We’re pretty excited to be heading into Week Three of our Rocks, Ropes & Boats Summer Camp. It’s another full camp week for us, with campers coming from both Reno and Incline Village. We’ll be posting a “best of” selection of photos each day this week to highlight our adventures. It’s just not possible for us to post pictures of each camper each day. For reasons of safety we can’t always stop to take pictures…and there’s the matter of already exceeding our bandwidth for the month, which shut down our site this morning!
Monday
Today was our first day on the ropes course with our new campers, and a few returning veterans. Our big focus today was to work through ground challenges and low elements to build trust and confidence throughout our team. All of this groundwork should pay off as we move into the high course and later into the rock climbing and rappeling later this week. Here’s a selection of photos from today:
Tuesday
It was an awesome day of pushing new limits at the Project Discovery ropes course with our campers today. They each found out that the magic does indeed happen outside of their comfort zone. One of the most awesome things that kids shared today was that they thought that being a part of a belay team and keeping their friends safe was more important than climbing or riding the zipline. What else was awesome was that we avoided any serious threats from thunderstorms and enjoyed a refreshing mid-afternoon rain shower to dampen the dust and keep things cool.
Wednesday
It was a fine day for rock climbing at Trippy Rock today. We ran five different stations for climbers of varying abilities. In the afternoon, we converted a couple of the climbs in some nice long rappels to challenge our campers. Watching the progression of our campers from Monday through Wednesday is something that we are proud of about the Rocks, Ropes and Boats Camp. They’re really starting to blossom into very capable little adventurers. Here’s quite a few pictures from today:
Thursday
It was a good day to be out of the heat of Reno. The cooler Tahoe Meadows temperatures provided an inviting venue for two different hikes. Mark lead a slightly more leisurely hike (6.7 miles total) up the Relay Peak road, where campers discovered not only hundreds of frogs, but also thousands of butterflies. We also found an amazing hill with a lot of snow for some safe glissading…during the last week of July. Mike lead a hike for those seeking a faster pace and a bit more adventure. The crew summited Incline Peak and then did their own glissades down toward Incline Lake, where the Project Discovery staff had set up a temporary zipline that ended in the lake. It was an awesome surprise for our campers.
Friday
We finished up the Project Discovery summer camp season with a bang today. It was our hottest day yet at Sandy Beach, making it a great day for a boat race. We warmed up with some rousing tag games and other action games, played some ultimate frisbee in the water, and then built some some boats. Each team learned some good lessons along the way, because some boats are better suited for water travel than others! For Project Discovery staff, we’ll be turning back to our usual routine of ropes course days for schools that are going back in session, teacher trainings, sports teams warmups and other team building and leadership development quests. We’re already looking forward to our 2018 summer camps!
