This was an extraordinary week as our class spent Tuesday finalizing logistics and making preparations for our last weekend overnight camping trip for the quarter. We had a unique opportunity to collaborate with the Binning Family Foundation, which is a private foundation in Littleton, Colorado that improves the lives of Colorado youth through a technology program and outdoor leadership program. We teamed up with their outdoor leadership program to give both groups the opportunity to learn from other high school and college students with a diverse background. More about our amazing weekend to come…

On Wednesday, we made great strides with out Action Project. We had about three weeks before the holiday break to coordinate our Action Project, which is scheduled for Wednesday, January 5, 2005. We broke up into teams and brainstormed all the possible solutions and projects that we could take on as a class to help promote the alternative fuel source vehicles. After a great discussion, we decided as a class that we would assemble a panel of experts and facilitate a discussion about this issue hopefully on air on with KGNU, our community radio station in Boulder, and with some of the larger local TV news stations from Denver. We decided that we still need to do more research on our topic and compile a list of statistics, backed up with legitimate sources, that highlight the environmental impact of transportation in our country, including topics like air quality, pollution, health considerations, etc. Our goal is to educate folks about the environmental impact of the automotive industry, to compile statistics with some shock value, to let people know this is an important issue that needs to be addressed, and to encourage environmentally sustainable solutions. The panel of experts will discuss those sustainable solutions and talk about how to make transportation alternatives such as biodiesel, hybrid, hydrogen fuel source vehicles more “mainstream.”

Wednesday afternoon, we learned about leadership and decision-making and the qualities and characteristics of transformational leaders. We then watched The Endurance and learned about Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the South Pole as an example of an outdoor leader who personified transformational leadership. The Endurance is one of the most amazing stories in terms of leadership and decision-making in a wilderness setting. Against all odds, Shackleton turned around a potentially deadly and disastrous expedition and saved the lives of all of his men. I highly recommend this movie to all interested in heroic journeys of the age of exploration after the turn of the century.

But now to the highlight of the week, our trip with the Binning Family Foundation…On Saturday, we met up with Mike, Liz, Marlane, Kai, Diana, and Phi at Devil’s Thumb Ranch outside of Winter Park, Colorado. The Binning Family Foundation obtained permission to build a yurt at Devil’s Thumb Ranch and is able to use their land for their outdoor leadership program. We snowshoed in approximately 2 miles with backpacks and sleds to their yurt, learned all about yurt living, built a snow shelter called a quinzhee, learned about ecologically responsible fires, the bare necessities of wilderness survival, and had an overall amazing time meeting new people, sharing skills and knowledge, and camping out in a stunning area of Colorado. To check out photos from CAP this quarter, including our overnight with the Binning Family Foundation, Click Here. A special thanks goes out to Mike Goeglein (aka Mr. G.) who helped coordinate this trip, to the Binning Family for making this possible, and to Gary Hachtel, who helped drive CAP students this weekend. We hope to be able to coordinate another trip with the Binning Family Foundation soon!