Newark high school sends freshmen on annual Appalachian Trail trek

Freshmen at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark spend their first year proving they can handle more than a classroom load. The private school requires all first-year students, many of whom have never hiked or camped before, to complete The Backpacking Project, a five-day, 55-mile trek on the Appalachian Trail that the school says is designed to teach leadership, collaboration and reliance on one another.

The hike is built around small teams with assigned roles: captain, camp specialist, navigator, cook and medic. Upperclassmen may serve as commanders on the trail and accompany the younger students, while the school says the teams generally hike independently. By the end of the trip, the freshmen have crossed a threshold that St. Benedict’s treats as both academic and personal, moving them into sophomore status and deeper into the school community.

The route itself is part of the lesson. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy has described the school’s trip as beginning at High Point, New Jersey, and ending at Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. In June 2026, CBS News described the hike as a 53-year tradition, and administrator Glenn Cassidy said he believed St. Benedict’s may be the only school in the country with a program like it. The administration has also said it prefers rain, seeing hardship as something students can later draw on rather than avoid.

The project dates to the school’s modern rebirth. St. Benedict’s says it reopened in 1973 and started the backpacking project in 1974, while Catholic Schools NJ said the Benedictine backpacking tradition was established in 1973 and marked its 50th anniversary in 2023. The school has described the trail as one of the defining parts of an experiment in experiential education that turned into a national model for urban schools.

That model reaches beyond the hike. St. Benedict’s says its core pillars are Community, Student Leadership, Counseling and Experiential Education, and that those values have shaped the school for nearly 50 years. Rooted in Catholic Benedictine values, the school says it has served Newark for more than 154 years and now operates as a K-13 school with three divisions and an enrollment of 750. The trail remains the sharpest expression of that identity: a hard, shared test meant to show that character, not comfort, is what carries students forward.