Adventure Risk Challenge (ARC) is a non-profit offering outdoor excursions as well as training in leadership and writing for students from rural communities in Fresno, Merced and a handful of other California counties. Its mentorship programs in Firebaugh and Dos Palos begin during the school year, then culminate in month-long trips to the wilderness over the summer. Excursions typically take place near Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, and Lake Tahoe.
Sarah Cupery Ottley, ARC’s co-director, says 10 students and staff were in the middle of this year’s excursion in Yosemite when the evacuation orders came in. “They had just finished their first expedition, they had backpacked for eight days on the North Rim of Yosemite Valley, and they were at our basecamp at Wawona Elementary School,” she said. “We were told to assume we would not be able to get back to Wawona this summer.”
Ottley says program leaders had to scramble to make backup arrangements, which for a few days included sleeping in an office space in Oakhurst. “Our students had a variety of responses, but I would say in general they were more resilient than I expected them to be,” she said.
This isn’t the first time wildfires have derailed ARC’s plans. Noxious smoke has led past excursions to change course, and when another group of students was evacuated from Yosemite during the Ferguson Fire in 2018, Ottley says their artwork took on apocalyptic themes. After all, the sky was a hazy orange and a thin layer of ash covered the ground. “We are constantly adapting to wildfire and smoke now,” said Ottley. “We now expect that only some of what we plan will be realistic and that we will have to adapt and that we will have to change plans.”
The good news for this year’s students is that they don’t have to go home just yet. Although they won’t be going back to Yosemite, and program leaders shortened their trip from 34 to 27 days, the students will finish their program of backpacking, rock climbing and poetry writing in the Ansel Adams Wilderness to the south of the park.
