Though I have been here in Colorado for nearly a month already, I have just now gotten around to writing my first installment on this site. In the past month I have been kept occupied with a wide range of activities from a four day rafting trip to a recently completed two day backpacking trip.
Early on in staff training here at Anderson Camps, we drove over six hours to our rafting put-in in Utah. The four-day rafting trip on the Green River that ensued consisted of whitewater rapids, spectacular scenery in Desolation Canyon, and multiple late-day hikes to canyon overlooks. Despite getting drenched by crashing waves on multiple occasions, I had a great time on the 90+ mile journey down the Green River which also allowed me to really get to know the counselors I will work with the remainder of the summer.
While at the camp itself, my fellow counselors and I have “worked” at perfecting various activities that will become an integral part of camp during the summer. Such activities include riflery, archery, rock climbing, rappelling, playaking (a form of kayaking which takes place on a pond while on very wobbly boats), trap shooting (of which I have greatly improved from last year), more rafting (this time on the Colorado River by camp), hiking, and my personal favorites: capture the flag and dodge ball. On one recent trip down the camp stretch of the Colorado River (a seven mile stretch from camp down to I-70), another second-year counselor and I rafted a “ducky” down while the others took a regular raft. The watercraft we took was basically a two man raft which put you much closer to the water than a regular raft would. The experience was a much more exciting version of traditional whitewater rafting since we were much more at the mercy of the current. Despite the increased probability of flipping out of the boat, we safely and successfully were able to navigate the vessel and thus ourselves down the river and onto safe land (not without a few close calls though!)
This past week, the counselors and I went on an overnight backpacking trip near the Flat Tops Wilderness. Due to high water levels and large amounts of snow, we were forced to go on a different route than we normally would have. We backpacked over three miles and set up camp in a large clearing. Three of the counselors and I then went on an excursion without our backpacks up the mountainside we were camped on. We subsequently found ourselves hiking steep terrain covered in snow. We had a great time on the hike up and had an even greater time sliding down the snow on our way back down to the campsite. That night we all slept out under the stars which blanketed the sky once the moon eventually went down. The next morning I went on a bit of a solo-hike where I climbed higher up the mountain and decided to turn around only after seeing a few elk having a very hard time on the next stretch of rock ahead of me (the elk kept sliding and knocking rocks down the side of the mountain). After tipping down a dead Aspen tree on my way back down, I returned to the others just in time to grab my backpack for the trip back to the van. We had decided to take a different route back that was supposed to be six miles. The return trip turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for as we ended up losing the trail in the multiple water crossings and snowfields we encountered. We ended up taking deer and elk trails thinking they were actual trail. Each new trail led to dense brush which we had to navigate through to find our way to our destination. Seven hours and seven and a half miles later we finally found our way to familiar territory and ultimately our vehicle to take us back home.
Yesterday we had a day off in which we went to Glenwood Springs and spent the day. Personally, I spent the day playing basketball with the locals at the city park. I tend to spend my down time either playing basketball, listening to music (country music just isn’t my thing), or reading (I recently got a library card in the local county). Such activities remind me of home and the city (of which I am fonder of than living in the country/the middle-of-nowhere).
That is all for now, the first batch of campers comes tomorrow so it will probably be quite some time before I post another update. Thanks for reading!
