Answers to your Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some of our commonly asked questions. If you happen to not be able to find the answer to your question, please contact us.
Guest with a service animal can certainly attend any of Rock-N-Water’s camps, but they need to remain in control of their service animal at ALL times. Our staff will not be able to provide care for or feed a service animal in your absence.
However, many activities at Rock-N-Water are not ideal for a Service Animal, and so you may not be able to participate in adventures such as whitewater river rafting, rock climbing, and canyoneering. (more…)
You can expect enthusiastic staff to greet you and kick things off with a game or skit. You can expect an all outdoor facility. We have all the comforts of modern electricity and plumbing but we strive to keep things as rustic as possible so that your students can experience the outdoors to the full extent possible. Sleeping outside can often be a big part of the adventurous fun that students never forget.
Yes, but since the vast majority of our guests come as large groups from churches and schools, we have chosen to offer our discounted group rates to almost everyone, and thus the prices you see on our website, are already our discounted group prices.
If you are an individual, or you have a group of less than 5 people, and would like to do a customized trip, there is a small added fee of $50/day for adventure trips with 2 or more days of adventure. Day trips, with or without camping, do not incur this added cost. Nor do organized events that we have pre-planned for you.
Yes. Because the vast majority of our trips are for large groups, the prices you see are for group prices for groups of 5 or more people. If you have less than that you can still do a trip with Rock-N-Water, but it just might look slightly different than if you brought a few more people.
Each adventure will clearly specify if we are expecting you to provide transportation to and from the location for your participants.
Class III Rafting Trips include the cost of any necessary transportation. While for other adventures requiring transportation of your group from one location to another, we typically find it less expensive for you to provide the transportation yourself, than for us to include it by default for everyone.
No.
We’ve tried again and again to find a way to enable groups to do their own meals. We have never been satisfied with the results.
There is great value to having your entire group together for the duration of the adventure. But there are also some safety, quality, and physical limitations to having everyone together. As much as possible, we seek to keep your group together throughout the entire day, but sometimes we’ll break you up into smaller sub groups.
If you have more than 32 people we might need to split your group into smaller sub groups, but we can easily accommodate as many as 200 people on a single trip.
Yes, there will always be risks involved with the activities we do at camp.
Our staff receive extensive training, we continually review the abilities and competencies of our staff, and we have comprehensive safety procedures in place to decrease the likelihood of serious injury. But injuries, even serious injuries, can still occur.
California does not have any statewide outdoor adventure guide certification process in place. Some states do, but California does not.
We have an extensive initial training process that includes multiple evaluations of skills and abilities, as well as ongoing training processes in place for all of our guides. (more…)
For the most part: Yes
It would (of course) be good for us to have a conversation on the phone. Both to make sure you and your leaders understand what religious influences might be unavoidable, and to make sure we understand what you are and are not ok with.
Rock-N-Water is an interdenominational Christian camp. Our staff come from a variety of different churches, including denominational and non-denominational churches with the broader Christian faith.
While we’d love to be entrusted with every youth group’s summer camp experience, there are some limited situations where the fit might not be optimal.
We intentionally do not have a lot of unstructured free-time or downtime at camp. We’ll keep you active pretty much all day long.
When you bring a group of 6 or more people to Rock-N-Water you’ll get your very own campfire ring for daily and nightly devotionals. We can easily customize exactly how your campfire time looks but here is a basic idea of how it tends to look.
Sponsorships: We do not typically have scholarships or camperships available. However, when we do you can apply for one here.
Discounts: In our efforts to keep our regular prices as low as possible, we don’t typically have specials. However, sometimes we do offer time limited discounts for specific dates or trips. If your schedule is flexible, please check out our Specials page to see if we have any current offers available.
No. While we strongly believe that the overall quality of your trip will be much higher if you stay at our camp, you can easily stay at a local hotel or campground and do day trip adventures with us.
Commonly used local accommodations: https://www.rocknwater.com/resources/local-accommodations/
When not spending the night with us we recommend a few things to help ensure the highest quality of your trip:
Most rafting companies, Rock-N-Water included, do not require swimming ability for Class III rafting. You will be wearing a PFD (life jacket) which takes care of staying on top of the water. As difficulty increases, some outfitters will require swimming ability for Class IV or V rapids. We WILL take non-swimmers on our Class IV trip on the Middle Fork of the American if they have had a recent Class III rafting experience.
Our full Refund Policy can be found here: https://www.rocknwater.com/resources/refund-policy/
Our deposit and cancellation policy exist to help us best schedule our trips in a reliable manner. (more…)
Maybe.
It’s a great summer camp tradition to have S’mores around the campfire at night. With the following three caveats you can bring materials for S’mores and have them on the last night you are in camp.
