Camp Activities

Using classic re-curve bows, campers can learn and practice introductory archery skills. Campers often make their own targets in the Arts and Crafts Shop before pinning them to our straw bale backstops.

Our Archery program emphasizes safety and fun, without competition. Archery teaches campers patience and hand-eye coordination. Using a bow and arrow gives kids a hands-on appreciation of the practice and skill required to master this simple tool, in use by humans for thousands of years.

The Craftshop is a busy place during Camp. This large, well lit room houses the tools and supplies for a large variety of craft projects such as: beading and jewelry making, drawing and painting, stamping and embossing, sewing, friendship bracelets, candle making, doll making, mask making, tie dying and batik, lanyards, puppetry, macramé, and more.

Campers work on projects with the help and guidance of counselors and Resource Staff. Worktables are set up outside in the shade of a spreading Mulberry Tree. It’s a great place to work, to converse, and to make friends. If you can imagine it, you can make it here.

Each session offers a variety of backpacking trips, from overnights at the river to multi-day trips into the near-by Trinity Alps. The range of destinations offers all campers the opportunity to try out backpacking. Trips to the Trinity Alps are open to campers 12 and up.

Our backpacking program is designed to give campers an opportunity to test themselves physically, while exploring the rugged and beautiful mountains that surround the Ranch. Physical challenge, small group size, and strong leadership combine to create an experience where the bonds of friendship form easily. The sense of shared accomplishment gives campers a hands-on awareness of the innate satisfaction that comes with effective teamwork.

At Camp Trinity, we hire experienced staff specifically to plan and lead these challenging multi-day adventures. Trips are carefully planned with a detailed itinerary. The Out-Trip Room is stocked with equipment and supplies for backcountry cooking, water filtration, and emergency communications.

Our blacksmith shop is well equipped to introduce campers to the art of working with metal. Using hand cranked forges, hammers, anvils, along with patience and finesse, iron can be formed into useful and beautiful objects.

Located next door to the Blacksmith Shop, the Welding Shop has Arc, MIG, and Oxy-Acetylene welding equipment. In the Welding Shop, campers can grind, cut, drill, and stick together just about anything that is made out of metal.

The Ceramics Shop is equipped with kick wheels, hand building tools, plaster molds, a wide variety of glazes, and and electric kiln. Our staff instruct campers in both wheel and hand building techniques. In addition to plates, mugs, and bowls, tiles, hand-prints, wind-chimes, gnomes, fish sculptures and embossed ceramic medallions are some of popular creations made by campers during recent summers.

Gates Gables Kitchen is the hub of our cooking and baking program. We want kids to learn the joy and satisfaction that comes from making good food—food that becomes even more enjoyable by sharing the results with the whole extended Ranch family. Campers learn firsthand that nothing tastes better then a dish using ingredients they helped pick, gather, grow, milk, or collect themselves.

Gates Gables Kitchen is equipped with all the supplies needed to make great snacks and desserts for the whole camp to enjoy. Campers and counselors make jams, jellies, cookies, goat cheese, and ice cream from food grown right here on the Ranch. When cherries, plums, blackberries, or apples begin to ripen campers can pick the fruit and bake them into pies to be shared with everyone.

Once a week, campers help the Gates Gables cook bake enough fresh bread for everyone in Camp. The kitchen is also available for Platforms to reserve so they can make a pizza for dinner, or ice cream with just-picked blackberries for Platform Night.

Saturday night at Camp Trinity is dance night. We’ll teach you square dances, line dances, folk dances, and even a few original dances invented right here.

Our Saturday night dance follows the long tradition of grand country dances; a gathering of the whole community to enjoy the companionship of friends, the pleasure that accompanies good music, and the kick-up-your-heels delight that comes with that great combination.

Saturday night dances are for everyone. We take the time to teach all the moves and steps you need to be ‘allemande-lefting’ to Oh Johnny, or flapping the’ funky chicken’ during the Hyampom Hustle. Bringing all of camp together for weekly dances is just a plain old great time.

Write your own skit, play improve games, or hunt through the Costume Shop to invent your latest character. Our counseling staff will help campers tap their thespian ambitions. With Staff guidance, campers can plan skits, plays or entertainment for Special Events such as the 4th of July or Horse Show.

Each session includes an “Untalent Show” at Camp Trinity. As the name implies, all acts are welcome–no talent required–so anyone and everyone can participate.

