ABOUT US
VIDEO
ABOUT
ROCK-E HOUSE & BASECAMP
Rock-E House & Basecamp provides customized learning retreats for schools, adults, and families. An extension of North Country School and Camp Treetops, Rock-E House & Basecamp offers programs that focus on sustainability through the arts, agriculture, environmental science, and outdoor pursuits.
Rock-E House & Basecamp is ideal for private and public schoolchildren, college students, educators, outdoor enthusiasts, and families. Guests are welcome to enroll in one of our programs or groups (up to 25) can design their own stay.
Facilities and features include a 9-bedroom, 4.5-bath historic farmhouse, well-equipped kitchen, five acres of vegetable and flower gardens, a maple sugaring operation, a 25-trail ski hill, a 36-route rock climbing crag, and 4 miles of horseback and mixed-use hiking trails. There is walk out access to Cascade and Pitchoff Mountains, and ski out access to Mt. Van Hoevenberg Cross Country and Biathlon Center.
HISTORY
A PLACE TO LEARN
To serve as a site for short-term educational programs for children and adults, in 2015 North Country School and Camp Treetops purchased an adjacent waterfront property on Round Lake, which includes 20 acres, a large 19th century farmhouse, boathouse, outbuildings, and 1000 feet of pristine shoreline. With a bold educational vision and a generous matching opportunity created by Eileen Rockefeller Growald (CTT ’63, staff ’69-’71, parent ’97-’99, NCS ’66, trustee ’76-’84 and ’92-’98), supporters of North Country School and Camp Treetops have made possible the acquisition and endowment of Rock-E House & Basecamp.
Under the direction of Executive Director David “Hock” Hochschartner and Director Peter Bullock, Rock-E House & Basecamp offered its first pilot programs in the winter and fall of 2017.
LEADERSHIP
PETER BULLOCK
Peter Bullock became the Director of Rock-E House & Basecamp in August 2017. Over the course of his career, Peter has served as interim head, curriculum specialist, and science teacher at several schools in Vermont. He developed and taught school and summer youth programs at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vermont, where he served as a camp director and organizational development fellow.
Peter’s passion for connecting ideas to experience includes guest lecturing at Middlebury College, Champlain College, Community College of Vermont, and the University of Vermont. He enjoys social innovation labs, bird language, science, history, and farm-to-table celebrations. He and his wife, Michelle, have four young children.
DIRECTOR OF ROCK-E HOUSE & BASECAMP
A WELCOME FROM THE DIRECTOR
Dear Friends,
Welcome to Rock-E House & Basecamp! This is a place with the promise for more than human community, a promise that starts with wilderness.
As farmers at the highest elevation in New York State, wilderness informs our ecological growing practices, including grass-based rotational grazing for our chickens, sheep and pigs, and an innovative drum composter that recycles nutrients inside the blue line of the Adirondack Park. If we can thrive inside the blue line, we can thrive on our blue planet!
As teachers, artists, and mountaineers, we integrate wilderness through nature mentoring into everything we do because in nature we find the wellspring for human creativity through an endlessly nuanced and diverse baseline. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
In the lessons of wilderness we hone a culture of acceptance and inclusion. We are inspired to see cooperation at all levels of resilient ecosystems - guiding everything from our politics, decision-making, and learning support, to our menu planning for the body’s microflora and fauna. We can reverse our silos of waste and our silos of thought as we restore earth’s natural systems together.
The High Peaks Region is just far enough away from suburban development to offer habitats for the black bear and the raven; places to hide and seek; and stars to see. In the Adirondacks we find the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, greater in size than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined.
If we are to rise to the challenges of the 21st century, we must rise to the challenge of thriving with nature and with each other. We must convene more than human communities everywhere - drawing out the wilderness within and without, and adapting our agriculture and our politics to regenerative design.
From sixty years of organic farming practices to new plans for a net-zero performing arts center, we invite you to be a part of more rugged, resourceful, and resilient future.
We look forward to hosting you at RockE House & Basecamp.
Peter Bullock
DRIVING DIRECTIONS
Rock-E House & Basecamp is two hours north of Albany. From Albany take I-87 (the Northway) to Exit 30. Turn left at the end of the exit ramp, taking Routes 9 to 73 West toward Keene and Lake Placid. After 10 miles you will pass through Keene Valley and then Keene. In the center of Keene bear left again to stay on Route 73 toward Lake Placid. After 7.5 miles uphill, past the entrance to North Country School and Camp Treetops, turn right on Wrights Way. Round Lake Campus is at the end of the driveway.