Thursday October 13, 2011

We woke up and had some tea and immediately started breaking camp down. We needed to knock over our wind wall and collapse our snow trench. It was really hard to collapse (which was a good thing because that means it was really strong). Marissa's eyelashes were covered in ice by the time we finished breaking camp and started walking back to the instructors huts.

Next we had a long lecture on how to use our radios. Dannie, Darren, an Instructor and me were pretty tired by the end of it.

The last activity we had to do was a simulation of white-out conditions. We needed to design and execute a plan of how to safely look for a member of our team who had "gone missing." To simulate white-out conditions, members of our team had to wear buckets on their heads. As you can see, they did not do well. However, the simulation was not meant to embarrass us, but rather, to show us how difficult it can be to anticipate every possible problem.

By the end of our Happy Campers experience, while we were all exhausted and ready for some real food and a shower, we all had bonded quite a bit and we really did have a blast!