About Us
What is Post 58?
Post 58 is a dynamic organization designed to connect Portland-area teenagers with the outdoors, and build resilience, group skills and leadership through challenging activities. These outdoor adventures occur under the guidance of experienced adults. Activities include rock climbing, backpacking, hiking, mountaineering and many other outdoor adventures. The Post is open to students ages 14-18. Students participate in trips around the Northwest as well as to many other mountain ranges and climbing areas.
Who are our students?
The Post is open to students ages 14-18 and is dedicated to making these adventures available to a diverse group of high school students. It currently has student members from 36 different high schools!
What is our Mission?
Our mission is to provide an arena for personal growth and social interaction by creating diverse experiences that foster responsibility, respect, and a passion for the outdoors.
Our objectives:
To provide Post students with opportunities to learn climbing and wilderness skills through outdoor experiences with members of their peer group.
To provide Post students with an opportunity to learn group living and leadership skills.
To enhance personal growth and self-awareness.
To teach respect for the wilderness.
To provide service to the community and give back to the outdoor world.
Join the Post!
Climbing is Dangerous. The Post engages in activities such as rock climbing, mountaineering, biking, rafting, and backpacking. Each of these activities takes place in true wilderness areas, and each contain risks inherent in the activity. It is important that participants know and understand these risks. Although the Post works tirelessly to minimize these risks, it cannot eliminate them. Each activity contains elements of risk to students that could injure or kill them. Participating students must acknowledge these risks and understand their own role in keeping themselves and their peers from being injured or killed.
Post 58 strives to be a welcoming and diverse place for teenagers from the Portland area to experience nature and engage in challenging outdoor activities. The Post is an extremely popular organization for students, with its focus on having fun in the outdoors with your friends on the weekends, but it is also a commitment. It doesn’t matter if you have no previous climbing experience, or if you don’t know anyone – we are a very welcoming group – but we do want to make sure that you have time for the Post. Read through our frequently asked questions and let us know how we can help you decide if joining the Post is right for you. You can email one of our current presidents, Carlo Hamacher or Sonia Schnell, or come to a meeting and introduce yourself. We’d love the chance to meet you and show you what the Post is all about.
If you decide the Post is for you, that’s awesome! However, while we’d love to have all interested students just show up and be a part of the Post, we don’t always have space right away. So, the first step to becoming a member is to join the waitlist by clicking the button below. You can also email the President and let them know you are interested. Once you’re on the list, we’ll contact you as space opens up. Our new year starts in October, so that is generally when we take on new members.
The Post Philosophy
We at Post 58 are proud of the work we do with your children. The Post approaches to working with teens may be different than students will encounter in other parts of their lives. We believe they are important to healthy growth and learning.
* We place a high value on accountability. Students are expected to follow through on commitments, and to own their own decisions.
Empathy. Understanding that each person – both adult and student – has their own story is essential to creating a place where teens from all over the City can come together and be their genuine selves.
Mistakes are how we learn. Teenagers are growing and learning, and they make a lot of errors. Learning from these mistakes can be one of the most powerful forms of learning. We try to help students acknowledge their mistakes and actively discourage them from shifting the blame off on to others. We work with them to grow and learn from these situations.
Staying connected. We ask students to be present with those students and advisors who are around them while on a Post activity, to be present in the place they are—and not be connecting on-line to others away from the present scene. Cell phones are not allowed on Post activities or trips except for photographs
Quality relationships with qualified adults. The Post creates spaces where students and adults can interact on a more equal footing than they will encounter in school or on sports teams that bring with them the unequal power dynamic of grades, authority and discipline. This is important work for teenagers that will help prepare them for life away from Portland, whether it be in college or in the outside world.