8th grade ODE has been a tradition at the Aspen School District for almost 50 years. The trip consists of a week long backpacking trip which ends with a few nights at a basecamp in Marble that has been used for this trip for a very long time. The basecamp was owned by the George family, but they soon sold it to another local family. As soon as this happened the school district started keeping an eye on it because they did not want someone to buy it that would not let us use the land for this program. If that happened, they would not only lose this piece of land that has so many memories and meaning to it, but there are not a lot of other places for 140 people to sleep at once in an area.

As of fall 2014, the risk of losing basecamp had been very high. Former AMS teacher Brian Hightower knew that it was for sale and organized a deal with the Aspen Valley Land Trust and the Greater Outdoors Colorado to raise most of the money to buy the land, yet they still had about ⅖ of the money left to raise and they turned to the public for help. Some people donated in memory of former teacher Scott Edmonson, and other important people involved in the creation of this program. People donated from all over the valley and finally enough money was earned to purchase the land.

“It was funny because some people gave a lot of money and a bunch of kids that I went on 8th grade ODE with coughed up $10, $50, and $100 because it didn’t really matter it all went towards this goal of preserving this land,” 8th grade teacher Chris Keleher said.

Now that the Aspen Valley Land Trust owns the land, they have made it public for AMS to use forever.

“It’s a huge relief that it got saved,” Keleher said.

8th grade ODE would not be the same if they had not been able to keep this land that has been a part of the program for almost 50 years.

“We wouldn’t have the chance to challenge ourselves with trust, self control, and team building,” Gage Redman, a current 8th grader, said.

This land offers so many amazing activities like The Wall, The Log, Superman, rock climbing, rappelling, and so much more.

Without basecamp the whole experience of 8th grade ODE would just be different. The whole Aspen School District is more than relieved to hear that we have the basecamp to use for this program for a very long time.