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 route designed to carry them through the rugged heart of New Jersey.
They had already logged roughly nine miles that day, with another one or two steep miles remaining before reaching camp. Every inch of Galo’s body ached, from her pulverized soles to the throbbing collarbone she had broken just days before embarking on the expedition.
Discipline, Galo reminded herself, fighting off exhaustion. You got this.
Her attention snapped back to her feet: no dragging. Just one step, then another. Drawing a deep breath, she watched as the long, slow climb up one of the many small knobs on the Kittatinny Mountain ridge finally leveled out before plunging into a brief descent. The group raised a collective cheer. Galo, hiking at the back of the pack, looked up at her bedraggled peers. They wore hand-me-down boots and packs, looking remarkably like they had just stepped out of an advertisement for a late-2000s garage sale. Wrapped arm in arm, they giggled and supported one another two by two as they carefully sidestepped downhill.
“None of us had done anything like this before, so we were absolutely dying,” Galo reflected later. “लेकिन instead of giving in and quitting, we’d chosen to literally and figuratively lean on one another for strength.”
For Galo, that pivotal moment crystallized everything teachers, upperclassmen, and school alumni had been preaching all year. Flooded with pride, she began raining praise and encouragement down on her companions.
“I realized these girls had become like sisters to me,” Galo said. “Up to that point, 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.”
The 55-mile trek serves as the ultimate culmination of a mandatory rite of passage for first-year students at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School. For more than half a century, rising sophomores at the private Newark academy have hit the Appalachian Trail in late spring, engaging in a self-guided leadership and team-building exercise that challenges every preconceived notion they hold about themselves and the natural world.
Main Facts: The St. Benedict’s Appalachian Trail Program
At St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, the Appalachian Trail wilderness program is not merely an extracurricular outing; it is an foundational pillar of the institution’s educational philosophy.
Classes consisting of roughly 190 students are divided into small groups that hike and camp in staggered intervals along the trail. Within these micro-communities, teammates assume specific roles—such as navigator, cook, medic, or captain—and must rely exclusively on one another to succeed. Modern technology is strictly prohibited; phones and electronic gadgets are verboten.
While two teachers, administrators, or upper-division students tag along strictly for safety and emergency response, they offer zero assistance with decision-making, navigation, or campcraft, providing nothing beyond moral support. Compounding the challenge, virtually all students enter the program with zero backpacking experience. Most have spent little to no time in the woods, let alone navigating the unforgiving backcountry.
Glenn Cassidy, the current program director who graduated from St. Benedict’s in 1990, notes that the experience is intentionally engineered to strip students of their urban comfort zones. It introduces them to the lifelong benefits of nature while creating an immersive challenge that is mathematically and physically impossible to overcome alone. The overarching goal is the cultivation of resilience, self-confidence, and an enduring appreciation for the power of a team operating in absolute lockstep. Furthermore, the trek serves as a formal, hard-won initiation into the school 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 says. “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 on the Appalachian Trail
Cassidy notes that the full-class program is the only one of its kind in the nation. Its founding in 1973, however, was effectively an accident born out of institutional desperation and visionary leadership.
The Rebirth of a Newark Institution
St. Benedict’s predecessor institution was founded in 1868, serving a working-class community of predominantly German, Irish, and Italian Catholic immigrants for roughly a century. However, decades of white flight and urban upheaval following the Newark race riots of 1967 devastated the region. The predominantly Caucasian school was forced to close its doors in 1972.
Refusing to let the legacy die, a small group of determined monks reformed and reopened a scaled-down version of the school just one year later.
While the mission to educate underserved populations remained paramount, demographic realities had shifted dramatically. Newark now featured one of the nation’s highest concentrations of urban poverty, with nearly 60 percent of residents living in federally designated low-income areas by 1980. Relaunched with a student population that was almost exclusively Black and brown, the administration paired its offerings with robust scholarships and financial aid packages to ensure accessibility.
The Accidental Expedition
The founders recognized that breaking systemic cycles of poverty required deep educational engagement, placing experiential learning at the core of the curriculum. The school launched an annual spring project where students split into small groups to immerse themselves in professional fields like architecture, photography, art, and medicine.
Then, in 1973, founding headmaster Father Edwin Leahy hatched a radical plan: Why not take urban youth on a multi-day backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail? He believed a long walk in the woods could foster quietude, self-regulation, and essential life values like discipline, teamwork, and perseverance.
