This week, students conducted research for the Organic Resource Guide they are compiling for their Community Action Project. A rough outline for the guide was created and students broke up sections to research based on what interested them the most.

On Wednesday, we had an awesome presentation by Jessie Stoner about various snow shelters, information for how to build each shelter, and the cultural history of each shelter. Jessie then facilitated an interactive challenge for students to build an igloo with sugar cubes and glue. The first team to finish won all kinds of candy and Jessie put together a huge resource binder with an annotated bibliography for future classes to consult. Great job Jessie!

We also spent Wednesday morning breaking into cook/sleep groups and making preparations for our upcoming winter camping overnight. When all of that was completed, I gave the students a card to make a homemade inclinometer to measure slope angles. Students also broke up into groups to play a new and improved version of our weekly Snow Sense quiz. This week each team was given 1000 points to wager with and could bet points before each question was asked. In the end, Misra, Chandra, and Alys won the get out of journal free cards because they answered the final question about the stratigraphy test correctly – way to go girls!

Later on Wednesday afternoon, we took a field trip to The Spot Bouldering Gym to learn how to rock climb. Ashley, Matt, and the other folks from The Spot were excellent teachers and coaches and some students took to the artificial rock for the first time ever. Although, I will rethink climbing before our overnight trips because we were all super sore for the next few days.

Finally, on Friday and Saturday, we had our second overnight. I just want to say that it was such an honor and a pleasure camping with everyone this weekend. After learning a lot from our first winter camping trip, I was so impressed with the way that everyone applied that new learning to our trip this weekend. People did a really great job of taking care of themselves and others, collecting firewood and managing our campsite, and, most impressive of all I must say, we ALL built quinzhee’s and slept in them!

I also wanted to send out a special thanks to Mike Musialowski for meeting us on Saturday to teaching us about snow science and Newt Wahlberg for demonstrating snow stability tests. We have been reading about this information all quarter so it was great to get outside and get some hands on experience.

I also wanted to thank Christi Gubser, who is an excellent co-instructor, Jonathan Falk, who is an amazing parent and winter camper, and the Stoner’s who helped drive this weekend. I can’t wait to see you in class on Wednesday!