NEWARK, N.J. — The hours on the trail seemed to grind on indefinitely, and frustration burned through 15-year-old Lilliana Galo’s brain like the uncharacteristic May heat. It was 2025, and Galo alongside seven classmates found herself three nights into a grueling five-day trek on the Appalachian Trail, navigating a demanding stretch through New Jersey.
Having already logged roughly nine miles that day, the group faced another one or two miles before reaching camp. Every part of Galo’s body ached—from her pulverized soles to a throbbing collarbone she had fractured just days before embarking on the journey.
Discipline, Galo repeated to herself internally. You got this.
Her attention snapped downward to her feet, commanding them not to drag: just one step, then another. Taking a deep breath, she crested a small knob on the Kittatinny Mountain ridge. The trail briefly leveled out before plunging into a sharp descent, prompting a collective cheer from the group. Hiking at the back of the pack, Galo looked up at her bedraggled friends. Clad in hand-me-down boots and packs, they resembled characters stepping out of an advertisement for a late-aughts garage sale. Yet, there they were: wrapped arm-in-arm, giggling, and supporting one another two by two as they sidestepped down the slope.
“None of us had done anything like this before, so we were absolutely dying,” Galo reflected later. “Pero instead of giving in and quitting, we’d chosen to literally and figuratively lean on one another for strength.”
For Galo, that moment crystallized everything teachers, upperclassmen, and school alumni had been preaching all year. Flooding her friends with praise and encouragement, she realized a profound shift had occurred.
“I realized these girls had become like sisters to me, and I felt so much pride,” Galo said. “Up to then, I wasn’t sure if we had it in us to finish the hike. But I realized that we’d been building up to this moment where it became crystal clear that, working together, we could accomplish whatever we set our minds out to achieve.”
That 55-mile trek serves as the culmination of a mandatory, time-honored rite of passage for first-year students at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School. For more than fifty years, rising sophomores at the private Newark academy have hit the Appalachian Trail in late spring, executing a self-guided leadership and team-building exercise that challenges every preconceived notion of their limits.
Main Facts: The St. Benedict’s Appalachian Trail Trek
The structure of the St. Benedict’s program is as demanding as it is unique. Incoming classes of approximately 190 students are divided into small, cohesive groups that hike and camp in staggered intervals along the historic trail.
Assigned Roles: Teammates assume specific responsibilities—such as navigator, cook, medic, or captain—forcing them to rely entirely on each other to succeed.
Total Disconnection: Phones, tablets, and electronic gadgets are strictly prohibited.
Minimal Oversight: While two teachers, administrators, or upper-division student leaders tag along strictly for emergency purposes, they offer zero assistance with decision-making or trail logistics. Their role is limited to moral support.
Zero Experience: Virtually all participating students enter the program with absolute zero backpacking know-how, having spent minimal time in the woods, let alone the backcountry.
The overarching goal is to strip students of urban comforts, introduce them to the mental and physical benefits of nature, and forge a shared resilience. It serves as both an immersive challenge and the formal initiation into the St. Benedict’s community.
“When you cross that finish line, you’re following in the footsteps of every St. Benedict’s man and woman that’s come before you,” Galo notes. “The entire year has built to this point where you’ve proven to yourself and everyone else that you belong here and have what it takes to continue that lineage of success.”
Chronology: Fifty Years of Wilderness Grit
The full-class Appalachian Trail program is widely considered the only one of its kind in the nation. Yet, its 1973 inception was essentially an accident born of institutional survival.
The Backdrop: Newark in Transition
St. Benedict’s predecessor institution was founded in 1868, serving a working-class community of predominantly German, Irish, and Italian Catholic immigrants for a century. However, the Newark race riots of 1967 triggered severe white flight and community upheaval. By 1972, the predominantly Caucasian school was forced to close its doors.
A year later, a small group of determined Benedictine monks reformed and reopened a scaled-down version of the institution. While the core mission to educate underserved populations remained intact, the demographics had shifted dramatically. Newark now held one of the nation’s highest concentrations of urban poverty; by 1980, nearly 60 percent of residents lived in federally designated low-income areas. The relaunched school offered robust financial aid and scholarships, welcoming a student body that was almost exclusively Black and brown.
The Accidental Beginning
Recognizing that breaking systemic poverty required deep educational engagement, administrators heavily prioritized experiential learning. In 1973, the founding headmaster, Father Edwin Leahy, hatched a bold, unorthodox plan: take urban teenagers on a multi-day backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail.
