Second Group Meeting

The sophomores met with their teacher and student leaders for the second time today. Today we talked about the trails, shelters and mountains we will be visiting and conducted the first round of clothing checks.

The routes are designed to balance beautiful terrain with managable mileage for our students. Each route is a little different and staff selected their routes carefully considering the strengths and weaknesses of their particular group. Each trail crosses a peak above 5000 feet and also includes a rest day in which little mileage is covered.

Here's a map of one of the routes - click on the picture to see it full size. You'll notice among other things that the distance between camp 2 and 3 is quite slight. That's the rest day I mentioned earlier.

Overall the routes vary between 8 and 11 miles total for the week. Here's Ted and student leader Leah talking about their trail. What's the matter Leah - not so sure snow will be off the trail by the end of May? Come on - think sun!
After learning more about where they would be hiking students were to show their teachers their core gear: long johns, rain gear, sleeping bag and boots. No worries that many students didn't have these items quite yet, we still have a few more weeks to get everything in! See our previous posts here for more info on layering and shopping. We're also setting up gear runs this weekend and next weekend to Concord. Jayne brought some gear with her today to show her group what she's looking for. We check all the student gear prior to the trip to make sure it will keep them warm and dry.
Jayne's group was pretty nervous during the first group meeting, but they seemed more confident, and asked great questions today.

Meanwhile behind the scenes we're packing gear, prepping food, hiring wilderness instructors and getting ready to go. It's a massive job to get the crews out the door and a lot of credit before we're even on the trail goes to Dave and Colleen who have been hard at work. Thanks y'all - I appreciate your work! My only question is who's going to be packing that sweet red fold out chair on the trail?
That was the second group meeting, one more to go and just about three weeks before the trip!