Wilderness Orientation Trip (Days 10, 11, and 12) PART ONE

*This post is pretty long, so I decided to break it up into two parts. Check back for part two tomorrow!*

Yesterday, I posted about my experience at Ghost Ranch...now it's on to wilderness! On Sunday, we woke up to a very wet campground--it had rained overnight! Fortunately, I had slept under a shelter, so I wasn't too wet! After a fairly lazy morning and lunch spent talking to co-years, it was time to get ready for wilderness. It was pretty crazy as we packed up all of our stuff and got ready to head out on the trail, but we were eventually ready! The school provided all of the equipment (if needed), though I had my own boots and sleeping bag (thank you Patrick). Carrying a pack is a very different sort of hiking than what I've done before. One doesn't appreciate quite how easy day-hiking is until they've had a 50 pound pack on their back!

We were hiking up to a place called Upper Camp East, about a 7 mile trek up a canyon. We left Ghost Ranch at about 2:30 and began hiking. We hiked for about 3 hours before making camp in a large meadow on a plateau. There were about 9 of us in a group--5 first-years, 3 second-year wilderness leaders, and 1 Wilderness Guide along as a guest. Hiking in such a small group allowed us to get to know one another really well. The team members were:

Myself
Cheyenne, from Barbados (Firstie)
Svenja, from Germany (Firstie)
Jomar, from the Philippines (Firstie)
Titan, from Indonesia (Firstie)
Ben, from the USA (Wilderness Leader)
Daniel, from Venezuela (Wilderness Leader)
Zeinab, from Lebanon (Wilderness Leader)
Mars, from the USA (Guest Wilderness Guide)

Ben, Zeinab, and Daniel were the second years in charge of leading the group. Mars is a graduate of UWC (Class of '08), who came along as a guest. Ben and Daniel are two of the funniest people I have ever met. All three Wilderness Leaders were excellent. The first night, we ate like kings. Ben and Daniel are amazing cooks, and so, after making camp, we feasted upon quesadillas with chicken, pepperjack and cheddar cheese, and salsa. They were so good! Unfortunately, during the middle of dinner, it started to rain and we had a rather wet dinner on our hands. The food still tasted wonderful though, and we went to bed with full stomachs. Overnight, it rained quite hard and we awoke in the morning to find a pretty soaked tarp! Fortunately, nearly all of our equipment was still dry.

Ben hard at work in the kitchen!

Our (rather wet) tarp...

We had a rather extended breakfast. Unfortunately, one of our fuel bottles had malfunctioned and we could only use one stove to cook breakfast. We finally broke camp at around 10, about 2 hours later than we had planned. We had a hard 3 hour hike up to our final campsite. The vistas were beautiful, although most of us were too out of breath to really appreciate them...

A mid-hike photo break

Two of our leaders...

The view, halfway up!

Finally, we reached the top of Upper Camp East. The final 20 minutes of the hike involved climbing the rim of the mesa above. It was steep and hard work with a big pack, but we finally made it. We found a beautiful campsite close to the rim of the mesa. The kitchen had especially beautiful views. As we poked around in the area around camp, we came across a rather interesting pile of junk. Someone had left a huge pile of stuff in the middle of a (former) campsite. Among the various items we found were: a jacket, a rake, several videos including Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and yes, a Playstation 2. Incredible as it sounds, we actually found a PS2 in the middle of the wilderness. We were rather surprised.