Well, my last week of camp was another week of doing Pioneers. As with all of the programs I'm in charge of, it was a huge adventure. On our first day out in the canoes, I was listening to the weather radio in the morning, which forecasted rain, but nothing severe. Then, we were hearing thunder while we where out on the the river, so I flipped it on again. The first thing I heard was that there was nickel sized hail and 30-40 mph winds headed at us. There was really no cover anywhere close to where we where, so we pulled out on the side of the river on a little spit of land, because we didn't want to be out on the water if lighting hit. Then, we flipped the canoes over and put one end up on a log so that we could crawl under them if hail hit.
Until hail hit, however, we thought it was better to stay farther back in the trees for protection from lighting. Furthermore, by the time we got things arranged, we where already soaking wet and people where getting cold because of the wind and wetness so, we didn't want to go under the canoes because we wouldn't be able to huddle for warmth. Thus, we spent 30 minutes waiting out a storm with no real shelter from the rain and cold other than our huddle. It was quite an adventure but at the end of the week, campers said it was actually one of their favorite parts. Luckily it didn't hail and it blew over it in under an hour leaving us with sun for the rest of the day. So I turned one of my campers into a mermaid.
The rest of the canoe trip was relatively uneventful and the horse overnight after that was relatively uneventful, except that I ate too much bannock (deep fried bread) and had to puke in the middle of the night. The hiking overnight after that, however, was wrought with adventure. Bryce and Steph decided to bring out all of our luggage using the horse wagon. Bryce was pretty sure the horses could pull the wagon through the creek on the way out, but wasn't totally sure because he hadn't done it before. Turns out that the horses could, but it was a hard pull for them and it looked pretty sweet.
Bryce and Steph decided to stay for dinner, which was fun because we don't normally get guests on my programs. Dinner, however, continued to be an adventure because we got hit with a rainstorm. It greatly slowed down the process of cooking dinner, so we didn't eat until really late, but at least we had tents for shelter and some of us just sat under the horse wagon.
Some people thought that it was fun and a big adventure and some thought it was miserable
By the end of the week, I'm pretty sure that everybody thought that it had been a fun week and that the rain had just added to the adventure of it.
This is all of the gear at one end of a portage. We had to pull it all out of the water and carry it over the portage.
Here, Jeremy demonstrates how to carry a canoe. Note he also also carrying a pack. Together, they probably add up to ~70 lbs.
This was my favorite portage, because it was short and it was quite pretty. It was on a stream and it was just there to get around some rocks and waterfalls.
Benjamin and I were canoe partners for the week. He made a solid power house. We meant to teach him how to steer, but didn't really get around to it, so I was in back all week.
There was a fire ban in effect for a lot of the week, but we were able to have one fire, which was really nice.
Overall, the BWCA is quite a beautiful place.
