Olympic Odyssey

3 Trips Available in Summer of 2025

Ages 12-14 | OO I: June 25 - July 2nd, 2025 / OO II: July 6 - July 13th, 2025 / OO III: July 22nd - July 29th, 2025 | Return to Youth Programs

“Journeys was the beginning of our son’s personal transformation into a young adult. His experiences with personal reflection allowed him to understand his own worth.” - Parent

preparing boys as they approach their transition to young adulthood.

Today, as in years past, the transition out of childhood and into adulthood is not easy, nor simple. Boys today need ample opportunities to prepare themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally, to put down the identity of child or boy, and embrace the oncoming phase of young adulthood.

Olympic Odyssey is an opportunity for boys on the cusp of adolescence to discover and cultivate the knowledge, skills, and capacities that young adulthood will require. This 8 day trip offers youth a powerful experience to explore, self reflect, and cultivate resiliency through challenge in a supportive community of male mentors and peers. Excluding the daily distractions of modern life, the natural pace and rhythm of the wilderness allows participants to experience the richness of being fully alive.

As participants connect with nature, share authentically in talking circles, and learn life enriching skills, they will discover a new found sense of who they want to be in the world. At journey’s end, each will bring home with them the gift of a unique story to share with their family and wider community.

For boys age 13-15 who are truly ready to fully step out of childhood and embrace life as a young adult (adolescent), we offer Mountain Quest for Young Men, a 3 week backpacking Coming of Age program.

This journey welcomes all who identify as male, trans boys, and non-binary youth, knowing this journey is a preparation for 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.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Ages 12-14

3 Trips Available in 2025:

Olympic Odyssey I: 6/25 - 7/2/2025

Olympic Odyssey II: 7/6-7/13/2025

Olympic Odyssey III: 7/22-7/29/2025

Olympic National Park
Program begins and ends at Journeys Basecamp in Bothell, WA.

$1495.00; Deposit $400.00
Financial Aid is currently available

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Participants reunite with their families after their Olympic Odyssey and share the stories of what they experienced.

After a 4-day day backpacking trip through the Olympic Mountains, participants arrive at the Washington Coast and prepare for a 24-hour solo vigil.

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

Trip Description

Olympic Odyssey participants, their families, and our staff participate in a send-off circle at Journeys basecamp. Then the group begins their preparations: community building activities, learning important backpacking and camp skills training. Finally, its off to the trailhead for the mountain adventure, a 6-day backpacking trip in the wilds of the Olympic National Park.

After the backpacking experience concludes, the explorers travel back to basecamp where they are greeted by their families and loved ones, as we share and celebrate the stories of their adventures.

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

Olympic Odyssey Guides

Our guide teams for 2025 will be announced ASAP. We typically have guide teams assembled by Spring. You can learn about last year’s guides below and learn more about the rest of our guide teams from prior years on our Staff & Board Page

Olympic Odyssey June/July 2024 Guides

daniel rosenberg

Program Coordinator
Daniel is a somatic coach, a seasoned wanderer, and an apprentice to the mysteries of nature and psyche. He has spent countless hours in the wilderness guiding youths through transformative experiences. His work is deeply informed by his own transformative experiences, including countless hours of solo time wandering the wilderness in conversation with the wild others…

Olympic Odyssey July/august 2024 Guides

koby silverman

Shaped by the alpine majesty of western Montana, Koby has always found solace in the wilderness. Growing up on the edges of suburbs and woodlands, he developed both a natural affinity for the land and a keen sensitivity to the societal disconnection that plagues our times. His early experiences sparked both a profound reverence for the beauty and need for nature…

OIympic Odyssey Form

Program Mentor

Shaped by the alpine majesty of western Montana, Koby has always found solace in the wilderness. Growing up on the edges of suburbs and woodlands, he developed both a natural affinity for the land and a keen sensitivity to the societal disconnection that plagues our times. His early experiences sparked both a profound reverence for the beauty and need for nature, and a painful awareness of the shortcomings of a culture which fails to provide true guidance and mentorship to young people. For Koby, serving as a wilderness rite of passage guide is a way to help address the mental health and greater meaning crisis afflicting today's world, and especially our youth. Driven by what he calls an ‘initiation urge’, he embarked on numerous journeys of extensive solo travel, musical creation, education and meditation before encountering Rites of Passage Journeys in 2022. There, he realized that this need for initiatory experience could be contained in a more proper, ancestral and communal form. Already feeling the call to become a guide, he went through his own 12-day wilderness quest and continued on to serve as an apprentice guide the following summer. Deeply attuned to the urgency of our times, Koby strives to be a force of cultural repair in a world increasingly disconnected from nature, the body, community, and ritual. Koby holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and lives a semi-nomadic life often split between the majestic Northwestern mountains and arid Southwest deserts.