Oh, barf!
Parents who shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to send their children to camp this summer received shocking news from the front this week — several pricey sleepaway spots in the Poconos and Catskills were spiraling after a nasty stomach bug swept through the secluded sites, sending kiddies and counselors legging it to the latrines.
Families routinely spend roughly $19,000 per child, per year, for seven weeks of waterskiing, lifelong friendships, and championship games. But nobody budgets for projectile vomiting. The final two weeks each summer are supposed to be about color war — not sanitation wars.
Frustrated parents who spoke to The Post anonymously, allege the outbreak began at Tyler Hill, a 7-week-long camp in Wayne County, Pa., shortly after visiting day in mid-July.
The camp, which is home to nearly 500 campers from June to August charges $18,475 for a summer season.
“I’ve been told somewhere in the realm of half the camp has gotten it,” one parent told The Post. “They ran out of beds in the health center; they ran out of toilets to throw up in.”
Nothing bonds East Coast camp parents quite like a crisis.
Screenshots of camp emails and text chains circulated faster than the stomach bug itself. Reports of bunkhouses are being thrown into chaos. Infirmaries oversubscribed. And some campers are fleeing the scene to recover back at home.
But what might normally have stayed confined to whispered parent group chats has instead exploded into a full-blown sleep away camp scandal. Anonymous Instagram accounts devoted to camp gossip have posted tips, turning the ugly event into arguably the biggest drama of the summer.
Andy Siegel, the current owner of Tyler Hill, sent an email to parents, assuring them that the illness had generally run its course within 24 to 36 hours after he fell ill himself — but would “not recommend first-hand research.”
The camp’s director even tried to inject a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor into the situation by declaring it felt like the camp had survived “the fifth plague of 2026,” after battling heat, rain, Canadian wildfire smoke and the diarrhea lettuce scare.
“And apparently,” he wrote, “it was a stomach bug.”
Though parents opted to take their children home for a few days to control the spread following Alumni Day, which was held on July 26th, Tyler Hill was effectively already ‘camp zero ’—a nickname that has spread through parents and anonymous social media accounts, though exactly where the outbreak originated remains unclear.
Timber Lake Camp, located in the nearby Catskills and charges $18,225 for the 2027 summer, told parents their Health Center has had 15 campers and staff, mainly in the younger age groups, with gastrointestinal symptoms and a handful of campers who have also gone home for 2-3 days.
“At first, given the volume of food that was left here from Visiting Day, we thought it to be just a matter of campers gorging themselves, as usual,” the email from the directors said.
However, as vomit ensued, it was surmised that the bug likely came from a basketball intercamp invitational, with several other camps reporting similar outbreaks.
The camps — popular with families from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida — operate in a tight-knit ecosystem where campers, siblings, counselors and sports frequently overlap.
Because of this, Timber Lake’s housekeeping staff is working overtime on a round-the-clock “disinfecting campaign” that involves aerial spraying from special backpacks akin to Ghostbusters, said to kill gastrointestinal viruses on impact.
Puking stations on both the boys and girls campuses have been set up with protective masks, gear, and supplies to deal with what administrators delicately described as “any messes which may arise.”
Directors also wrote that they’d “commandeered most of this month’s Florida lemon crop” — serving one-ounce lemon shots to campers at breakfast despite admitting they weren’t sure they’d actually work.
“I can’t tell you how much excitement and fun there was at breakfast this morning as campers held up their lemon shots, downed them and then threw their cups into the garbage cans,” a note read.
If lemon shots weren’t enough, there were also elderberry gummy supplements.
The vitamin regimen comes as camp infirmaries have become increasingly complex operations.
A recent New York Magazine feature detailed how today’s campers arrive with individualized medication schedules that have transformed health centers into mini pharmacies tasked with sorting a plethora of daily regimens for hundreds of campers.
Timber Lake confirmed that one in five campers has been taking Elderberry gummies since the start of the summer with their vitamins each morning.
“So, since I have been bombarded with requests, IF YOU DO NOT WANT US TO PROVIDE AN ELDERBERRY GUMMY TO YOUR CAMPER WHO REQUESTS IT, please just email me back, and we will not provide it,” the email said.
At Trail’s End, another co-ed camp located in Beach Lake, PA that costs $18,625 per season, parents told The Post that following a lacrosse tournament at Tyler Hill, 7 campers came down with the pukes.
“We will be pausing all intercamp tournaments for the next day or two while we monitor the situation,” a message from the director reviewed by The Post said.
For the parents cutting the hefty tuition check to send their children away for the summer, this is a nightmare for everyone involved—despite understanding that children in close quarters get sick.
Instead of refreshing the camp photo website hoping to spot their kid in activities or scoring a winning goal, parents have spent the week wondering if their child has thrown up that day.
Fortunately, camp kids are remarkably resilient.
Many of the campers who briefly went home are already expected back to finish the summer.
Tyler Hill, Timber Lake, and Trail’s End did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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