Our animals are an integral part of Ranch life. The cow and goats give us milk, the chickens give us eggs, pigs recycle our leftovers, horses provide transportation, and the cats give us comfort as cuddly companions.

The Small Animal barn is home to chickens, turkeys, goats, pigs, and more. Every morning before breakfast, campers can join our staff to feed the animals, help milk the cow and goats, slop the pigs or collect eggs. The Small Animals barn is open during program time for campers to visit. They can hold a chicken, water the pigs, or help clean a pen. Interested campers can adopt an animal for the session, taking some responsibility for the care and feeding of that animal while they are at Camp.

Our program allows interested campers to have hands-on experience caring for farm animals. We emphasize that keeping animals requires responsibility, work, and respect for the life in your charge. Raising and caring for animals connects us to the cycles of life on the Ranch, and gives campers a broader understanding of our place in the food chain. The beef and pork we serve at Camp comes from animals raised on the Ranch.

Two ponds on the Ranch provide campers the opportunity to try their hand at fishing for bass or Rainbow Trout

Our gardens teach campers the incredible abundance the Earth can provide; how work, patience, and a little know-how born from experience can turn dirt into food. And oh what food! There is no tomato so good as one picked and eaten on the spot, no potato like the one you dug that afternoon to be cooked that night for dinner.

Two large organic gardens supply us with fresh produce throughout the summer. Tomatoes, carrots, peas, beans, cabbage, potatoes, corn, and much more are grown and harvested by campers and staff. The gardens are always open, for everyone to enjoy, to work, or just to visit. Planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and (of course) eating vegetables are activities enjoyed by all.

We supplement the soil with compost made from lawn clippings, kitchen scraps, sawdust from our sawmill, and manure collected as we clean the corrals. Along with vegetables, fruit trees and flowers thrive in the long warmth of summer’s days. Late in the summer, we can pears and make apples sauce to store and serve next year.

With miles of trails, and many beautiful destinations accessible only on foot, we hike a lot at Camp Trinity. Campers hike to the river and back almost every day to swim.

Every Tuesday night is Overnight Night. In groups of 10-15 people, campers and staff hike from Main Camp to one of the many great camping spots on or near the Ranch. Meals are cooked over a campfire and everyone sleeps out under the stars.

Camping away from Main Camp fosters friendships and encourages social connections as campers experience physical challenges and the often unfamiliar rigors of outdoor life without their usual peer group. Overnights are a time for great adventures, whether exploring new country, hiking to the top of Gates Mountain, or just sleeping under a sky full of stars.

Our Horsemanship program includes trail rides, lessons, jumping and vaulting, and overnight trips.

We emphasize that Horsemanship is more then just riding. Feeding, cleaning stalls, vet care, brushing and bathing, tacking up, training, barn and trail maintenance, and, of course, friendship, are all part of living with horses. All of these activities are open to campers in our horsemanship program.

During Camp, we group riders based on their experience, skill, and comfort level while on horseback. Each riding group is scheduled 2-3 times a week. Campers who want to ride more often can come to the barn to be on hand for openings in lessons or trail rides. Overnights and pack trips are open to all campers, but participating campers must posses the necessary skills and experience as evaluated by our Horsemanship Staff.

The Ranch is home to approximately 25 horses. Our horses are like family. Many of our herd bloodlines trace back more then 50 years, or five generations to ancestors that, back in the early days of Camp, pulled wagons or packed supplies to the far corners of the Ranch.

All horses raised on the Ranch spend time with an experienced trainer, and are ridden by Staff until we feel they are ready to become a regular part of our herd. Many of our horses spend their off-season (September-June) at the UC Davis Equestrian Center where they are used to teach beginning Western lessons.

Music and singing are a part of daily life at Camp Trinity; on the grass under the apple trees before lunch, after the dance on Saturday night, or gathered around a campfire after a long day. Our Camp songbook contains a collection of folk songs and favorites, both old and new. Singing together is inspiring; it binds a group together, each individual voice adding to the amazing sound that comes with many people singing together.

Campers and staff often bring instruments to Camp and our staff musicians can offer lessons or pointers to beginners.

After dinner on Sunday we gather at sunset to share thoughts and to reflect on the week gone by. During this time, campers and staff often choose music and songs to express their feelings and to share their experiences of Camp.

The Curiosity Shop at the Bar 717 Ranch is our natural history resource room. Here we have terrariums to temporarily house critters and reference books to help identify what those critters may be. In the Curiosity Shop campers may also find animal skeletons, pressed plants, rocks, and pretty much any other cool item that lives or grows around the Ranch.

