The Fort Smith Mountain Men program is designed to provide a safe environment for everyone on our trips. Here’s how we do it !!!

Our travel bus is a factory customized school bus designed specifically for the purpose of travel camping. The body is the safest, structural bus body available on the market. Our bus has a ten-speed, dual rear end to provide ultimate engine control, traction and safety.

Our maintenance records are perfect on our vehicle. Before and after each trip our bus is inspected by an expert mechanic. Our mechanic knows this particular bus as he has been taking care of this vehicle for several years. We don’t leave unless everything on the bus has been checked to best of our ability and found to be in perfect working order.

In addition to our travel bus we drive a modern day “Chuck Wagon”. Back in the old west days John Chisholm, of the Chisholm Trail fame, designed the first chuck wagon for the long cattle drives up north. The idea was to take food and supplies to meet the needs of the cowboys on the trail. Well, that’s exactly what we do today…except….we drive our Chuck Wagon! We carry complete supplies of food and cooking equipment which allows us to be set up and cooking in less than ten minutes!!

While this setup provides incredible convenience and luxury to the group to cook wherever we want to, driving the Chuck Wagon also serves another very important role. This role is one of safety through transportation redundancy. This means if we should ever have an issue with our travel bus or if a boy needs rapid attention or we just need to go get some fresh groceries, we can use the Chuck Wagon. We are never in a situation where we can’t get somewhere fast either for convenience or necessity.

The staff of the Fort Smith Mountain Men is hand selected for our trips. We run a low 1:5 Staff to Camper ratio on all of our trips. This means that boys always have access to and supervision by an adult leader.

Our staff is selected on the basis of experience with boys, leadership knowledge, outdoor camping experience, personality and interest and knowledge of the outdoors.

Each trip has an adult leader who serves as medical officer. This person is trained in CPR and Wilderness First Aid. We carry a fully stocked medical kit with us at all times. This means we are able to handle all minor medical issues on-the-spot should they arise.

All staff members are required to undergo a criminal background history evaluation and clearance. In addition, each staff member must provide personal and professional references which attest to their character, integrity and suitability for a staff role. These references are verified personally by Ron Smith prior to confirmation as a staff member for Fort Smith Mountain Men.

The staff your boy will enjoy is able to provide significant knowledge of the West from history to geography to ecology to geology to Indian cultures. Beyond the background, character, knowledge and experience checks of our staff, Fort Smith hosts a required pre-trip training session for all staff members. In the session we cover; trip itinerary and camp locations, cultural sights and history, safety and emergency procedures, communications procedures, cooking and camping procedures, story telling and campfire entertainment and of course leadership concepts and assignments. This training ensures that everyone is both knowledgeable in the set procedures as well as committed as a team to carrying out all aspects of the program to deliver a top quality experience for the boys.

Our team uses the best equipment available. While your camper needs to bring some personal things along like a sleeping bag, we provide all other equipment which is of top quality and reliable. We have a power converter on our travel bus that allows us to do many things from watch a video movie on the road to charge our cell phones to providing back-up electrical power.

Our goal is a safe travel camping experience. Communications is a very important aspect of the overall safety plan for our program. One way we ensure that this goal is accomplished is through excellent communications. Our bus and Chuck Wagon communicate through a CB Radio. We are in constant communications during travel operations.

Once we reach camp, each of our staff members have two-way radios that remain on until the boys are asleep. This means supervision is direct and communications uninterrupted throughout the day. In addition, we have both a Cellular Telephone and Global Positioning System on our travel bus. This allows us to send and receive phone calls if necessary (in most areas) and allows us to precisely locate ourselves anywhere.

In addition, another really, really fun way to communicate is through mail call during our trips. We usually have one or two mail calls depending upon the duration of the trip. Mail (in the form of care packages) can be sent to the boys while we are out on the adventure. We stop in to a Post Office that we have set up ahead of time and the boys pick up their mail. This is really neat for the boys and for the parents too and is another way we “keep in touch” while being out on adventure. Overall, the summary of our communications strategy is that “we are never out of touch”. This provides the ultimate in safety for our camp experience. [ back to top ]