After an extremely vigorous day of outdoor activity, we woke up bright and early on Saturday morning for Round II of fun in the sun.
We started off with the High COPES courses. My group beat feet for the Giant's Ladder which requires a team of six + participants to climb, belay, check and guide as the two climbers work together to try to climb to the top of a swaying 30 foot high ladder.
After the first team of agile adults climbed to the top, Michael and I gave it our all. We worked together to both climb up each rung of the ladder.
We felt successful and were all smiles.
Another group climbed the sheer rock wall.
A view from the top of the rock wall.
There was more great teamwork on the climbing and rapelling course.
There was a tree top COPES element that included mastering a fear of heights and possessing great balance.
Agility was needed to cross the elements.
Don't worry, there were plenty of safety precautions in place to include spotters, belayers and more - on the ground.
After all that excitement, and lunch, we had a few hands on classes in the afternoon
We learned the importance of the Leave No Trace principles
We learned some neat tricks for building a fire without damaging the organic elements of the top soil.
We had a great nature hike to learn about conservation and flora and fauna
Frogs, toads, snakes, hawks, great blue herons, sparrows and more participated as if on cue for our nature hike.
Even the birds, and the bees, the flowers and the trees got in on the game.
We learned so much, that I walked away with the realization of how much more I don't know and can learn.
After a session on Wilderness First Aid (very important when you do high adventure treks in remote areas), we played an adventure game of geocaching.
Our clues included some history, some coordinates, some cryptology and required some great teamwork to find the actual cache when we arrived at our coordinates. Fortunately, our team of ten worked well together and we found our treasure relatively quickly. I won't give you more details in case you want to find this one, too. It was a Take and Replace cache - so we left some Scout patches and goodies for the next group.
Are you tired yet? I hope not - because it's only 4:30 in the afternoon and we've got plenty more to do before bedtime...
Secundogeniture had so much fun, he and I went with the instructor to help hide some extra caches. Sssshhhh! Don't tell anyone where we hid it!
After dinner we had a session about cycling.
We learned about cycling - both mountain biking and road cycling.
Then we got to go out for a spin.
Fun was had by all!
Our final session of the night was about Expedition Planning. Our instructor talked about his personal trek to climb Mount Kilimanjaro
He either inspired me to someday do my own expedition, or to never, ever try it (and if I do try it, to be fully prepared and in the best possible shape of my life!)
After his presentation, he fielded lots and lots of questions. This looks like it could be his next group of climbers!
The ending to an unbelievably wonderful day were the deep fried Oreos. Now for a good night's sleep to gear up for the final day of adventure.
Where do I sign Fireman up for this?????? he seriously would LOVE it.
Deep fried oreos....my gallbladder hurts already
Posted by: kathy b | Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 08:58