Provided Photo — Marcy Fagan Northwood students Florence Richard, left, and Maya Wissler smile at Tokyo Shibuya, Japan, on Monday, Feb. 17 during the school’s 2025 LEAP trip. Wissler is from Saranac Lake.

LAKE PLACID — Planning, organizing and shepherding a 17-person group through a foreign nation halfway around the world for nearly two weeks is a big ask for anyone — let alone a high school student.

Then again, Augustine “Gus” Garvey is not your typical high school student. A graduating senior at Northwood School, Garvey put the wheels in motion for the school’s trip to Japan when he first began studying there as a freshman.

He first got the idea when he was on a different trip with Northwood to Vietnam. It had a layover in Japan for a night and Gus found himself serving as a translator and guide to other trip members.

“So that was kind of like my first taste of like, hey, I might be able to do something like this,” Garvey said. “And the idea kind of started there.”

Garvey, who is a dual U.S. and Japanese citizen and numerous family members who live in Japan, realized there was potential to turn his idea into reality when he discovered Northwood’s Learn, Engage, Apply, Perform “LEAP” program.

Members of Northwood School’s 2025 LEAP trip to Japan enjoy the slopes at the Myoko Suginohara ski area on Thursday, Feb 15.

The program is based on experiential learning and offers a variety of classes focused on different immersions, ranging from a local focus in the Adirondacks to culminating international trips. As one might expect, most of these classes and trips are organized by school faculty and staff.

Garvey had a different idea. Drawing on his connections to Japan and familiarity with the country and its culture, he reached out to Marcy Fagan, a member of the Northwood science faculty who serves as the school’s LEAP director, to pitch a LEAP trip that he would oversee as a student.

Despite the significant responsibility that Garvey would be taking on, Fagan said Garvey’s strong and consistent leadership skills he displayed as a student, made faculty open to the idea. After spending much of his junior year pitching a number of ideas, something seemed to stick.

Garvey collaborated with Bobby O’Connor, who heads up Northwood’s outing club and adventure sports programs, and Fagan to craft a trip that incorporated a variety of cultural immersion and educational opportunities, such as visiting numerous historical landmarks in Japan and watching the Toyosu fish auction, as well as the opportunity to ski some of the most renowned terrain on the planet.

“(The faculty) were very supportive of Gus planning it,” Fagan said. “And Gus got academic credit for planning it.”

Gus Garvey, a graduating senior at Northwood School, speaks at Motorikyu Nijo Castle in Kyoto, Japan on Sunday, Feb. 16. Garvey, who is a dual U.S. and Japanese citizen, planned and organized the school’s LEAP trip to Japan.

Ironically, Garvey said it chipped away a bit at his GPA from all the time he poured into planning and executing the trip, but it was a sacrifice he said was “beyond worth it.”

The trip idea soon became popular. When Garvey, O’Connor and Fagan finalized the planning and submitted the trip to school for approval, they initially expected six or seven students to want to join. It ended up being 14. Despite a larger number, Garvey was confident that he could accommodate and oversee the group.

Garvey produced a final 12-page itinerary that accounted for every day’s activities, contingency plans, transportation method, background on locations and “dos” and “don’ts” for visiting Japan as a tourist.

The group of 17 — which included 14 students along with Fagan, O’Connor and Adam Fischer, a chef at Northwood, departed at 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 7, driving to and then flying out of the Newark Liberty International Airport. Given the 14-hour forward time difference, they arrived in Tokyo the next day.

Part of the challenge, Garvey said, was knowing that, inevitably, some parts of the plan would fall through or something unexpected would arise. The key was being able to adapt and adjust on the fly.

Provided Photos — Marcy Fagan The Northwood School’s LEAP trip group smiles in front of the restaurant where they had dinner in Kyoto, Japan, on Saturday, Feb. 15.

One of these incidents ended up chasing down a lost cellphone. Fortunately, its location-tracking was enabled, and Garvey was able to follow its movements. Being on a train, however, the phone was a moving target. When the rest of the group was set with their plans for the remainder of the day, Garvey set off to track down the phone.

“I’m like running around trying to get to this phone,” Garvey said. “By the time I got there, the tracker had moved in the station.”

Fearing that the phone was about to take off on another train, Garvey bolted to its location. Luckily, that movement had actually been a result of someone bringing the phone to a lost and found. The hassle, however, was not quite over.

“I had his phone passcode, I had his passport,” Garvey said. “But I didn’t have a kid with me, and they wouldn’t give it to me!”

The next morning, Garvey and the other student showed up to the lost and found together and were able to draw the ordeal to a close.

“Just stuff like that,” Garvey said. “I mean it’s always going to happen on these sorts of trips, you just have to know that going in and manage as you can.”

On Feb 9, the trip watched the Toyosu fish auction, one of the largest in the world. The auction began promptly at 5 a.m. Afterwards, the group has sushi for breakfast. Fischer said it was “amazing” to see the reverence that the Japanese culture has for food preparation and consumption.

“They look at is, ‘If you’re walking around eating, you’re not taking the time to respect what that person has put into the food,'” he said. “It’s very un-American as a mindset, but for me, that was very neat to see.”

After spending a day exploring Tokyo, it was time for the group to travel to the slopes. They stayed the night in Tokyo and traveled by bullet train then taxi to Niigata.

Northwood is renowned for its ski program. Only minutes from Whiteface Mountain, the school regularly produces athletes who compete at the national collegiate and World Cup levels. Japan is renowned for its snowfall, which benefits from a prime geographic setup.

Persistent winds usher cold air down from Siberia over the relatively warmer Sea of Japan before brushing up against Japan’s mountainous regions, forcing the moist air to rise, rapidly cool and, as a result, dump massive amounts of snow on Japan’s snow country along its western and northern mountain ranges.

Members of the trip said it was the most snow they had ever seen. Garvey described the snow removal system as “military grade” with specialized snow blower equipment to accommodate banks lining both sides of the road that grew to more than 20 feet in spots.

Fagan, an avid and lifelong skier, said it was among the best snow she had experienced. After several days of skiing, the group spent a day sightseeing in Kyoto. Throughout, Garvey had a list of landmarks, shops and restaurants that he led the group through, constantly scanning to make sure the group stayed together at and between often-packed sites.

“Coffee was the key,” he said. “Wherever I could find it, I was just pounding it all day.”

Feb. 18 was the group’s final day in Japan. Students spent the morning getting ready to go, getting last-minute souvenirs and reminiscing on 12 days well-spent.

Maya Wissler, a Northwood student who went on the trip, said it was something she and her friends still talk about “every day.” Wissler, who grew up in Saranac Lake, said the trip was the perfect way to cap off her four years at Northwood.

“To be able to do one last big thing with my best friends and the people I’ve grown up with and have been here for so long was such a great experience,” she said.

“Gus has been planning this for four years and just to see all of that hard work come together and lead to such a good trip, that was really great.”