Camp ASCCA hosts high adventure activities

Published 8:28pm Wednesday, August 3, 2011

By Austin Nelson, www.alexcityoutlook.com

The Alabama Special Camp for Children and Adults has all of the usual activities you would expect at a summer camp.

Arts and crafts, swimming, canoeing and horseback riding are among some of the offerings. Director of public relations Allison Wetherbee says the camp also features some activities you wouldn’t imagine would be a part of a camp designed for children and adults with disabilities.

“Our high adventure activities include a ropes course, rapelling, and a zipline,” Wetherbee said. “We also have water tubing and water skiing.”

ASCCA also instituted a new activity last summer, Wetherbee said — a wheelchair accessible waterslide.

The high adventure activities are the domain of outdoor adventure program specialist Amber Cotney. Cotney said the cargo net, which allows persons to climb some 30 feet up in the air, gives the campers a huge sense of accomplishment.

“It is really difficult even for an able-bodied person to do – so making it to the top is a big deal to them,” Cotney said. “It’s not an activity ran all the time – it’s mainly for the guys who really, really want to do it.”

The high ropes course is perhaps even more challenging, Cotney said, and is only run during certain times during the summer. The course requires campers to pull themselves up a pulley system then negotiate a series of log crossings and rope bridges, crossing a cargo net and going up some trees and down others until eventually catching a zipline ride down to the ground.

“It is a good time,” Cotney said. “There is a lot of stuff going on.”

This week ASCCA hosted campers from the Mobile Rotary club, Wetherbee said, but the camp, which was started in 1976, draws children and adults from all over the southeast, even a few international campers.