For the students of one Newark high school, the Appalachian Trail rite of passage is not an optional adventure or an extracurricular bonus — it’s a mandatory journey that every freshman must complete to move forward. Five days, 55 miles, and very little adult hand-holding stand between these teenagers and their next chapter.

It’s an unlikely tradition to find in a city better known for traffic jams than mountain trails. Yet that contrast is precisely the point.

An Unexpected Place for a Wilderness Program

Newark, New Jersey, is about as far from a national park as a place can get. For many residents, the closest thing to a scenic view is the bumper of the car ahead in traffic, and the only “hike” is dictated by a crosswalk signal.

But tucked into this urban landscape is St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, a private high school that deliberately pushes its students far outside their everyday comfort zones. Many of these teenagers have never set foot on a trail or slept in a tent before.

Sent Into the Wild With Minimal Supervision

The premise is striking in an age of constant parental oversight. Students are sent out onto the Appalachian Trail for five days with only, as school administrator Glenn Cassidy put it, “some adult supervision.”

Cassidy is confident the program is one of a kind. He told CBS News he’s “willing to put money” that St. Benedict’s is the only school in the entire country running anything like it.

He acknowledged the unusual nature of the setup with a bit of humor, joking that there might be some insurance companies watching nervously. But the core philosophy is serious: the teams largely hike on their own.

Preparation Begins Long Before the Trail

The journey doesn’t start at the trailhead. Training kicks off in early spring, built around physical exercise and team-building exercises designed to forge trust among classmates.

From there, students are organized into smaller units, each assigned specialized roles:

• A captain to lead the group
• A camp specialist to handle the campsite
• Navigators to chart the route
• Cooks to manage meals
• Medics to deal with injuries

The clever design lies in the gaps. Each student masters one specialty, but no individual knows everything required to survive the trek. Success depends entirely on the group functioning as a whole.

The Power of Relying on One Another

This interdependence is the heart of the program. As Cassidy explained, the entire point is that the students have to lean on each other. The only way through, he said, is by working together and making it to the finish line as a team.

The students themselves seem to grasp the lesson. One participant preparing to complete the hike last month described it simply as learning to work together in different ways to finish the task at hand.

A Tradition Forged in Rain

The 55-mile trek has become a fixture at St. Benedict’s, now stretching back 53 years. The hike happens regardless of weather — rain or shine. In fact, the administration secretly hopes for rain.

There’s a deeper purpose behind that preference. Cassidy explained that when life gets hard, the memory of pushing through difficulty becomes something students can draw strength from. As he put it, there are plenty of rainy days ahead in life, and learning to endure them matters.

More Than a Hike

In an era often defined by helicopter parenting, this school insists that its students rise to the challenge on their own. And when they do, the result is something worth witnessing.

After five days of literal and figurative ups and downs, this year’s group completed their hike in May and officially crossed the threshold into sophomore year.

The toll was real:

• Some came back bruised
• All of them were exhausted
• Their shoes would never recover

But neither would the students themselves — and that transformation was the true destination all along. The trail, it turns out, was never really about the miles. It was about who these teenagers became by the time they reached the end.