As part of our wilderness trip program, every cabin group at North Star goes on either a canoeing or hiking trip. We hire Wilderness Trip Leaders to go on all of our trips. Trip Leaders are often known as those guys who spend most of the summer sleeping in tents. Being a trip leader is about canoeing and hiking with our campers, but it’s much more than that. Before each trip goes out, you’ll get to know the group that you’re leading. You’ll plan a menu, pack out food and equipment (all from our trip shack) and help your group get ready before heading out. Trippers also help care for and organize our equipment.

During the trip your main responsibility is to create a safe and healthy experience and connect our campers to the outdoors. We are looking for mature people who have good decision making skills to help make sure that our campers and staff members are kept safe. Each Trip Leader is put through an eight day Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course to ensure that they can provide emergency care in the back country. We also put our trip leaders through a lifeguard course. North Star covers the cost of these expensive certification courses.

Trip Leader candidates should have significant experience in outdoor tripping. The majority of our trips are canoe trips, but we also have hiking, climbing and other trips. Trip Leaders should love the wilderness but also relish the opportunity to work with campers and staff in the outdoors. This is a great opportunity to impact young people and potentially turn them onto a lifelong love of camping and outdoor adventure. Out trip leaders have had a significant impact on our campers.

Read the complete Wilderness Trip Leader Job Description.