will be backcountry camping. Each shabbos will be spent at the Chabad House of a different highly successful shliach, where campers will see the challenges and accomplishments of shlichus in the modern era.

Planned activities include: Hiking, Campfire Farbrengens, Backcountry Camping, Davening in Pure Wilderness, Chassidus and Halacha shiurim, Rock Climbing with the Colorado Mountain School, and a tour of Cave of the Winds by candle lantern.

TrekkerGirls is looking for campers ages 14 or 15, who are geared for fun and ready to challenge their own limits. Though there will physical activity, the only fitness requirement for the camp is a positive attitude. Ahavas Yisroel is central to its mission, and the camp hopes to find girls who are able to transcend their own circumstances to learn from and make friendship with their peers. TrekkerGirls is a Chabad camp, and welcomes admissions from all suitable girls, regardless of experience.

If you or anyone you know may be suitable for the camp, please refer to the website at www.TrekkerGirls.com.