WilderSkills Jr. Trail Guides Summer Camp
Quarry Park Wilderness Open Space, 22000 Congress Springs Road, Saratoga, CA 95070
About
WilderSkills Jr. Trail Guides Summer Camp focuses on real-world nature connection and outdoor wilderness skills through activities such as Wilderness First Aid and Survival Techniques, Outdoor Cooking, and Back-country Navigation. Campers practice Knife and Outdoor Tool Safety and Care, Traditional Outdoor Tool Construction and Methodologies, and Wilderness Emergency Response Protocols. They also learn Plant Identification and Uses, Animal Sign Observation, Tracking and Behavior, and how to research and plan outdoor adventures, prepare for all-weather adventures, and play outdoor games.
• Ages: 7–13 years old
• Schedule: Week-long summer camp sessions with daytime programs; Saratoga and Huntington Beach programs run 9am–3pm, and Redwood City programs run 9:30am–3:30pm
• Price: $525 per camp week
During camp, participants learn how to make improvised primitive emergency shelters, hiking packs, and other gear, and how to make tools from only natural materials using techniques for making tools and traditional navigation. Specific skills include tracking a fox, navigating by the stars, blending into the woods, breathing fire to life, and practicing fire-by-friction. Campers can make a friction fire kit (bow drill, spindle, wood plank, and hand hold), use it to make a coal and then a fire, and use clay for camouflage.
WilderSkills Jr. Trail Guides Summer Camp is part of WilderSkills, a youth outdoor education program founded as a branch of California Survival School that focuses on modern and traditional wilderness living and guiding skills. WilderSkills programs are divided into three aspects: Ancient Skills, Wild Adventure, and Deep Connection, and age groups are generally subdivided into roughly 7–9 and 10–13, with session content customized for each age group and the option for siblings to be in the same group if desired. Campers can attend all summer and encounter new material each week while repeating some skills. WilderSkills offers year-round wilderness adventures for kids and teens, including Junior Trail Guides Summer Camp, custom and private adventures, and K–12 school programs.
WilderSkills was founded in 2013 and has been described since 2013 as California’s #1 outdoor summer camp program for helping youth learn skills that prepare them for a lifetime of rich outdoor experiences. The program states that consistent, meaningful connection with wild outdoor spaces reduces symptoms of depression, ADHD, bullying, and obesity, and increases self-confidence, cooperation, reasoning and observation skills, and overall fitness. Outdoor time with WilderSkills is described as fostering unstructured problem-solving capabilities, independence and self-regulating behavior development, critical early physical strength and coordination, self-expression, and learning how to have fun outdoors in real nature.
The leadership team includes Dan Baird (Head Instructor and founder of WilderSkills, who formed WilderSkills in 2013), Laura Stein (Instructor and co-founder of WilderSkills youth adventure programs), and Nicole “Nikki” Sterman (Instructor). Staff are described as some of the most experienced back-country guides, nature specialists, and primitive survival skills experts in the United States. Dan Baird is identified as one of the world’s leading back-country primitive survival experts and guides, a certified Medical Wilderness First Responder, a FEMA/DHS trained National C.E.R.T. Instructor, and a member/trainer of Law Enforcement Search and Rescue teams across California, and he has been featured for his remote guiding and survival expertise in media outlets including National Geographic, History Channel, Forbes, and Good Morning America. Laura Stein is a Wilderness EMT with degrees in Tourism and Hospitality Management and Environmental Studies from Temple University, and Nikki Sterman is a licensed primitive skills instructor and back-country guide who also works as an herbalist.
Testimonials from parents and professionals describe children making items such as a spoon by burning out an indentation on a tree branch, creating and using a friction fire kit to make a coal and then a fire, and using clay for camouflage. Families report children coming home to write and illustrate what they learned in camp journals, sharing skills in their backyards, and having “great shared experiences with a real connection to nature.” One education counselor states that WilderSkills provides access to the natural world and nurtures many fundamental aspects of child development in a rapidly shifting modern environment.
Last updated June 18, 2026.
• Ages: 7–13 years old
• Schedule: Week-long summer camp sessions with daytime programs; Saratoga and Huntington Beach programs run 9am–3pm, and Redwood City programs run 9:30am–3:30pm
• Price: $525 per camp week
During camp, participants learn how to make improvised primitive emergency shelters, hiking packs, and other gear, and how to make tools from only natural materials using techniques for making tools and traditional navigation. Specific skills include tracking a fox, navigating by the stars, blending into the woods, breathing fire to life, and practicing fire-by-friction. Campers can make a friction fire kit (bow drill, spindle, wood plank, and hand hold), use it to make a coal and then a fire, and use clay for camouflage.
WilderSkills Jr. Trail Guides Summer Camp is part of WilderSkills, a youth outdoor education program founded as a branch of California Survival School that focuses on modern and traditional wilderness living and guiding skills. WilderSkills programs are divided into three aspects: Ancient Skills, Wild Adventure, and Deep Connection, and age groups are generally subdivided into roughly 7–9 and 10–13, with session content customized for each age group and the option for siblings to be in the same group if desired. Campers can attend all summer and encounter new material each week while repeating some skills. WilderSkills offers year-round wilderness adventures for kids and teens, including Junior Trail Guides Summer Camp, custom and private adventures, and K–12 school programs.
WilderSkills was founded in 2013 and has been described since 2013 as California’s #1 outdoor summer camp program for helping youth learn skills that prepare them for a lifetime of rich outdoor experiences. The program states that consistent, meaningful connection with wild outdoor spaces reduces symptoms of depression, ADHD, bullying, and obesity, and increases self-confidence, cooperation, reasoning and observation skills, and overall fitness. Outdoor time with WilderSkills is described as fostering unstructured problem-solving capabilities, independence and self-regulating behavior development, critical early physical strength and coordination, self-expression, and learning how to have fun outdoors in real nature.
The leadership team includes Dan Baird (Head Instructor and founder of WilderSkills, who formed WilderSkills in 2013), Laura Stein (Instructor and co-founder of WilderSkills youth adventure programs), and Nicole “Nikki” Sterman (Instructor). Staff are described as some of the most experienced back-country guides, nature specialists, and primitive survival skills experts in the United States. Dan Baird is identified as one of the world’s leading back-country primitive survival experts and guides, a certified Medical Wilderness First Responder, a FEMA/DHS trained National C.E.R.T. Instructor, and a member/trainer of Law Enforcement Search and Rescue teams across California, and he has been featured for his remote guiding and survival expertise in media outlets including National Geographic, History Channel, Forbes, and Good Morning America. Laura Stein is a Wilderness EMT with degrees in Tourism and Hospitality Management and Environmental Studies from Temple University, and Nikki Sterman is a licensed primitive skills instructor and back-country guide who also works as an herbalist.
Testimonials from parents and professionals describe children making items such as a spoon by burning out an indentation on a tree branch, creating and using a friction fire kit to make a coal and then a fire, and using clay for camouflage. Families report children coming home to write and illustrate what they learned in camp journals, sharing skills in their backyards, and having “great shared experiences with a real connection to nature.” One education counselor states that WilderSkills provides access to the natural world and nurtures many fundamental aspects of child development in a rapidly shifting modern environment.
Last updated June 18, 2026.
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