Star light, Star bright . . .

Looking out of my window just now and seeing the stars has sparked a fun little musing in my head. If you have spent any amount of time camping, especially if you don't have an enclosed tent or camper, you quickly find the unobstructed view of the stars to be a mixed blessing. Yes they are beautiful, but clouds work like blankets and a clear sky means that there is no blanket to trap the heat around the Earth and the temperature drops quickly. So while when I guide trips and the groups from cities come and look at the stars and think "Wow look at all those stars! This is great!" I often think "Wow, look at all those stars, this is great! And now it will be cold." Stay warm everybody.

Long Time

Well it has been a very long time since I have posted an update. So here we go, I just got done with week 5 of the summer and it has been several good weeks.

Week 2 was a trip on the Brule River in Wisconsin and it was an amazing run with a great group of kids, no major dangerous tips happened, a few fun ones but nothing serious. It was a very warm week that week and lost of sun. So there were many sunburned campers and guides a like.

Week 3 was the pilot run of a sailing trip on the Apostle Islands. Which was just a ridiculous amount of fun. A very relaxing and fun trip, the beauty of the sailing trip is that you end up doing a lot of work for a very short amount time, then there is a large amount of relaxing time. It was also very nice in that we had a group of all boys who had just gotten done with their senior year of high school and they were just a really inclusive and positive group of guys.



Week 4 was also a very fun week I got to guide a backpacking trip on the Superior Hiking Trail. We went from Caribou Lake just north of Lutsen, MN south to Temperence River State Park just south of Tofte, MN which ends up being a 24 mile hike in 4 nights. It is just an absolutly beautiful trip and I again had a wonderful group of kids, most of whom had been to our camp before. They were really supportive of each other in terms of the pack weights and really also very conserned about myself and my co-guide's well being as well. It was a very physically intensive week but it was just an amazing, amazing week.

So then this last week, week 5 was a fun bizare hard and frustrating week on the Brule river again. We started off with a little bit if rain as we left the trail head that was off and on through out the day. Then as we got closer to our campsite the rain picked up a bit and as we pulled in there was lightning and thunder. So we gathered as much wood as we could and proceaded to work on getting a fire started and we did in pouring rain. We had a fire and cooked food but we didn't get to bed until 2 am. Which is kind of how my sleep patterns went for the rest of the week. I also got to do a bit of canoe rescueing on the ledges as a canoe completely missed the chute that they were supposed to hit and got royaly stuck. So I had to run a canoe back up a sketchy portage trail to a place where I could launch and get back to them and get the canoe unstuck and working.

So it has a few good weeks, this next week I'm then headed off to the Apostle Islands again to do a Voyageur Canoe trip. And I'll leave you with a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Week to Week

My attempts to stay up to date every week fell through last week because I ended up having only a half day off between weeks.

Week one of the summer was a difficult and interesting week, I had a group of inner city kids from the twin cities. Lots of behavioral issues and just a really tough but good week. I feel like all of the kids got a lot out of the week and that the adult leaders really got a chance to connect with the kids. We were on the Flambaux river in central Wisconsin which is just a beautiful river that is mostly flat water canoeing with some sweet rapids towards the end. I unfortunately was unable to take my group all the way down the river, partially because they just weren't up for the paddling involved to get there but also because I didn't feel confidante that they could handle it and listen to my co-guide and myself.

This last week was a completely different week this week a was a trip on the Bois Brule river with a group of foster kids from western Minnesota, and they were just absolutely amazing group of kids. They were all very up beat and respectful of the rules and boundries we set, and they really were willing to help out with anything and everything. It was just a really great week, the weather was beautiful if not a little hot. We also had very few tips through out the week, which with the Brule is a very fortunate as the river is fiarly rapidy and technical. The end of the week is rather bizare, we ended having to evactuate the group and had to end the week on the Amnicon river rather than the Brule.

The story of this is that as my group pulled into our campsite and there was already a group there, that had a reservation for two of the three sites at the camp. The campsite is also an extreamly primitave one and kind of hard to see that there are three sometimes. So they were not terribly happy to see up or really even very cooperative. One of the men though was willing to drive me out to where there was cell phone reception for me to make a call back to base to try and get things figured out. On the drive out the man was very open about how this group of guys was out here to party and not willing to tone there activies, and considering I was esentially sitting on a case of beer as we drove out, I wasn't terribly comfortable with having my group out there with this group of guys either. So the decision was made between our director and myself to pull out and move camp sites. It ended up being just a really positive and realaxing evening for the group and this morning we just took our time and really explored the beach and the kids found a lot of beach glass and agates to take home with them. So as a whole the week was just a really positve and awesome week. And now I'll leave you with a few pictures of the sailing training.

