This stage requires persistence, determination, and cooperation. Students are challenged through a series of structured outdoor activities that include hiking, camping, leadership activities and other outdoor skills. Students learn to make a backpack from a tarp and ropes. They learn how to make primitive tools and equipment including wooden spoons, stone scrappers, digging sticks and various forms of shelters. The most difficult skill that must be mastered is the ability to make a fire using a hand made bow, spindle and fire-board.
Students get better equipment as they demonstrate that they can take care of it.
The program teaches various survival skills but does not expose students to dangerous survival conditions. The conditions can be adverse and require students to examine the quality of their lives at home. With the help of our staff, students begin to evaluate the behaviors and attitudes that brought them to Obsidian Trails. Relationships are established between staff and students from which genuine and caring relationships are built. After completing the Impact Stage of the program, students move up to the Advanced Stage.