Open Sky Wilderness Therapy is closing its doors for good.

A final group of students will graduate from the program Feb. 14, and operations will cease the next day, Founder and CEO Aaron Fernandes confirmed Thursday.

Dropping enrollment over the last 18 months put the business in jeopardy, its founders said. The organization’s staff is down 50% from a year ago, and its enrollment numbers have fluctuated, but recently sunk to unsustainable lows. It became clear last weekend that it was time to close.

Open Sky will scale down incrementally over the next month. The program will continue to provide full services to all of the 22 students currently enrolled until Feb. 14, although the exact timing of layoffs remains unclear.

“We are in the process of figuring out how to wind this down in the most honorable way possible, with the most integrity (possible) and trying to take care of people,” Fernandes said.

Past and present employees, as well as former students and families, reacted with shock and sadness to news of an uncertain end to a longtime Durango institution.

Students who attend Open Sky are typically in need of intensive intervention for destructive behavior, including drug use, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues, and have exhausted the resources in their home region.

In the last several years, negative media coverage of wilderness therapy, which is often conflated with the antiquated model of unaccredited boot camps, has put legitimate therapeutic programs in jeopardy. That trend, paired with an increasing number of alternatives that bill insurance and rising costs, finally pushed things over the edge last week.

The program first opened for business in Durango in 2006 with 25 staff members. Open Sky provided wilderness therapy to students between the ages of 13 and 30, as well as families. The business was also an entry point for many young people looking to enter the mental health field.

A 2019 study completed by the Region 9 Economic Development District found that Open Sky supported an estimated 281 jobs, $12.7 million in labor income and $21.9 million of economic output.

“(The work) just attracts some remarkable people who are ideal, idealistic, hard working and passionate and intelligent and creative,” Co-Founder and Admissions Director Danny Frazer said.

The business currently employs about 110 people, and founders estimate they have employed 1,400 people over the 18 years of operation.

“There’s so many heartbreaking things but having to say goodbye to this team is just …” Co-Founder and Executive Director Emily Fernandes said, trailing off.

“ … It’s the hardest part,” Frazer concluded.

The programs generally involve students spending periods of 10 to 12 weeks in remote locations, tended to by field guides and licensed therapists.

Emily said the program’s successes were attributed to four essential elements of the wilderness therapy program: the healing power of nature, focusing on the tasks of daily living, peer relationships and therapeutic relationships.

“It was life-changing for us,” said Wynn Jones, whose son attended Open Sky. “It not only helped him through his particular journey, but it helped us as a family start to change unhealthy patterns and create new healthy ones.”

Texts and phone calls expressing gratitude and sadness interrupted the founders’ interview with The Durango Herald on Friday, as parents and former students learned the news. Staff members say they feel great sadness for the students who would benefit from Open Sky’s program, but will not have the opportunity to do so.

“Open Sky saved our family,” said Tessa Fontaine. Her 19-year-old son attended Open Sky in 2019 after expressing suicidal ideation.

Still, some attendees and outside critics have slammed providers, including Open Sky, with allegations of abuse and mistreatment. Other parents say they felt highly pressured to pursue further treatment.

Recent media coverage of the industry has cast wilderness therapy providers in a negative light, stemming largely from the 2020 documentary “This is Paris,” in which Paris Hilton described being abused at a wilderness therapy program in Utah. She and the nonprofit Breaking Code Silence have since launched a national campaign to put a stop to what detractors have named the “troubled teen industry.”

“It’s just really unfortunate to see something that has helped so many families and so many students over the years kind of get pulled into the fold,” said Peter Thornburn, a former operations team member who left in December after 12 years at the company.

The larger movement against wilderness therapy has rooted out some bad apples, he said.

But the “tough love” approach that has prompted widespread backlash has never been Open Sky’s philosophy, employees say.

“I was extraordinarily moved by just the impact you see on the family with a student who’s really accepted their stay at Open Sky and accepted their work,” Thornburn said.

Row Grant has worked on the operations team for six months and was a student at Open Sky herself as an adolescent.

“I never would have gone back to work there if they had abused me,” she said.

Leaders of the organization say that the stories of abuse and neglect are often in reference to programs of a bygone era, before industry regulation and accreditation was in place. And recent incidents of harm at residential treatment programs have prompted what Frazer called a “take-no-prisoners, scorched earth kind of approach.”

In the summer of 2022, Emily said that enrollment numbers dropped off dramatically.

A round of layoffs in early 2023 left the company with 110 staff members, about half what it had the summer before.

This winter, enrollment number continued to fall below projections, thrusting the business into perilous territory.

Although financially speaking, the founders say they are accustomed to stretching themselves thin, Open Sky cannot provide its intended quality of care without a critical mass of students.

“The critical mass is what creates the group dynamism and creates the dynamic amongst the peer group that creates the opportunities for insight and change,” Aaron said. “And if you don’t have that, then we don’t have the program that we created.”

With just a handful of students signed up to enter the program – numbers that steadily dropped last weekend – the necessary critical mass did not exist.

Open Sky is a private pay provider, meaning that most families shell out five-figure sums for their children’s treatment. About 35% of attendees receive some sort of financial assistance. An increasing number of providers offering hybrid wilderness-indoor therapy are accepting insurance, making for tough competition.

The business is becoming increasingly expensive to operate, Aaron said, as Open Sky’s clientele are becoming more frugal given rising prices and the impending possibility of recession.

“The trend lines are: It makes for a difficult business model,” he said.

With immense uncertainty looming, Open Sky’s founders are caught simultaneously mourning the end of the institution, working to wrap things up as best they know how, and looking to the future.

The decision to close Open Sky is what Emily called the end of a chapter. And although they might not write the next chapter for some time, the founders say they are not walking away from their philosophies.

“Activating the potential of the human spirit and believing all people have the capacity to thrive – that’s our core purpose and belief … for the students and for all of us doing this work,” she said.

Rschafir@durangoherald.com

Staff Writer Tyler Brown contributed to this report.