Staying in Touch With Your Camper
We have a “no cell phones” policy at our camp. We believe camp is a great opportunity for children to be independent from their parents, in a safe and supportive environment, for a short period of time. Camp, for most kids, is the one time when they handle issues directly with their peers and counselors without relying on their parents. The boost of confidence the campers gain from these experiences is one of the most valuable things they will take away from their time at camp.
Communication with your child and knowing how your child is doing are both very important. We encourage you to write letters and send. emails to your child at camp (learn how below!) We will also encourage your camper to write you letters while they are here. We agree to call you if your child is experiencing a problem at camp and you are welcome to call our camp office with any questions or concerns you have about your camper. We prepare our campers for missing home, but know that families miss their campers just as much! We are here to help with the transition.
While letters and encouraging words from home are vital to a camper’s experience, we have found that care packages can often be distracting and create feelings of comparison between campers. For these reasons, Mountain Camp will not allow care packages and encourage you to instead write letters to your camper. Care packages (which are considered anything that is a material good outside of a letter or photos) will be held in the office and returned at check-out.If you camper has forgotten something essential, please email [email protected] to make arrangements.Mail is distributed a minimum of three times a week, please keep in mind that it can take 3-5 days for mail to arrive.
Mailing Address:
Camper’s name and cabin (if known)
Mountain Camp
P.O. Box 1348
Pollock Pines, CA 95726To make it easier for your camper to write back to you, please send along postcards and envelopes that are pre-addressed. We also provide postcard and letter writing materials to campers as needed at the office!
Using your account, you are able to stay in touch with your camper(s) by sending one-way e-mails that we print and deliver on a daily basis. Every camp family can send unlimited emails to their camper, per week that you may use to send while your camper is at Mountain Camp.
- Simply visit our website and click on the ‘Login‘ button on the home page: www.mountaincamp.com
- Type in your email address and your password and click log in.
- Follow the ‘E-mail’ link at the top of the page to send an e-mail to your camper
OR
- Open the Campanion app
- Click the menu in the upper left corner and select “Letters”
- Choose your camper’s name, write your message and press done! It should appear as “Sent” once it is submitted.
Emails are printed at 11:30am every day and passed out to campers with the daily mail call after lunch. Please keep in mind that campers can respond via written letters mailed home and cannot respond via email.
Mountain Camp uses the mobile app Campanion to share photos from camp!
To get started, follow these three simple steps:
- Download the Campanion app
- Login to the app using your CampInTouch Account email and password (the same login you use for your Mountain Camp account)
- Upload a reference photo of your camper, you will receive a push notification each time a photo of your camper is uploaded! If you used Campanion last summer, you need to upload a new training photo to make sure the app is searching for the most accurate images of your camper.
We offer photos as an enhancement to your camp experience and photos are uploaded each evening. We understand photos are important to you and do our best to capture as many moments of your camper as possible while still maintaining a focus on creating an unplugged environment. Due to the varying nature of the camp day, as well as the sheer number of campers we serve during the week, our goal is to make sure there are at least three photos of each camper per week.
Some campers are more willing to seek out our photographer, therefore, their pictures will appear more often in the gallery. We respect our campers’ decisions to avoid the camera or remove themselves from other photo opportunities. We do our best to capture the range of emotions experienced by campers throughout the week. Sometimes this means your camper won’t be smiling in photos as they may be focusing on an activity, concentrating on learning a lesson, or caught in a transitional moment as campers move from talking to their friends to a new activity. Just because your child isn’t smiling in a photo does not mean your child is unhappy or upset. If your child is upset or unhappy over an extended period of time, you’ll hear from us, and you can always reach out to the office to check in.
We cannot fulfill photo requests as we don’t have the capacity while maintaining our commitment to a safe environment for the campers as well as capturing the spirit of the camp experience.Thank you for your understanding and help in keeping camp an environment focused on community building, fun and growth!
During summer, we have an amazing and mysterious “Mountain Blogger” who writes a daily update on what is happening up at camp! Sometimes even the camp dogs are featured writers!
On opening day, you will receive an email with your camper’s cabin and age group. We recommend writing these down so you can follow along with what their cabin is doing or what may have been a popular activity for their age group! You can access the daily updates by logging into our website and clicking on the “News” Icon underneath the “Online Community” heading.
We totally understand how camp is a big transition for families and campers alike. It is quite common for campers to miss home and have a hard time the first couple of days as they get used to camp, and learning how to face these challenges with support is important!
At camp, we teach campers independence in a safe environment and in general, no news is good news! If your camper has any health concerns the Healthcare Team will reach out directly, and the Director Team will reach out if your camper is struggling with persistently missing home or has any significant challenges to see how we can support your camper. As always, you can contact the office at [email protected] or at 415-351-2267 and we can check in with your camper and/or their counselors and let you know how they are doing.
