NORTH Melbourne hopes a pre-season trip to the US can not only launch its 2011 season, but be the start of sustained future campaigns.

Coach Brad Scott has seen first-hand the benefits reaped from such altitude camps.

While the Kangaroos' trip was booked long before the one-time Collingwood assistant saw his former club hoist this year's premiership cup aloft, North Melbourne director of sports science Peter Mulkearns said Scott was a strong believer in the effects of such programs.

The Roos, who on Friday jetted out for a 20-day camp in Park City, Utah, may be following a similar path to that of the Magpies.

"Brad's heavily into the sports science aspect of coaching and I think that he realises the benefit of having an elite training camp for an extended period of time, and also by having a camp at altitude," Mulkearns told kangaroos.com.au.

"It's very exciting and all the players are very much looking forward to it."

Collingwood has been making an almost annual visit to Arizona (barring a trip to South Africa in early 2008) for altitude training since 2005 with the Pies maintaining it would take time to see real benefit from their expeditions.

Mulkearns said the Kangaroos would be looking to follow a similar format to their rivals, with the club hopeful this year is just the beginning.

"It's going to basically kick-start our campaign for this year but it's also going to kick-start our campaign for probably the next four of five years," he said. "We see a long-term future in it and long-term benefit in it.

"We'll definitely be looking at an altitude room in the future. At the moment we've just got this camp and this is our first foray into it and we're just pretty keen on getting the best personnel available to help us out.

"They'll come back in terrific nick and they'll come back so we can enjoy the immediate effects of altitude in the first one or two weeks of training back here in Melbourne, and that's going to give us a real boost for our training and going into the future."

The Kangaroos will spend their initial days in Utah at close to three kilometres above sea level, where almost the entire squad will spend close to their first week acclimatising to conditions and hiking.

Mulkearns said the camp would be focused on education and taking players out of their comfort zone, although players would immediately notice the change in altitude.

"That's one of the reasons why we wanted to give them a camp - to put them in an environment where they have to work hard through their training and through their living," Mulkearns said.

"The following two weeks we're just coming down a little bit to the pristine playing fields of Utah and we're having an emphasis on training and conditioning."

The majority of the squad has made the journey, although veterans Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie and Brady Rawlings have been given an extended lay-off and were not required.

Ruckman Todd Goldstein, whose partner is expecting a child, and youngsters Aaron Black and Luke Delaney - who have stayed in Melbourne to continue to perform extra rehab work - are others to have missed the trip.