All of our hard work and research paid off because we finally coordinated the details of our Action Project. To quote the immortal words of Monte Burns from the hit TV show The Simpsons – Excellent! We will be working with Zachary Price, who is a Forester with Boulder County Open Space and Mountain Parks. After conducting a lot of research about the pine beetles in class, it was time for us to get some hands on dirt time in the field. We will devote all day on Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 with Zachary learning more about the pine beetle issue, discussing how this issue affects different stakeholders in Boulder County, and then we will go to a pine beetle infestation area to fell, load, and remove infested trees in the area. We are all looking forward to our Action Project next week!

On Wednesday, students presented what they learned from their Outdoor Clinic Project. This is a three-part assignment where students go out into the community to take advantage of the free lectures and clinics that pertain to an outdoor or environmental issue that is related to the Community Adventure Program. Clinics and presentations ranged from attending a hike with a CU Geology Professor to going to a slideshow presentation called South America by Motorcycle. Great job on this everyone!

After our presentations, we spent the afternoon talking about Search and Rescue in Boulder County and participating in mock rescue scenarios. Students gained first hand experience with applying the leadership and decision-making skills we talked about last week. We pretended that Mike Kilkenny-Patrick hyper-extended his knee and shattered his ankle during a freak hacky sack accident while the group was on an 8-mile backpacking trip. They had to choose 5 rescue equipment items from a huge gear duffel bag and come up with an action plan to rescue him. Below is a picture of the class hiking Mike out. We walked less than 1/4 of a mile around the school and students realized how difficult it was to hike someone out during a real emergency. Roxanna and Zoe really stepped up as leaders in the group and did an excellent job!

On Friday, we made final preparations for our last overnight camping trip for the quarter. The purpose of our final overnight camping trip together is to integrate the outdoor camping skills we have gained this quarter and to learn about survival priorities, fire, and shelters. We can