Mountain Quest

Coming of Age for Young Men

Two Sessions in 2024!!

Ages 13-15 | July 8 - 28 OR August 5 - 25, 2024| Return to Youth Programs

"I got so much out of my trip: memories, experiences and undeniable challenges. I became extremely close to all of my comrades on this journey and I believe that I grew as a person in many ways. From jumping into freezing glacier water to pushing myself up the side of a mountain, every moment of this trip allowed me to grow. This trip is something that I will remember for a lifetime."
- Lochlan, Age 13

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This three-week program challenges boys to develop into solid young men: heroes in their own life journeys.

For thousands of years, cultures around the world have relied on the wisdom of intentional rites of passage to awaken the mature masculine spirit within young boys. By overcoming various ordeals, initiates bring back the inner resources and external skills that the community depends on for its continued vitality.

In the spirit of these ancient traditions, the Mountain Quest offers youth an opportunity to live, learn, and laugh in a supportive community of male mentors and peers. Far away from video games, mass media, and pressures of modern society, life slows down and begins to take on new meaning.

As participants sleep under star-filled skies, hike among ancient cedars, and dip in cold mountain streams, the rich inner life of a boy awakens. At journey’s end, each will bring home the exciting and important story of his own adventure, a greater sense of self-awareness, and new gifts to share with his family and his community.

Family Participation

The initiate’s family plays an important role in the Coming of Age Journey. On the first day of the trip, parents and guardians will send their children off and then spend some time exploring the changes that are happening in their child and in their family. At the conclusion of the 3-week adventure, parents and guardians take part in a process of incorporation. During this day-long event, parents and young people alike will have the opportunity to see one another with new eyes. Together in this way, they breathe new life into existing relationships, and explore the possibilities of what it means to be a family in the 21st century, with a new family member who is no longer a boy, but a young man.

This journey welcomes all who identify as male, trans boys, and non-binary youth, knowing this journey is an initiation through the male lens. Please check out our welcome statement on gender identity here. Not sure which trip is right for your youth? Contact Us and we’ll help figure it out.

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PROGRAM DETAILS

Ages 13 - 15

Session 1: July 8 - 28, 2024
Session 2: August 5 - 25, 2024

Olympic National Park
Program begins and ends in Bothell, WA

$3495.00; Deposit $600.00
Financial Aid is currently available

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Participants reunite with their families after their Coming of Age adventure and share the new stories of who they are.

After a 6-8 day backpacking trip, participants arrive at the Washington Coast and prepare for a 24-hour solo vigil. — After a 8-10 day backpacking trip, participants arrive at the Washington Coast and prepare for a 24-hour solo vigil.

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Questions? Check out our FAQ page or send us a message!

Sample Itinerary

Week 1-2 | Coming of Age participants, their families, and our staff participate in a send-off ceremony at the Journeys basecamp. This ceremony is followed by intentional community building activities, backcountry skills training, and launching a 8 to 10-day backpacking trip during which wilderness, leadership and teamwork skills will be taught and practiced.

Week 2-3 | After their mountain journey, Participants will head for the Coast to prepare for their 24-hour solo vigil by the ocean. During this time participants will be involved in nature explorations, expressive art projects, journaling and ceremony.

Week 3 | Participants begin their return to “the world” that they left behind, ultimately arriving back at basecamp to celebrate their incredible journey and the beginning of young adulthood. The young men and mentors will participate in council with group and individually, and prepare for the Parent Incorporation Day. The final day of the trip will be spent with participants and families creating a family covenant to reflect the privileges and responsibilities of the young man.

Skills Introduced

Program Outcomes

Improved self-confidence
Skills and insight into teamwork
Understanding and taking responsibility
Ability to listen to intuition
Leadership skills
Improved physical strength and personal resolve
Knowledge of natural history of Northwest terrain
Exposure to Low-impact camping techniques
Understanding of a healthy and appropriate path to adulthood
Completion of a transformative rite of passage

Mountain Quest Video

Mountain Quest Staff

Guides for Mountain Quest 2023

Sam Balka

Program Coordinator

With his first love of dance and the performing arts, Sam has been exploring the edges of humanness and story from a young age. This journey eventually brought them to discovering the outdoors, and what it means to explore the edges of our humanness with adventure, and eventually, wildness; where we humans meet animal, meet plant, meet spirit. It is at these blurry intersections where he has found the most freedom in this life. Sam also identifies as queer, and it was just before beginning high school that they faced what it meant and felt like to exist at an edge when they came out. He attributes his bravery and persistence to discover who he is and what this world is all about to the brave journey of self-love that his queerness has offered. Whether queer or not, they firmly believe that we all deserve to step into the journey of self-discovery and self-love for ourselves. Sam originates from the neighborhood creek beds and small historic towns of Eastern Pennsylvania, and moved to Chicago to study theatre and global health, where he spent many semesters getting to know the cultures and land of countries across the world. They moved to rural Utah two years ago to create a new commitment to the wildness in their soul, and began working as a field guide for an adult wilderness therapy program. Here, Sam felt the call to ceremony work, drawn in once again by the edge it presented, constantly in awe by the clarity in a muddled world that this edge ultimately offered. Since then he has been in pursuit of ways to bring ceremony to our everyday lives, as well as working as a guide of rites of passage ceremonies for the clients at his program and members of his own community.

Alex Voynow

Program Guide

Alex was raised among the pine forests of southeastern Lenapehoking, ancestral and present Lenape territory, outside of Philadelphia, in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. As a teen boy, Alex loved music, making mischief with his friends, getting good grades, and doing what he could to fit in to the tight standards of male adolescence in a New Jersey suburb in the 2000s. As a young adult, life took him through an expansive undergraduate education in social geography at Vassar College, seasons spent in kitchens and regenerative farm communities, deep immersion into ancestral Jewish culture, and an intimate and unplanned initiation into the immense reality of trauma, grief, resilience, and space-holding. This journey has gifted Alex the ability to sit at the threshold of mystery and transformation with others and hold them with courage, insight, patience, and love. Alex now offers this gift to himself, his loved ones, and the youth and adults with whom he guides and mentors. When not on the trail with Journeys, Alex works as co-founder, program director, and lead facilitator of Kinhood, an organization that creates opportunities for men to re-story their relationship to masculinity towards a reality of wholeness, authenticity, interdependence, and collective liberation. Alex also guides a 2-year-long rites of passage program for Jewish Bay-Area middle schoolers called B’Naiture, a soul- and nature-based alternative to the traditional Bar or Bat Mitzvah. When not directly supporting the soul development of young folks, you can likely find Alex in, near, or under the ocean, foraging for local, seasonal abundance, observing the spiral of the ancestral Jewish cycle of celebration and ceremony, sitting by a fire, and still making mischief with his friends.