As the founder of The Amer­i­can Adven­ture Ser­vice Corps and direc­tor of the Mor­gan­ton, NC unit, Mike Fis­chesser serves as a guid­ing resource for the phi­los­o­phy, safety and design of TAASC. Focus­ing on out­door pro­gram safety, man­age­ment of pro­grams, and advanced skill train­ings, it is easy to see how Scout­ing and Out­ward Bound have been a large part of his background.

From 1963 through 1971 he was actively involved in Scout­ing in North Car­olina. Cam­pcraft, aquatic safety, back­pack­ing, teach­ing, canoe trips and major respon­si­bil­i­ties at a young age laid a strong foun­da­tion for becom­ing involved with Out­ward Bound in 1971.

In 1978, at the age of 26, Mike was asked to direct the pro­grams of the North Car­olina Out­ward Bound School. As Pro­gram Direc­tor, he hired all the instruc­tional staff and super­vised all NCOBS pro­grams for the next seven years. In 1983 Mike devel­oped the idea for the Kurt Hahn Lead­er­ship Center.

After 14 years with the North Car­olina Out­ward Bound School, Mike joined the Out­ward Bound USA’s National Head­quar­ters with the task of over­see­ing a National Train­ing Insti­tute. While at National, he con­ducted many national safety reviews for the var­i­ous OB pro­grams around the coun­try. A new Out­ward Bound school was devel­oped in New York City and Mike was asked to con­sult with them, which he did for eight months.

After help­ing the New York City Out­ward Bound Cen­ter, Mike rec­og­nized that he was begin­ning to enter­tain a num­ber of con­sul­ta­tion requests for advanced train­ings, safety reviews, unique ropes course designs and pro­gram man­age­ment ideas, which resulted in the for­ma­tion of Alpine Tow­ers, Inc. After devel­op­ing Alpine Tow­ers, Inc. into one of the most suc­cess­ful and respected chal­lenge course com­pa­nies in the world, Mike and his wife Nina recently sold the com­pany so Mike could fur­ther develop The Amer­i­can Adven­ture Ser­vice Corps con­cept. Mike and Nina live in their log home on the edge of the Linville Gorge Wilder­ness Area in North Carolina.

Since the early 1970s, Mike has par­tic­i­pated in many climb­ing, cav­ing, pad­dling, and ski moun­taineer­ing trips, writ­ten many tech­ni­cal arti­cles on cav­ing, and orga­nized over 30 major expe­di­tions. He served as the chair­man of the Safety Com­mit­tee for the National Spele­o­log­i­cal Soci­ety for seven years.

Since his Scout­ing adven­tures, Mike had always had an inter­est in explor­ing areas less trav­eled by oth­ers. In pur­suit of this inter­est, he has been out­ward bound in such places as the Bio Bio of Chile, Peru­vian Andes, deep pit caves and vol­ca­noes of Mex­ico, the Ice­field Ranges of the Yukon, Denali, and rivers of the North­west Territories.

In 1996 Mike cre­ated this unique, new, non-​​profit pro­gram for youth. Of all his cre­ations, he is most proud of The Amer­i­can Adven­ture Ser­vice Corps.