The Bar 717 Ranch is located within the Klamath Bioregion, home to a huge variety of plants and animals. We see Columbia Blacktail deer, foxes and coyotes, Douglas Gray squirrels, Stallers Jays California Quail, crayfish and Rainbow Trout. If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of a Black Bear or a Bald Eagle.

Many other rare species have also been seen around the Ranch, including: northern spotted owl, red tailed hawk, osprey, goshawk, golden eagle, ruffed grouse, Pacific fisher, mountain lion, American Trinity bristle snail, red-legged frog, and Chinook salmon.

The Camp Trinity darkroom is fully equipped for developing and printing black and white film. We supply film and paper. Campers can use in their own cameras, or borrow one of ours.

Photographs document life at Camp, capturing memories of places visited, friends made, and adventures shared. Each summer, in a tradition going back to the 1930’s, we assemble photos from the summer into a slide show and an album to share with future generations of campers. These albums, and the photographs they contain, are a great trove of memories, ideas, and history that highlight all the ways in which Camp Trinity has changed (and stayed the same) over so many years.

There is always work to be done around the Ranch. From splitting firewood, to fixing fences, to stacking hay, interested campers can always join in the work that makes the Ranch go.

Building something, making something with your hands, leaving something that will be used for years by others, this ‘work’ creates a singular feeling of accomplishment and connection to the people you work with, and the place you live. We want everyone to feel the unique sense of satisfaction that comes from contributing physical effort to an activity that benefits the whole community.

Much of what exists here on the Ranch (barns, platforms, trails, riding rings) has been built over the years with the help of generations of campers.

The Camp rifle range allows campers the opportunity to develop their marksmanship skills under the supervision of an experienced Range Instructor. All campers interested in participating in Riflery must attend a rifle safety session prior to going to the range. Once at the range, campers can shoot .22 caliber rifles at a variety of targets.

Beautiful Hayfork Creek flows through the Ranch, a short walk down the hill from Main Camp. Campers spend most afternoons at the Swim Hole, relaxing on the beach, floating in an inner tube, or jumping off the jumping board. The cool green waters of Hayfork creek are the perfect place to spend summer afternoons.

Up and down the river campers can enjoy many other great spots: Girls Camp with its wide sandy beach, Below Mays with its legendary jumping rock, and the great campsite at Diamond Back Beach. Campers can also join ‘Riverwalks’, donning tennis shoes and exploring the many creeks that flow through the Ranch.

Camp Trinity counselors with current Lifeguard Certifications are always on duty lifeguarding whenever campers are swimming, boating, or in the river.

Our climbing program includes outdoor routes in beautiful locations near main camp. New and experienced climbers can practice their skills on the rocks or on our small training wall. All equipment needed for climbing including helmets, harnesses, and shoes are provided.

The Silkscreen Shop contains all the materials and supplies needed to create permanent, wearable works of art. Campers can use one of our many designs, or create one of their own. Any kind of artwork, drawings, phrases, logos, etc., can be printed on a T-shirt, sweatshirt, pillowcase, or anything made of fabric.

We stock white cotton tee shirts in many sizes in the Trading Post for campers in need of an extra for silk screening or tie dying.

Every session contains a number of Special Events. These include:

A 4th of July celebration, The Community Bar-B-Q, The Harvest Festival, The International Festival, The Apple Jubilee, Untalent Shows, Horse Shows, All-Ranch dinners, and more…

Special Events are all-camp events. We gather as a community to commemorate holidays, show off- skills, demonstrate talent (or lack of it!), enjoy food, dance, visit with neighbors, celebrate the harvest, play games, and just to have fun.

Special events are designed to give campers opportunities to participate in planning, organizing, and carrying out activities that involve the whole camp. They can be designers, stagehands, MC’s, hosts, cooks, performers, and participants.

The Ranch woodshop is equipped with a band saw, chop saw, small power tools, work benches, and many hand tools for working with wood. All the wood we use is salvaged, recycled/reused, or milled using our own sawmill from dead and dying trees harvested from the Ranch property.

Campers can build anything, from small projects such as a toy boat or picture frame, to larger scale projects like benches, tables and shelves for use around the Ranch. The woodshop program teaches tool safety, along with the simple joy of creating beautiful and useful objects using a combination of practice, patience, and creativity.