The end of the beginning.

Well after two and a half long, wonderful, stressful, exciting, boring, intense, and relaxed weeks I am finally done with staff training! It has been a great process and for me went much faster that I was expecting.

Our first half week was spent in base going over trail standards and starting wilderness first aid training. So lost of long days spent sitting and listening to lecture material and doing some discussion and practice of various skills. Then as we approached the first full week we got ready to go out on trail for the first time.

The first full week was then spent out on two of the rivers that we take trips on during the summer, the Namekagon river and the Bois Brule river. This was so we could get a good feel of how our trail standards actually played out in real life and to get some experience paddleing in current and running rapids. The first night was on the Namekagon and very relaxed paddleing, and the next day we moved to the Bois Brule river and immedately jumped into rapids. Then a day of slow water and our last day on the river was spent running the Lenroot and Mays ledges. The ledges are where the river has cut through all the top soil and is cutting then into the bed rock below. They are so much fun and I got the chance this year to solo paddle down them which is a real confidence boost and affirmation of my paddleing ability that has grown over the last two summers.

After the river trip we returned to base for three days to finish our "book" learning and then we split in to guiding groups and got ready to go out to the Apostle Islands. The Apostle Islands is where we take our giant Voyageur Canoe that is 34 feet long and fits 16 people and go Island hopping. The only day that we had even remotely adverse weather was our first night, but after that the rest of the week was absolutely beautiful. I love the Apostle Islands and the Voyageur Canoe, there is just this amazing sense of traveling on Lake Superior under human power and in a canoe!

After several good days of paddleing in the Islands and many first aid senerios for the practial half of our first aid class we returned to base once again and finished off the last of our training. Now it is my day off and tomorrow the first set of camper shows up for the first week!!! It is so very good be back in the swing of things up here.

Wilderness Water Safety or Try to swim and freeze to death.

So as I've been up in the Northwoods the last couple of days I've been taking Wilderness Water Safety, which is a backcountry specific water safety/life guarding course. It was an intense two day course, that kicked my butt multiple times and ways.

Our first day was spent at a pool in Superior, Wisconsin working on strokes and saving techniques from 8 am until 5 pm that evening. Although I am still very sore from doing lots of laps and towes and surface dives. The high light of the first day were the pulling people off of the bottom of the pool, doing 5 minutes of continuous surface dives, and making a whirlpool at the very end. After class those of us staying at camp went back and had dinner and spent sometime exploring the area and catching up. After many hours of great conversation and time spent together we went for an early bedtime as we were all beat and the next day would be starting at 9 am.

The next morning I was up for 8 am breakfast of egg strata and baked oatmeal, which is by far the best way of having oatmeal that I have ever experienced. Then at nine when everyone finally arrived we started up with some dry land scenarios and lecture time then headed down to the river to do some sighting and rock finding.

It's not an easy skill to find a rock (in lieu of a body) in a completely murky and muddy river where you can't even see down an inch much less a few feet.

But with much practice and patience we recovered every single rock that was thrown.

Triumph!!

Then their was Lunch.

After lunch it was back out to the river for some more in river practice. This time for canoe over canoe rescues and neck and back injuries.

And after a long two days I'm now settling in to a little quieter time for the next two to three days with some camp shopping and then it's back down to KC for my sisters graduation.

Heading Out.

It's finally time for the migration north, I'll be joining all the bird and butterflies that make the long trek north to our summer habitats. I'm in the mode of making sure that I have every thing set and ready to go and that I'm not missing any thing, which I probably am. It also has not quite set in yet that I am leaving tomorrow and that for the next week I'll be living in my sleeping bag once again getting to see the beauty of Amnicon and hopefully getting a short paddle or swim in before I come back down for my sisters graduation and then head north for the rest of the summer.

I'll leave you here with a nice sunset from last summer.

Plans . . .

As I gear up for my last Sunday shift working at Genghis Khan I'm starting to think about plans for this blog over the summer. I think that it would be fun to try and keep a running blog of my adventures in the North Woods. So I'll try and post once a week on my trips and goings on running various rivers in Wisconsin.

I also wanted to take this time to do a little updating from last weekend as Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Arkansas. Which despite my preconceived ideas of what Arkansas would be like was amazingly beautiful. The climbing last weekend was also amazing with the weather cooperating much more than I could hope for. I got in 9 or so climbs in the two days I was able to be down there and 5 of them were lead climbs, which is still a fairly new thing for me outside. It is definitely a completely different mental game than lead climbing in a gym but I love it.

So finally I'll leave everyone with a few pictures of my time down in HCR.

Looking across at the East Side from our campsite up by the North Forty.

A good view of our modest tent city.