Howdy!
So to give a brief table of contents, some of my recent
adventures have been:
1) Rerouting the Hawksbill trail
2) Intern Diversity Training at the Town Office
3) Beginning work!
Featuring preparing backpacks, gear, and food for people to take out on
course
4) Exploring the Table Rock Region (featuring Bouldering and
Exploring with Pip)
SAWS Trail Building
After all staff
we had a day off, but my supervisor (rightly) thought it would be a good idea
for us to go out and learn about trail building. We worked with SAWS (Southern Applachain Wilderness
Stewards) and helped build a trail near our base camp. One of the reasons we did this was to
learn to build trails, but another reason was that we were trying to learn how
to do this on our own. I don’t
think we know enough to do what SAWS does alone, but I think NCOBS may use SAWS
as a service opportunity for future students. Below are some pictures of us working
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The (Day 1) Group |
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All 6 feet and 7 inches of Aaron |
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Workin |
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Table Rock. So good. |
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Our boss |
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Bouldering |
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Our Group |
Day 2! More of the same, so I didn't take many pictures. I did, however, do some serious tree removal work today, so I took some pictures of those:
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I chopped my way through this thing. It was pretty sweet |
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Ben going to town on this monster |
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Jesse givin the tree his effort |
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The remains. Sadly you'll have to tilt your head left, as I couldn't figure out a way to rotate the pic. |
DIVERSITY TRAINING
After working with SAWS, we decided to devote a day to
Diversity Training. We met at the
town office and did a few activities that helped us to better understand how to
work with Diversity in NCOBS. The
information was interesting, but I honestly didn’t find it particularly
helpful.
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(Miscellaneous) Our all staff picture. I really hope a digital version of this goes online at some point... |
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Talking about words (i.e. privilege, social power, etc...) |
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A BEAR! This was my first real life bear siting. Pretty sweet. |
WORK!
After a month of training, it’s finally time to begin
WORKING! Crazy right?! And what
was even crazier was the fact I actually enjoyed the work. It’s one thing to have a monotonous 9-5
job packaging food, but it’s another to know that whatever you do, directly
influences someone’s outdoor expedition.
The fact that every backpack I select will become someone’s home base
makes the work a lot more rewarding.
Below are some pictures of the backpacks we packed,
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Packed by the pro's (aka 3/4 interns) |
I didn’t get a
picture of the gear we packed, but I did get a picture of us working in the
food hut
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Food hut! |
and a MASSIVE supply of Natural Peanut Butter. It was 35 pounds folks. And don’t worry, I tasted it for them,
it’s safe to eat ;)
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Three letters come to mind: Y-U-M |
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Miscellaneous pic: Bryan picking up a snake. Sadly I snapped the pic just as he put it down, but it was pretty sweet. |
OFF DAY ADVENTURES!
AND! Then I got
two days off! And fortunately for me, a course also started that day, which meant cooked breakfast (usually you just do your own thing in the morning).
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You may be thinking: "Are those biscuits as delicious as they look?!" - the answer is YES!
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I was thinking of
scouting an epic route that I planned for GORP, but I decided to just explore
base camp a bit. In the morning I
went off to the boulder field which hasn’t really been used much,
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Heading off to the boulder field. Decided to bring my ipod as I was going solo. Gave me something to listen to. |
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My route! I created a V3ish and a V2ish, then combined them. Should make the final route around a V3/4. Either way it was a ton of fun! |
I then went off with a fellow Instructor Buddy and we went
off to explore Table Rock. We
started off by going to very scenic Chimneys,
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Pip heading up to the Table Rock sign |
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Love it |
and then headed back North to
explore some campsites. We also
passed a
Unity Crew (Unicorn Crew to be exact, yes, they
had one), and took some group shots for them so everyone could be in the
picture. We also packed out some
trash some previous non-LNT’ers had left in their campsite. We then headed up to two more
campsites, and then headed back to base.
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The trail |
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HUGE Shroom! |
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This rope ladder actually led up to a campsite |
And that was it! We got back to base, had dinner, and then I just hung out.
And that brings me to today! If you're wondering what I did today, I could give you a hint: look at the date of the last couple of blog posts. Yep. I've been on my computer almost all day. I really needed a rest day, so that's what today has been.
ANDDD tomorrow I go back to work, and I believe I’ll be
starting pre-course for my first NCOBS course! That is, the one I will be logistically (kind of) in charge
of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Next up, two posts are coming. The first is about the fundamentals of my Thru Hike, and the one after that is going to be about the first part of the trail, GEORGIA!
Enjoy!
Chris
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