Nervous about adventuring in the outdoors without the comforts of home? No matter what time of the month it is, there are a few extra things you can bring to ensure that you can explore the outdoors without worry.
Yes! Diabetics and insulin dependent individuals can totally come to camp.
Here is a list of a few extra things to bring with you to help make your time at camp the best it can be.
While we can accommodate most food allergies and dietary restrictions, if you have food allergies and/or dietary restrictions in combination with being a picky eater, then you might want to bring some of your favorite foods along just in case. However, you may find that camp is a great opportunity to try new foods. Food tastes more amazing after a long day of fun physical activity in the outdoors!
If you have one of the eight common food allergies (Peanuts, Tree nuts, Milk, Egg, Wheat, Soy, Fish, Shellfish) we will have safe food options for you as needed. However, we do serve many of the above foods at Rock-N-Water, so please check-in with the cook when you arrive, especially if extra cautions need to be taken (e.g. if we need to be careful about cross-contamination).
We provide all the food and snacks that you will need. If you have food allergies or dietary restrictions, please let us know in advance. We typically can meet most dietary needs without you needing to bring your own food.
Not really.
We expect students to leave their electronics at home. With the normal design of our camps you might be surprised how little they miss their electronic devices. Additionally, most cellular providers do not get signal at camp.
If you’ve got adults (or yourself) needing internet access: (more…)
We love the idea of putting together a Student Packet for devotionals and journaling at camp. But due to the outdoor nature of our adventures, we won’t be able to give you a solid schedule or itinerary of events to include in that packet.
Here are some suggestions for making a Student Packet with a rough timeline or schedule outline:
The answer to that question varies a bit based on the time of the year and the adventure you are doing.
Depending on the size of your group, we will oftentimes combine multiple groups to do the same activity/adventure during the day, but you’ll still have autonomy. (more…)
You might want to let your parents know that you will be out of touch with the “real” world for the duration of your trip. So “no news is good news”.
Not only do half the cell phones not work around here, but we really hope all of our participants will forget about phones for the short time they are with us. Our office phone is available to leaders if needed
One reason why camps are a place where students often make life changing decisions is that it is a place away from home. In addition, we have found that the longer and the more a student leaves their lifestyle at home, the more clearly they can see themselves — almost as if they are looking in from the outside. This doesn’t need to be an unpleasant experience. In fact, it can be naturally integrated into a refreshing adventure where students are mostly unaware of the limitations until their lifestyle is restored. (more…)
We get wet ;-)
Some of our best trips have been ones when it rained. Unless safety is an issue, we probably will not cancel a trip due to inclement weather.
As a camp in the State of California we are required to ask for the immunization history of minors. However, the state does not require our participants to have any immunizations. Therefore, if a participants immunization history happens to be blank or empty, they will still be able to fully participate in all the adventures here at Rock-N-Water. We just are required to ask.
Yes, we can take you on most of our adventures on the weekends as well as on weekdays. However, there will be a $15/person fee for each day we do an adventure on the weekends. We really encourage you that if you are able to adjust your schedule to be active with us on a weekday instead of a weekend, we think you’ll be glad you did.
Rafting year round is an amazing thing that we are able to do on the South Fork of the American River. However, off season trips from October through May have a few added costs that we incur during those months. Therefore we charge an extra $15/person for any rafting trips that we do during those months.
At other camps a high quality week long experience can range from $500-$600 to over $3,000 for a single week of camp.
These higher costs at other camps are usually due to the cost of maintaining extensive facilities and sometimes due to unnecessary extravagance or excessive profits.
The optimal age and minimum age varies by adventure, so please see the specific adventures you are interested in for details.
Some activities are limited to high school or older, but in general most of our outdoor adventures are optimal for students as young as those entering Middle School or Junior High School in the Fall.
Our 49er Fun Gold Rush Living History Field trips are optimized for 4th Grade students that are currently learning about the California Gold Rush and the history of California during their current school year. These trips also work great for those in 3rd and 5th grade too.
We have intentionally avoided having a souvenir/snack store at our camp. This is to protect the unique atmosphere we have at Rock-N-Water. We don’t think that selling snacks and mementoes is wrong; we just want students to have a break from their everyday “see… want… buy…” routine.
So aside from money for food on your drive too and from Rock-N-Water, there is no need to bring any extra cash.
Yes it’s no problem if you are on your period and you don’t wear tampons. We take a an old swim team trick and use what we know about our bodies and the water to help you navigate when you will need to wear a pad and when you will not. (more…)
Our full privacy policy can be viewed here: https://www.rocknwater.com/resources/privacy-policy/ (more…)