“Problem was, Father Ed had never been backpacking,” says current program director Glenn Cassidy, a 1990 graduate of the school. “Not only that, there was no gear or any discretionary funds to purchase it—and even if they’d had the money, no one would have known what to buy.”
Undeterred, Leahy purchased trail maps and books, instituting a rigorous preparation regimen. Students walked school grounds with weighted backpacks, navigated blindfolded obstacle courses, and attempted a grueling 20-mile practice road walk to a neighboring town using sneakers and school bags filled with water jugs.
The inaugural AT trip itself was predictably chaotic. Students arrived with rolling luggage, cast-iron pans tied to shoulder straps, inappropriate footwear, and diets dominated by peanut butter and jelly. With no cell phones and no support teams, it was an absolute test of survival. Yet, after overcoming exhaustion, emotional friction, and near-quits, the boys returned to Newark like conquering heroes. The resulting camaraderie effectively erased behavioral problems on campus.
Structural Evolution
Seeing immense potential, Leahy institutionalized the trip. Two years later, Mark Payne—an avid outdoorsman, Scoutmaster, and incoming teacher—took over the program. Payne overhauled the curriculum, integrating Boy Scout protocols, conservation principles, and core school tenets, such as the motto: "Whatever hurts my brother, hurts me." He expanded the trek to include all incoming first-year students, embedding it within a comprehensive, yearlong agenda focused on school identity and community belonging.
Supporting Data and Program Mechanics
By the late 1980s, when program director Glenn Cassidy and alumnus Herb Brooks hiked the trail, the initiative had transformed into a well-oiled developmental engine.
Preparatory Seminars: Beginning in February and running through April, students attend monthly, three-hour seminars covering essential trailcraft: first aid, tick safety, campsite setup, outdoor cooking, water management, and print-map navigation. A parallel leadership class uses case studies to cultivate communication and team motivation.
Physical Conditioning: Regimens kick off a month before Labor Day, advancing from basic pushups and jogs to complex team-building challenges, such as navigating fields on oversized skis with half the team blindfolded.
The Trial Hike: Before touching the AT, groups complete an overnight trial hike in Stokes State Forest, navigating checkpoints manned by upper-level students to test their coordination under pressure.
This extensive preparation systematically dismantles student anxiety. “After all of that, whatever anxiety I had about the trail had pretty much vanished,” recalls 53-year-old Brooks. “I looked forward to it as a grand adventure and felt incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to do something that, at that time in my life, I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.”
Official Responses and Reflections
The impact of the St. Benedict’s backpacking program extends far beyond graduation, frequently altering the life trajectories of both students and faculty.
Glenn Cassidy, who assumed the role of program director in 2007, has personally guided approximately 7,000 students through the wilderness. For Cassidy, the trail offers an irreplaceable environment for youth development.
“There’s something magical that happens out there,” says Cassidy. “The experience teaches kids important lessons about who they are, the world, their place in it, and the value of friendship. Helping young people have those experiences became a calling.”
For Herb Brooks, the trail instilled a lifelong passion for wild spaces that helped balance the intense stresses of a career in New York City media. Eventually, Brooks redirected his professional path toward outdoor education, volunteering with Outdoor Afro and securing a role as an adventure and course facilitator with New York City Outward Bound Schools.
“It’s such a full-circle thing for me to be doing,” Brooks says. “But I can tell you, I’ve never gone to bed at night feeling so content—and I almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten here without St. Benedict’s.”
Implications: Changing Lives Beyond the Urban Grid
For current students like Lilliana Galo, the physical hurdles of the trail yielded profound internal growth. Facing the trek with a broken collarbone meant Galo could not carry a standard pack, pitch a tent, or tie her own boots. Instead of falling into despair, she learned the grace of accepting help—and pivoted to become her team’s emotional anchor and primary cheerleader.
Her experience was so transformative that Galo returned as a student mentor for subsequent hikes and participated in a summer outdoor learning program in Grand Teton National Park.
“Being on the trail showed me there was more to life than being in a city, and how to see past all the busyness and noise,” Galo reflects.
As St. Benedict’s Preparatory School looks to the future, its historic Appalachian Trail initiative remains a testament to the power of experiential education. By pulling urban youth out of their comfort zones and placing them shoulder-to-shoulder in the rugged backcountry, the program continues to manufacture grit, dismantle self-doubt, and prove that communities—much like hiking parties—are strongest when they learn to lean on one another.
