SBR Consol Energy Bridge - Sunrise
The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve, often shortened as Summit Bechtel Reserve (SBR), located in Fayette and Raleigh counties, near Beckley, West Virginia, is one of four facilities managed by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). The others are Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, Northern Tier National High Adventure Bases in Minnesota, as well as Manitoba and Ontario in Canada, and Florida National High Adventure Sea Base in the Keys. The Summit Bechtel Reserve is the current home of the National Scout Jamboree, the Paul R. Christen National High Adventure Base, the James C. Justice National Scout Camp, and the John D. Tickle National Training and Leadership Center. The reserve comprises properties totaling over 14,000 acres. The facility's opening event was the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.
The Summit Bechtel Reserve is located adjacent to the New River Gorge National Park & Preserve. Managed by the National Park Service, designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. Established in 1978 as a national river and redesignated in 2020, the park and preserve stretches for 53 miles.
SBR has three main components of activity: the Paul R. Christen National High Adventure Base, the James C. Justice National Scout Camp, and the John D. Tickle Training and Leadership Center, each of which has unique program opportunities. There are six subcamps named based on the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, which has the capacity to house up to 40,000 campers, a large outdoor arena with a capacity of approximately 80,000, and ten district adventure areas covering mountain biking, BMX, skateboarding, archery, rifle & shotgun shooting, zip lines, canopy tours, challenge courses, climbing & rappelling. The operating principles of The Summit Bechtel Reserve are centered on four core values: Leadership, Adventure, Service, and Sustainability.
The SBR property was once the site of extensive coal mining, an industry for which the state of West Virginia is known. The remnants of long abandoned surface mines within the property have created wide flat areas that tier the terrain into a series of benches, effectively pre-grading and excavating the property, and allowing for many of the roads and infrastructure on the property to begin construction with manageable earth moving. Sections of the property contain large flat areas engineered to accommodate regional camp headquarters and sub-camps.
A lake at the center of the main site separates base camps from the arena, action areas, transportation centers, and other traditional core areas. A valley on the Summit property is crossed by a triple-walkway pedestrian suspension bridge sponsored by CONSOL Energy. The bridge is just shy of 800 feet in length. The bridge connects the western and eastern portions of the core areas of the property.
High Adventure Areas constructed on the property include: The Park (skateboarding), The Trax (BMX), The Pools (scuba and swimming), The Bows (archery sports), The Barrels (shooting sports), The Ropes (challenge courses in the trees), The Rocks (climbing, bouldering, and rappelling), The Zip (zipline), Low & High Gear (mountain bike headquarters locations connecting over 36 miles of downhill and cross country mountain bike trails), The Canopy (canopy tours)—Wikipedia