“Problem was, Father Ed had never been backpacking,” Cassidy recalls. “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 maps and books, instituting a rigorous physical training regimen. Students walked the school grounds with weighted backpacks, navigated obstacle courses while blindfolded, and undertook a practice 20-mile road walk to a neighboring town using sneakers and school backpacks filled with water jugs.
The inaugural AT trip was a comedy of errors. One student brought his mother’s rolling luggage; another strapped cast-iron pans to his shoulder straps. Footwear was wholly inappropriate, diets consisted entirely of peanut butter and jelly, and big-box store tents offered minimal shelter. With no support teams and zero cellular communication, it was a true make-or-break trial.
Midway through, one student planted himself in the middle of the trail and flatly refused to continue. Leahy calmly informed him that he was welcome to stay—they would see him next year, provided he survived the wilderness. The sharp motivation worked.
“Father Ed told me later it was a miracle that they all survived,” Cassidy says. Yet, the boys returned to Newark like conquering heroes, their behavioral issues vanishing amidst a newfound wave of mutual respect and camaraderie.
Evolution and Institutionalization
Building on this early success, a teacher and avid outdoorsman named Mark Payne took over the program two years later. A Scoutmaster and accomplished backpacker, Payne recognized the transformative potential of the trek, expanding it to encompass all first-year students and folding it into a yearlong curriculum focused on school identity.
By the late 1980s, when Cassidy and classmate Herb Brooks hiked the trail, the program was operating with military precision. It kicked off with monthly, three-hour seminars covering first aid, tick management, tent setup, camp cooking, water management, and map reading. Physical training progressed from basic calisthenics to complex team challenges, such as navigating a field on massive skis with half the team facing backward and members blindfolded.
Supporting Data & Participant Impact
The data and personal testimonials collected over five decades paint a clear picture of the program’s lasting psychological and professional impact.
- Scale: Program Director Glenn Cassidy, who took the helm in 2007, has personally worked with approximately 7,000 students on the trail.
- Demographics: The student body primarily hails from urban environments in and around Newark, many of whom have never previously camped, hiked, or left city limits.
- Curriculum Integration: Preparation spans months of classroom seminars, leadership case studies, physical conditioning, and an overnight trial hike in Stokes State Forest.
For Herb Brooks, now 53, the experience fundamentally shifted his life trajectory. The trek instilled a lifelong reverence for wild spaces, helping him balance the intense stress of careers in major New York City television networks and media companies. Eventually, Brooks chose to reshape his life entirely around outdoor education. After volunteering with organizations like Outdoor Afro, he earned professional certifications and now serves 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.”
Lilliana Galo’s journey similarly reflects the program’s adaptive nature. Though an experienced athlete accustomed to carrying physical burdens for others, her broken collarbone forced her into an unfamiliar role: learning to accept vulnerability and asking for help. Unable to pitch a tent or carry a heavy pack, Galo became the team’s emotional anchor, keeping morale high during brutal ascents. Her experience was so transformative that she subsequently returned as a mentor for younger students and participated in an outdoor learning program in Grand Teton National Park.
Official Responses and Administrative Vision
School leadership views the Appalachian Trail expedition as an irreplaceable instrument for personal growth. The core ethos of the school—embodied in maxims such as "Whatever hurts my brother, hurts me"—comes alive on the rocky switchbacks of the Kittatinny Mountains.
“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.” For thousands of teenagers who have never gazed at the stars from a mountain summit, guiding them through the wilderness has evolved from an administrative duty into a profound vocational calling.
Broader Implications
The longevity of St. Benedict’s Appalachian Trail program offers a blueprint for modern urban education. In an era dominated by screen fatigue, diminished attention spans, and growing disconnects from the natural world, the Newark institution proves that immersive, high-stakes experiential learning can yield extraordinary results.
By stripping away the safety nets of modern convenience and forcing adolescents to depend entirely on one another, the program bridges socioeconomic divides and builds unbreakable bonds. Whether inspiring alumni to spearhead outdoor equity initiatives like Outward Bound or simply teaching a 15-year-old girl how to lean on her peers when her body gives out, the 55-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail remains a powerful crucible—forging resilient individuals and lifelong communities one step at a time.
