The offices were moved up to camp on May 25th. What a process… Each camp fills an entire van to capacity with boxes, files, office supplies, etc. and we make the trek up the

Precamp Staff Moves Gymnastics Equipment to the Gymnastics Pavilion

NY State Thruway to I-90 and finally after 2.5 hours we are in West Stockbridge, to unload the same van we just loaded only hours before.

As you can imagine, it take time to get camp from winter mode to everything that you see during the summer! So the very first thing we do is invite up committed counselors who are on break from college before camp to do a bit of what we call “pre-camp” work. They are joined by kitchen and maintenance staff that come from many parts of the world. Together camp starts to take shape.

One day this group of people might be assembling new beds, while another day is spent with the weedwacker. We have teams of people getting our lakefront ready, our pools cleaned, the ropes course set up and the list goes on and on!

All this is led by our talented Maintenance Director, Billy Blackwell, a key member of our year-round CLC team!

Next week is when we start our training and when our first counselor/instructor staff members arrives to begin to train in their specific areas including lifeguarding, ropes course, athletics, arts, etc. The week after that is when ALL of our counselors arrive and we begin our general staff orientation, teaching our counselors how to work with kids and to be the best person they can be. We focus on so much during our staff training including bullying, safety, creating relationships, working with co-counselors, engaging our campers, how to address individual needs and much more. Our orientation is one of the longest and most extensive among camps across the country.