Choosing a Montana Summer Camp? Why Parents Must Ask These Questions

I loved summer camp. Like, loved it. The campfire songs, the lake, the feeling of being completely free for a whole week, while my parents presumably sat in blissful silence at home. So when people ask if I'm sending my 11-year-old John to camp this summer, my gut says absolutely yes.

Then I remember who John is.

My Son Is That Kid, The One Who Makes Other Montana Parents Nervous

John is the kid who, at age seven, tried to figure out whether our neighbor's decorative boulder would "roll better" down a hill if he removed the dirt around its base. He is currently amassing a rock collection that I'm fairly certain includes at least two chunks of our driveway. He once stood at the edge of a bonfire at a family cookout with an expression I can only describe as deeply, spiritually satisfied. Last fall, I caught him climbing the massive tree in our backyard. Not the low branches, mind you, but near the top, where the branches get thin, and the ground gets very far away.

I love this kid more than anything on earth. He is curious and fearless and alive in a way that makes me proud and terrified in equal measure. And Montana, bless it, is basically one giant playground for a kid like him, which is exactly what makes sending him to a summer camp in these mountains both a dream and a full-blown anxiety spiral.

But here's the thing, I'm not going to let my anxiety make the decision for me. I'm going to make a better decision instead.

The Real Question Every Montana Parent Should Ask

Personal injury attorneys David Lever and Dan Ecker, who have spent years working cases involving youth programs gone wrong, suggest cutting straight through the brochure-speak with one simple, disarming request: ask a program director to tell you about an actual injury that happened at their camp and walk you through exactly how staff responded.

That question will tell you everything. A good director won't flinch. They'll tell you about the kid who broke a wrist on the ropes course in 2022, what the counselor did in the first two minutes, how they reached the parents, and what changed in their protocol afterward. A bad director will get cagey, pivot to their certifications, or suddenly need to take another call.

What to Ask About Supervision, Staff Training, and Yes, Snake Protocols

For a kid like John, I also need to know the adult-to-child ratio the moment the group leaves a structured setting because that is precisely when John's brain starts generating what he considers creative ideas. I need to know who is doing headcounts, whether counselors are actually trained in first aid or just technically required to be, and what the protocol is when a camper decides that a prairie rattlesnake he found sunning itself on a rock near the creek looks, in his expert 11-year-old Montana-boy opinion, like a potential new friend.

The Summer Camp Safety Questions Montana Brochures Never Actually Answer

Out here, the stakes are a little different from those in a suburb somewhere. Where is the nearest hospital or urgent care? How far is that when you're camped in the Beartooths or up near Glacier? What's the threshold for calling 911 versus calling me? If there's a wildfire, and this is Montana in summer, so that is not a hypothetical; that is basically a calendar event. What does family reunification actually look like, and how will I know where to go?

These are not the questions of a paranoid parent. They are the questions of someone who has watched their child look at a campfire the way most people look at a really good sunset and thought: I need to know there is a responsible adult nearby at all times.

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Finding the Right Montana Summer Camp for the Kid Who Keeps You on Your Toes

The right camp exists for my boy here in Big Sky Country. I genuinely believe that. The kind of place that will let him scramble up a boulder field and collect weird rocks and stay up too late staring at a sky full of more stars than he can count, and come home with dirt under his fingernails and twelve new stories. But also a place run by people who have thought through what happens when the fun gets complicated out in the backcountry.

I'm going to find that place. I'm going to ask the hard questions. And I'm going to pack the snake bite kit just in case. I hope you will, too.