Coppercreek Camp put up their first Ropes Course on the “back 40” in 1985 (??) after Lornie experienced one through her outdoor recreation program at UC Santa Barbara. Ours involved mostly low group challenge events and a few ropes, like the one below.
We built a climbing wall and used some creativity to come up with crazy team challenges. For example, one event involved TREK filling a trash can full of holes, set a short ways from the creek, with buckets of water. The group had to work together quickly to fill it before it emptied.
The first climbing wall.
Team challenge wall
We actually still use this one.
Trust Fall
Eventually, the campers and staff got tired of hiking out to the Ropes Course and we moved it into the tall trees below our equestrian center in the main part of camp around 1994. We had a company build the first few events and one of our climbing instructors created a few more, such as the Vertical Playground. Every spring, our course is inspected by a ropes course inspection company for safety, and every summer, our ropes staff go through an intensive training session to run the course (more on that later). There is SO much more to running a ropes course than the early days.
