Post by Azurerana on Jun 29, 2007 20:25:28 GMT -5
Well, now that it's over and everyone lived, I can tell the story.From June 11 through June 21, I was a 'cave specialist' for a lower teens residential summer camp. They did a caving and canoeing unit. We had 7 campers from 12 to 16, between 2-3 Jr. Counselors, 2 senior counselors and 3 adults-- me, and two others with geo degrees--one was also the religious minister for the group.
I was with the group for 7 of the 14 days. We either went, or set up trips for the kids, including 2 lantern show caves, 10 wild caves, 2 cave entrances, 2 full days of canoeing, and 5 (maybe 6) major Missouri spring visits. The caves varied from easy walking, though slimed muddy, and one (the camp's cave) which is climbable/chimneying/crawling. I was with them for 11 of the caves. One of the days, the kids did a full day of cave restoration with Jon Beard. One of the days, they entirely mapped a <100 foot cave from scratch with compass/tape/graph paper. (The cave was relatively small, so one subgroup had a novel approach-- they started at the back and mapped TO the entrance. They had three days of topo map reading instruction and learned cave map reading. They spent 4 nights camping a 100 miles or more away from the main camp.
I did a Powerpoint for them, and a hands on Missouri Rock ID with real rocks. They got Bill Elliott's cave life booklets, NSS responsible caving booklets, my Springs Caves and Karst handouts, cave maps, cave map symbols, topo map symbols-- probably too much reading material, but hey, they could keep it.
None of the kids were mine. Half of the entire crew were from Texas. I adjusted to a diet of white bread pbj, hot dogs and breakfast burritos, tacos, crumbled graham cracker cobbler and still lost 10 pounds. (Because of religious strictures, these folk don't do soda pop or caffeine-- I missed my tea!) They're getting over a gigabyte of copies of photos I took. As a 'thank you' I made them Cave and Canoe Club Founder badge-a-minute buttons--showing their canoes outside of the one cave we canoed into on the Current River.
I had pretty many trepidations taking this on--I've done a lot of cave programs, but nothing so ambitious, and am pleased that it went so well. (Not perfect of course--the first time out, nothing is perfect.) The kids took pretty easy to the helmets and 3 lights, but gloves and kneepads--that's something else again. In one cave, I let them learn the hard way what gloves (or lack thereof) are for. After teaching them map reading, they just tromped off to the cave on my sayso; I let them 'accidentally' discover another cave along the same trail.
So now you know what I did on my summer vacation. The End.
