Volunteers help rebuild the Outward Bound School in Everglades City on Jan. 25, 2018.
Few of the decks, sheds and wooden floors of the base camp remained on the small island in Everglades City after Hurricane Irma struck.
Exposed staircases to the cottages and the main outpost of North Carolina Outward Bound School had to be torn down and replaced. The roof of one building was found washed up on a beach and had to be taken apart.
Dozens of volunteers, many of them former and current employees and guides, have been flooding into Outward Bound's camp to rebuild the site.
The former hunting and fishing camp, a short ferry from the mainland, now serves as the central point every year for about 500 students, veterans and at-risk kids to head into the trails, swamps and mangrove-lined waters of southern Florida.
"We've had about 60 folks come down for between just a day or as long as a week," said John Porter, project manager. "We're almost at full capacity. We have the power back on. We're continuing our courses."
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The challenge is every piece of equipment, the mountains of lumber and bags of concrete powder have to be carried onto a small pontoon-sized boat, ferried to the island and then dragged to the construction sites.
Five buildings and sheds have needed extensive repairs or complete reconstruction.
"Inch by inch," said Diane Matheson, a former Outward Bound instructor from North Carolina.
Matheson spent four summers working at the camp, starting in the 1980s, and came down as soon as she heard it needed repairs.
"It's just about helping neighbors," Matheson said. "A lot of really good people and skilled people work here. You spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with each other and you get to know everyone really well."
All the concrete has to be mixed by hand on the island. That job that fell to the younger volunteers, Eli Mills and Nora Randolph, both 26, of North Carolina.
"We've mixed 20 bags of concrete so far today, on top of the 40 yesterday," Randolph said.
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Outward Bound started in the mountains of North Carolina as a retreat into the wild to learn basic outdoors skills, teamwork and environmental matters.
During the winter, from November to April, the school primarily operates out of its Everglades City camp. It offers free trips for veterans and works with schools that send students from across the country for trips of varying lengths, but mostly for five nights.
Guides teach the students how to set up camps on keys in the Ten Thousand Islands and navigate the maze of mangroves in canoes around Everglades National Park.
The cottages and sheds are used mostly by long-term employees, Porter said. That means the trips can keep operating even as Outward Bound rebuilds.
Nine groups with a total of almost 90 students camped their way from Goodland to Everglades City this week.
In the Everglades, Outward Bound teaches its groups about water flow and the importance of swamps as filters and aquifer rechargers, said Porter, the rebuilding project manager.
"The water flow is just so important here in southern Florida," he said. "This is where it all ends up.
"Our clients are from as far away as Ohio, but primarily from the Southeast, and they've usually never really thought of the Everglades in terms of a resource."
