What's outstanding to me about the Pacific Northwest is
the diversity of terrain and skill types that students can encounter;
from ocean to alpine, lowland forests to
eastern slope high desert. We offer 5 different skill sets:
backpacking, glacier mountaineering, rock climbing, sea kayaking
and keelboat sailing. What really stands out to me is
students traveling in these rugged course areas,
being novices at the beginning and finishing their course at the end
having been to such wild places
and feeling proficient having traveled through a place that before seemed so foreign,
seemed so rugged, seemed so far from what they could do
and at the end it feeling almost like home to them.
In sailing there's such a learning curve and you basically walk onto the boat
and you don't know anything.
I didn't know anything. Paired with that it's
a lot of really technical skills but also understanding
theory and how wind works and then there's the ocean
and there's the weather and there's other people you have to rely on so it
combines a lot of different elements that are kind of the ultimate challenge.
In the beginning I was very intimidated by it and I thought I wasn't going to
like it at all, but it's awesome. The more you learn the more fun it is
and it's just pure joy every single time you're out there on the boat.
Once you get the sails up and shut the motor off, you're just moving by
the power of the wind and i think it's
fascinating. It's really environmentally friendly in my mind
it's zero-emission. Your power source is sustainable and renewable.
I think that's awesome. The climbing was really great.
It was fun to be in a totally different place that I have never climbed.
I've never climbed like that before. There's nothing better than
sinking your hand into a hole, locking it in,
knowing that's going to hold, and then rearranging the feet and having the same feeling there.
Making a move and then completing it. It's not something you have to wait for.
It's such a quick feedback experience, you make it or you don't.
If you don't, then you try again. Being able to make it is really exciting for me.
If someone tells you, this is how we see leadership developing,
it's in these categories, then
when you see the leadership you can hang it up
on one of those pegs and then when you look back at the end of the day you say "okay
so that's where this was occurring, that's where this was occurring".
In a classroom environment, it's slow, it's sterile,
it's a lot of information and it's very little application.
You don't really learn how to interact and understand what you're learning.
Out here it's all real. That's kind of the beauty of nature,
it's the quiet, the birds, the natural things. I think they speak to most people.
I don't think that you can come out here and NOT learn something.
The favorite part for me
is when you are making a summit attempt and you set out at 2/3 in the morning,
everything is pitch black, you've got the stars above. The only thing that you can see
are these string of lights where the other rope teams are.
You are limited to your own personal world, but you know your teammates are
out there and you're all working to the same objective. Then at 4:00
the sun comes out and suddenly everything becomes pink and
blue, and that's when I really feel
like everything, all the hardship, all the hunger, all the cold,
has been worth it, for that moment. Waking up early in the middle of the
night was beautiful and you could see so far out
to the other ranges, it was a beautiful view
the entire time. Getting to the summit was fun, everybody was pumped.
It was good to see everybody make it up there strong and push through.
It was definitely worth it. Some of it was challenging,
sometimes I was miserable, but the next day I feel even better. I feel like I've
overcome something, every day's been a challenge and every day
I felt like I've accomplished something.