Teton High Adventure

Heyo! I'm back from Wyoming, where I went to the Teton High Adventure Base for our Stake Varsity and Venturing Scout Camp! How's that for a first line? Anyway, it was really fun. First, we got there after a 5-hour drive and had a River Orientation. Then we had Lunch. They had surprisingly good food there. We had Chicken Sandwiches, Hamburgers, Meatball sandwiches, Egg Rolls, French Toast, Steak, (This was over the course of three days, not one meal!) and more. After lunch we went to White Water Rafting. That was fun! We had eleven people in a raft, 8 rowers, one guide, one person that just sat in the middle, and one person that got to sit on the very front of the boat and take all the rapids head-on. (Or Legs-on, as they were the parts that hit the rapids.) We all took turns doing that. We had a really cool guide. We called him Captain Jack. One part of the Rapids was called the Champagne Rapids. There were all these bubbles in the water after them, and he told us it felt cool to stick your feet in. 3 people did, and then he snuck up and pushed them off the edge of the boat. It was really funny, especially because one of them was someone we were trying to get to get in the water anyway. We all jumped in of our own accord except him.

The next day we did what was called a C.O.P.E. Course. (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience, I think.) First was the Lower Cope course, which included this one challenge where there were ten tire swings between two platforms, and we had to get 20-something people across, but at one point we had to have everyone on a tire. That meant that we had to have 3 people on most of the tires! It was difficult, but it was fun. Then there was the High Cope Course, which was a bunch of metal wires strung between tall, wobbly poles, and we had to go across each of the different challenges on these metal wires. Did I mention that the wires were 50 feet in the air? (Honestly, That's a guess, not a fact. They were pretty high.) That was way difficult. But I had fun doing it, even if my legs couldn't stop shaking... My mom asked me if I learned anything about myself on the Cope Courses. I said "Yeah, I have almost no Upper Body Strength!" I guess I'm more of a kicker than a climber... I can kick a football or a kickball pretty far, but I can't climb up a pole! And apparently we now have a motto. Every once and a while Brother Astel (??? on spelling) would say something like "If you had died, it would have been a glorious death!" And then we'd all yell "Glorious Death!" It was funny. I changed it a bit to make a summary of the camp. I got the first part from the guy who did Orientation, and though he never said it, he might as well have.

"Fifty Percent of you won't come back alive. Fifty percent of those won't even come back dead. But If you die, it will be a Glorious Death! Glorious Death!"

The last day we got up early to go to Canoeing. That was fun, but it wasn't my favorite. We had to kneel in the boats for maximum stability when going through the rapids, and my legs were really, really sore by the end. I was also deathly afraid of falling or swamping into a rapid, so I was freaked out. One of the other groups went through a big rapid, and their boat filled with water. I looked and thought "Two boats swamped on that one... Wait... Calvin and Brother Nelson are still in their boat!" It was funny, their boat was totally submerged, and they were still sitting in it. Kenyon and Marshal hit a rock and knocked one of their screws loose, so they had a small hole in their boat the entire way. Good thing we brought out own Bail Buckets!

That afternoon we went on a hike, which was pretty boring considering what we had done the past two days. On the way down, we met a guy in a wheel chair being pushed and carried up the rocky trail. We helped him up the next ridge, and then continued. We knew with all the steep rocks, he probably wouldn't make it to the top, but we didn't want to tell him that, did we? Too bad we didn't meet him on the way up, then we could have helped him to the top.

So all in all, I had a lot of fun.

Random Quote from Camp! (Read with a french accent)
"Twenty-Nine people go into ze water... Twenty-Two people come out of ze water... Ze ice-cream man, he gets ze rest..." -Adam

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Atra ilian tauthr ono.