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Low & High Challenge Courses

Teenagers wit and adult helping each other walk across a rope.
While Participating in 4-H Challenge Activities, Youth Practice Teamwork to Keep Each Other Safe.

The WSU Colville Reservation Extension 4-H Challenge Course has been hosting groups since 1991. The focus of our low challenge course is to provide participants with an opportunity to discover, practice, and master essential lifeskills.  Trained facilitators create an atmosphere of support and fun.  All activities are designed with consideration of the needs, the expectations, and the demands that will be placed on participants with respect to their physical, emotional and mental abilities.

A typical ropes course day consists of group challenges designed to enhance leadership, communication, awareness, cooperation, self-confidence and problem solving.  Low course elements are close to the ground; participants may be asked to walk on logs, balance on cables, and/or swing on ropes as they share the responsibility of safely solving the problems they face.  In this environment, participants begin to experience cooperation and begin to accomplish what they believed once was impossible.

Two children helping each other on the ropes course.
4-H Challenge Teaches Reservation Youth Lifeskills of Working Together for a Common Goal.

The WSU Colville Reservation Extension 4-H Challenge Program’s high ropes course provides an opportunity for participants to interact with their group in a unique and powerful way.  Using ropes, trees, harnesses, and cables fixed 45 feet up in the forest canopy, groups explore trust, communication, appropriate risk taking, goal setting, awareness and self-confidence.  In an environment of support and group achievement, participants expand their horizons by challenging themselves in the tree tops.  Participants learn to use the skills of coaching and encouragement to help their teammates reach their goals.  The act of overcoming fears and challenges on the ropes course can be peak experiences that groups and participants will draw upon for a lifetime.

A day at the course can be designed to meet a number of educational and developmental goals.  Course participants gradually expand their comfort zones and begin to contribute to the process of achieving the goals and expectations set by the group.  Youth groups, sports teams, schools and corporations have used our challenge course to help their groups unite and to master essential life skills.