UPDATE: Fall 2011

I realize it has been way too long since I have posted new stories but that is because I was so busy experiencing those stories. Now that our busy season is over and we are in the office season I am hoping to get many of those stories written down so that they can be enjoyed by all.  So stay tuned and check this out while you wait.

July 12, 2011- On the Rock

We experience a lot of different attitudes on rock days. Some don’t particularly want to be there, some are crazy afraid of heights you name it we see it. These students for the most part had never been climbing but they were more than willing to give it a go. Like most rock days real emotions come out during the rappel. I talked about it earlier in the blog and every experience is different but a lot of the emotions are the same. Fear of heights, fear of trusting their belayer, fear of trusting the rope etc… This group really stepped up in encouraging each other. Multiple gals didn’t really want to rappel. One gal in particular got to the top sat down and said she wasn’t moving. By the end of the afternoon she was willing to walk to the edge with me. With the support of her community of friends and willingness to challenge herself she stepped over the edge. It is funny to me how an arm around a students shoulders is big help. When in reality the arm does absolutely no good for anything other than reassurance but it seems to help. We were all stoked for her when she got to the bottom and celebrated her victory with her.

 Walking her through each step.

July 11-14, 2011 – College Leadership Foundation.

We have a group that brings around 60 students. These students come from inner cities throughout Washington. They are students who are primarily from lower income families and have displayed leadership potential in their communities. These students are accepted into this leadership program where they receive full need scholarships to attend a university in their town. The goal is that they receive higher education while staying in their communities for support and then they go back into their communities and change the community for the better. For most of these students this is the first time that they have ever slept outside, rock climbed, gone hiking… you get the picture. It was awesome to walk through a couple days of challenging experiences with them. I got to hang out with a group that will be starting at GU in the fall. There are so many stories of the students pushing themselves and pushing each other. This has been one of the most inspiring trips to be on.

 Doing group initiatives with the students.

Lesley came out to be food staff for this trip which was a huge blessing.

Playing forced choice.

Adventure Oddities #2

So you might have wondered what this tube on the back of everyone’s kayak are.. well this goes back to the Leave No Trace subject. Earlier I mentioned that in the backcountry you dig a hole for your “ahem”. On the river a hole is not possible because there really is no way to say where high water is so if your hole is below high water mark in the spring when high water comes your ‘ahem’ will be washed down the river and is now contaminating the river… thus you pack it out. Well when you are on a 7 day trip you don’t really want your ‘ahem’ bag of goodness in your dry bag so that is why we have the tube. Just because I know the next question is always you go ‘ahem’ in the tube?!!!! No!!! just like the shovel... cleanliness is next to godliness. The tube should NEVER be contaminated with said ‘ahem objects’. How it works is you are provided with a ‘landing pad’ this most often is a paper towel. When you are done with your business you pick up the four corners of the landing pad and what ever toilet paper you might have used and you put it in the blue plastic bag. You also get to add a little “Mr. Sprinkles” (everything has a name at YD) Mr. Sprinkles is poo powder (yes that is its actual name) but it is the chemical that is found in diapers that gels the ‘business’ thus making it so when we empty the poo tubes we can dump them straight into the dumpster and it is no longer considered hazardous material. Though I must say after 7 days in the hot sun in a sealed pipe the smell is QUITE Hazardous. So to continue the how to (just in case you ever need to use this method) you pick up your landing pad and deposit it in the blue bag add some Mr. Sprinkles then you drop the bag into your pipe and seal the lid. If you need to go # 1 it is a little different on the river instead of peeing on a rock you pee directly in the river… if you were to pee on the beach that is just going to attract animals and make the beaches gross for others who will be coming after you.

July 2011 - Fun at the Pool

I love that our staff team chooses to do what we do for work during our off time. One of the kicks we have been on this summer is learning to roll hard shell kayaks. A local outdoor outfitter holds pool sessions on sunday nights throughout the summer to learn to roll in a warm controlled environment as opposed to all of the snow melt river and lakes around us.  I chose to watch the first weekend because I wasn't so sure about hanging out in the water having my body connected to a big piece of plastic holding me there. I did enjoy videoing my friends doing it. This is Dano he pretty much rocked roll practice. I don't know that this is a skill I will ever choose to master but I do know how to wet escape :)

July 10, 2011 – Sheriff’s Department.

