Learning the Ropes--Wilderness (Jan. 23, 2011)

One of my new year's resolutions was to write a quick post about interesting things that I do. Although I have a history research paper looming on the horizon, I wanted to jot down some thoughts about my Wilderness Campskills Training Day before I started :)

Today was another early start. I do miss the weekends where I can get up at 10-11 and have a leisurely breakfast. This morning saw me crawl out of bed at the depressing hour of 8 AM. Tom, the director of wilderness, had given the Emergency Response students a brief delay...we didn't have to get to training until 9 AM. (Everyone else had to get there at 8)

After slowly waking up in the shower, I arrived at Wilderness training. We went down to the dungeons to pick up our packs that contained everything we would need to train in camp skills. The idea behind this session was to train us in basic backpack adjustment and stove use that we would need for our first years in August. The session started out with backpack skills. This year, the school has started to replace the standard 25-year old packs with brand-new Osprey Packs. The new packs are top of the line for program packs (they're basically a stripped-down version of my new pack). Tom had us take apart both types of pack and put them back together again. The goal that he had in mind was that we needed to be able to fix any pack quickly when we are out on expedition.

The second portion of the training concerned stoves. The school uses a type of camp stove called WhisperLites, which are extremely simple and durable. Tom taught us how to light the stoves (it's quite a complicated process, involving lighting the stove twice). Tom also taught us how to take both the fuel supply bottles and the stoves apart and fix any component that might be broken. To be honest, the design of the stoves is very simple, but ingenious. It's pretty difficult to design such a delicate instrument (and camp stoves really are) that can withstand heavy use (and wear/tear).

All in all, it was a really interesting day. Now, on to my research paper :P