Orientation Step 2: Oredigger Camp

Oredigger Camp
Get off to a great start
The start of your first year of college can be daunting—it’s a new environment full of new experiences, new expectations, new people and, for most, a new bed. Get off to a great start by making friends and building community at Oredigger Camp!

A few weeks before the start of classes, more than 600 first-year student will get to spend 2 ½ days deep in the Rocky Mountains, having fun, making friends and learning what it means to be an Oredigger.

Encouraging vertical connections between current and incoming Mines students is at the heart of Oredigger Camp’s design. Peer mentors lead nearly every activity at camp, and President Johnson gives some opening remarks and then steps back to join students for meals, impromptu conversations and the occasional pickup game.

Oredigger Camp Snapshot 
Day 1: Arriving at Oredigger Camp shortly before lunchtime, students spend most of tackling team-building activities—low ropes, tug-of-war and more.

Day 2: Starts bright and early with self-reflection and goal setting. Later, during free time, students soared through the mountain air on zip lines while others jumped in on pickup games of volleyball, 9 Square and Gaga Ball.

Engineering challenges got students thinking and working together. In one task, small groups build a basket out of plastic drinking straws and tape that could protect an egg when dropped from the top of a ladder. In another, larger groups are handed three rolls of duct tape and the challenge building a support device to carry a person. The group whose device did not break won.