End of camp 2008

The SRCC camp blog is new this year. It's a way to communicate with everyone in the camp, plus future campers who may want to know what goes on here. Why didn't I think of this before??!! Oh well, some things are so obvious that you don't think of them! Smith Rock Climbing Camp 2008 ended on Saturday, July 26th. It was really sad to see it end because it was such an amazing, talented group of kids this year. Each year we say the group is better than the last! Can it keep getting better every year???!! We believe the answer is, YES! Here is a brief rundown on camp activities for this year:
Climbing:
Climbing at the Pleasure Palace and the Red Wall
Climbing at Mesa Verde Wall
Climbing at Trout Creek
Climbing in Cocaine and Aggro Gullies
Climbing at the Lower Gorge
Moonlight climbing at Morning Glory Wall (I'm serious! The moon was full and we climbed until 2:00 AM! What an experience!)
The Tyrolean Traverse on the Monkey Face, climbing Panic Point and doing the 140' free air rappel.
Climbing at Phoenix

Water Activities:
Zip lining and cliff jumping at Steelhead Falls
Swimming and cliff jumping at Deschutes River Ranch
Swimming and relaxing in the river at the Mt. Bachelor bouldering spot
Bouldering: Mt. Bachelor
The wave boulder at Smith
The river cliffs of Steelhead Falls (bouldering out of the water)

Other Activities:
Bikram yoga
Dancing and listening to great tunes at Munchin' Music, a local music festival.
Touring the Metolius and Entre Prises factories.
Hanging out in Drake Park, eating pizza.
Slack lining!

That is a broad outline of this year's camp. There is so much more!! For the 2009 camp, I will be adding this this blog every other day or so and you can keep up with all the amazing actitivies on a regular basis. We can't wait for next year's camp because we have some really cool additions that are just going to make it better and better. This year's most popular new addition was having Bee as our new cook. She made sure that each meal was healthy and delicious. Some of the kids had favorite recipes and she made sure that all the ingredients were available for them to prepare their favorite gastronomic specialty! Let's see...some examples are Bee's famous chicken stir fry, Jack's pasta carbonara, Shannon's curry delight. Oh, and we accomodate vegetarians too. Zach is our resident "vegetarian guide" so he makes sure that the vegetarians in the camp are accommodated! We had our regular guides again this year, Zach Horn, Nina Ward and Dean Fleming. Kudos to all three of them for their contributions to our camp. They are all tireless, energetic and outstanding guides. Each year they amaze me with the ideas and excitement that they bring to the camp. We feel very lucky to have such competent and talented guides who live, eat, climb and recreate with the kids for this incredible two week adventure. They each have a passion for climbing and their main desire is to share this passion with the kids as well as to teach the kids the safest way to do things when climbing. It's the ideal situation for a kid, to learn the safe, smart way to climb from professional climbers while having fun at the same time. I have so many photos from SRCC 2008 and they will be going up on the site soon. Along with dates for next year's camp. We are entertaining the idea of two camps next year. I'll keep you posted.Meanwhile, my heartiest thank you to all the parents who trust us with their most valuable possessions for these two weeks. We appreciate your confidence in us!
Stay tuned for more!