Plain is classified as a wilderness setting when it comes to treating medical stuff. All of our services are volunteer like the fire department and paramedics. We got back from our IK training got all of our gear put away and our River Manager got a call from the Sheriff asking if we could be a part of a rescue on the Wenatchee River. It was quite humorous because we were all walking up the hill on the ranch towards the Lodge where most of us live and Shane stops walking to talk on the phone and a couple of guy guides are giddy at the fact they get to take part in a rescue… well I guess we were all a mixture of giddy, worried and ready for action. So Shane tells Sheriff Mike that he has his team assembled and we will be there in 10 min. Sheriff Mike was expecting a response time of at least an hour or more so he was pretty shocked. So we run… and I mean all out sprint to get our wetsuits and PFD’s. We weren’t given much info about what the rescue entailed so we took enough guides/paddlers to fill two boats if needed. We drive over to the scene that was 5 min away from our location and all of the fire trucks/aid cars/ rescue vehicles from the area are in these people’s yards so we rig up our raft. In the end we were thankful that it was a really simple rescue scenario. An older couple somehow had run their “raft” otherwise known as a K-Mart Coffin into a strainer in the middle of the river and had been able to get on top of the tree but needed a ride from the tree back to shore. One of our guides tried to get their raft loose so that it wouldn’t become river trash but it was thoroughly stuck (side note we floated by it 3 weeks later and it was still there) The sheriff mentioned at the end how thankful they were for our help and quick response. He really hadn’t expected any rafting outfitter to be able to assemble a team that was sober enough to respond since the rafting community isn’t known for its soberness but we proved that we are a different kind of outfitter.

Many hands make light work of rigging a raft.

In my sprinting and grabbing gear I grabbed the DSLR but I couldn't quickly put my hands on my long lense so these photos are less then exciting but better than nothing.

A quick trip to the middle of the river to pick up the two stranded passengers and now it is time to de-rig the raft.

But first it had to be carried through a lot of people's backyards.

Adventure Oddities #1

#1 Leave No Trace (LNT)


For many of you who live in the Pacific Northwest LNT is not something new or crazy. The concept of Leave No Trace is just that Don’t leave a Trace. There should be no trace that anyone else has ever been there. I don’t want to walk into a camp area and see toilet paper from others scattered around thus, I don’t leave my toilet paper to be scattered around by animals for others to find. We are more of LNT enthusiasts than many others because as an outfitter who runs lots of trips if our group of 10-20 people doesn’t practice LNT it is a big deal and leaves a big impact.

So you might be asking what are some LNT practices you follow? Well let me tell you:

- “Pack it in, Pack it out” Everything you carry in you can carry out. If you don’t want to carry it out don’t carry it in. In the back country this includes everything but it does not include bathroom deposits. For # 2 you dig a hole 6-8 inches deep and bury your ‘deposits’ (It is different on the river but I will get into that later) Always remembering that the community trowel NEVER, we emphatically emphasize NEVER touches anything but dirt. For #1 you go on a rock or on a durable surface. The whole concept of “watering” the vegetation is past. Though you think it makes sense to ‘water’ the plants…. Your pee is not water but is very salty so the deer and other animals will rip up the plants to get to the salt thus killing the vegetation you are working to protect by walking on the trails. So why pee on rocks…. Well you are pretty much creating a salt lick for the animals. Gross, yes but they might as well not kill the plants when they are searching for the salt. Toilet Paper if it is needed is put in a blue bag which is just a plastic bag that is tinted blue. The nice blue bag then goes in your own pocket/pack and never again makes contact with the community trowel/TP/Hand Sani kit.

- Micro Trash: Is not our friend. Even the littlest crumb attracts animals which is not practicing LNT so we are all about micro trash. You have a choice when you find yourself with some micro trash…

o First option is many of our guides favorites and that is to pick it up, dust it off and eat it. Option # 2 If you are not into that then you can put it in with the lunch trash and carry it out but it does not stay on the ground.

- We always hike on the trail there is no cutting switch backs or making a new path. If it is muddy we want everyone to just walk through the mud so that we don’t widen the path more than it needs to be.

- If we are walking off trail you don’t follow each other in a single file instead you fan out so that lots of plants are experiencing a little trauma instead of a few plants facing extreme trauma.