Stone Mountain Adventures (SMA) is a co-ed outdoor-recreation-focused summer camp for teens located in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, outside the village of Donation (between State College and Huntingdon). The camp was founded in 1983 as Horsepower Adventures by Biff and Pam Houldin, the parents of current owner Jud Millar, who was 10 years old at the time. The name later changed because they offered so much more than just horseback riding, though that is still a part of the camp experience. Millar grew up as a camper until age 16, when he transitioned to becoming a counselor for many years. After a hiatus, he returned in 2001 to assist his parents in running the camp, and later purchased the business from them with his wife, Anne.
SMA now offers multiple sessions per summer, ranging from 2-8 weeks in length, with 60 campers ages 12-16 in each session. Each summer, SMA also employs 21 young adults as camp counselors, who live on the property with the campers and get just as immersive an experience in the camp lifestyle and activities.
Every day, campers get to choose from several options for morning and afternoon adventures, ranging from mountain biking, hiking and rock climbing to stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing or wakeboarding. There are overnight trip options for small groups to backpack local hiking trails. There are three different “masters programs” in which campers can choose to specialize in one activity that they get to do every day — mountain biking, horseback riding or wakeboarding/waterskiing. Once every session, the campers go to Ohiopyle to whitewater raft the Youghiogheny River. In addition to the outdoor adventure offerings, campers can also choose to participate in community service projects, arts and music, cooking and more. They even take field trips to local events such as the Amish market and Huntingdon County Fair.
Stone Mountain Adventures’ location is crucial to its success in offering a wide variety of outdoor experiences. It is surrounded by large swaths of public lands, including Rothrock State Forest and several state parks with many miles of multi-use trails, Raystown Lake and the Allegrippis Trail System, the Little Juniata River, the Lower Trail (a 19-mile rail trail), and several local parks such as the Flagpole Hill Trails and Peace Chapel in Huntingdon. “Without public lands there would be no Stone Mountain Adventures,” says Millar. “Our campers play on public lands every day. Our goal is to have them unplug and connect or reconnect with nature while they are at SMA.”
The Millars also strive to make the camp an inclusive and welcoming place for all, to encourage teens and “tweens” to get outside their comfort zone but also provide a safe space to be themselves. “As with many aspects of teenagers lives, our camp is also a very social place and we work hard to model and encourage positive relationships, create community in an authentic way, stop cliques from developing, and take away many of the traditional pressures that teens feel in school,” says Millar of the camp experience. “The result is that campers feel a new found freedom to explore who they truly are while at the same time feeling like they have a new ‘home away from home’ at Stone Mountain Adventures.”
When asked about a memorable experience over his years in business, Millar says there are so many, but that family connections stand out. “Parents who I went to camp with are now sending their teens to SMA,” he notes. “One cool story is of a kid named Adam Goldberg. He wanted to attend a summer camp and his parents agreed. They told him to search the internet and find a camp. Adam is 14 and spent weeks researching camps and finally chose SMA. When he showed our camp to his parents the dad Michael thought ‘there is something really familiar about this camp.’ When he finally visited the Directors page, he realized it was the camp he had attended as a teen in the early 80’s when it was called Horsepower Adventures. Michael and I were campers together. This will be Adam’s third year at SMA.”
More information about Stone Mountain Adventures can be found at sma-summers.com, and follow on social media @smateencamp on Instagram and Stone Mountain Adventures on Facebook.