Experience Learning

Teach students Appalachian mountain ecology while caving, hiking, climbing, paddling, & orienteering

Experience Learning, formerly The Mountain Institute’s Appalachian Program, has a forty-year history delivering beyond the classroom wilderness programs. The mission of these courses is to help people become confident, competent individuals with a clear vision of their responsibilities and potential for improving the human condition and the natural world.

Operating out of two distinct campuses, the Spruce Knob Mountain Center, a 400 acre high-elevation nature preserve, and the Sweetwater Farm, a 565 acre working farm. The Potomac Highlands feature some of the darkest night skies in the Eastern U.S., the highest peak in the state (Spruce Knob), the healthiest streams in the state, extensive forests, natural springs, and numerous caves.