July 26-28
YW 4th Year Hike
I teach the 13-old sunday school class and Travis is the Ward Chorister, so you are probably wondering why in the world we ended up going on the 4 year Young Women hike???? Well this is the story.
So Trav answered the phone on Saturday, July 17th, right before we were going on our camping trip in the Uintahs(July 21-25). I hear him talking on the phone and I hear him say "Girl's Camp" and "I'll talk to Michelle and let you know." So I am thinking, well maybe they needed a priesthood holder to go up to Girl's Camp for a day. Well he gets off the phone and explains to me that it was Bro. Alston (2nd Counselor in Bishopric). Trav continued to tell me that they had had a couple lined up from our ward to go on the 4th year hike, but the guy ended up needing back surgery and they wouldn't able to go. So he told me it was going to be for 3 days (July 26-28) and that we would go on the 4th year hike with the girls. We talked about it and decided that I would have to check to make sure I could get work off, but most likely I could. My thoughts:
Well when I went to Girl's Camp on the 4th year hike, they just took us on a longer hike then the rest of the girls. It wasn't too bad. I think I can handle that.
We are going camping this Wed-Sat, do we really want to pack up and head out again Monday morning?
Atleast I get to go with Travis. That will be fun.
I wonder where their Girl's Camp is? I hope it is the Heber Valley Camp.
Hopefully it has showers and flush toilets, atleast they will have outhouses if nothing else.
They always make Girl's Camp fun, it won't be that bad.
Travis said he sounded desperate....who else will they get if we don't go?
So after discussing everything, we decided we would tell Bro. Alston the next morning before church that we would go. So on Sunday we met with Bro. Alston and said that we were 99.9% sure we could go, unless for some reason I couldn't get work off. He was very grateful!!! VERY! Then he proceeded to tell us exactly what it was....I thought Trav already knew, but apparantly not. We would meet early in the morning on Monday and would backpack 3 1/2 miles to Island Lake, camp there for 2 nights, and then backpack out on Wednesday. We would be over 3 girls in our ward. Okay, so not only is it not "Fun" Girl's Camp, but there are no showers and NO outhouse! You have to pack on your back everything that you need (no extra stuff) And we already agreed to this. :( He continued to explain that they were having a meeting that night for all of the leaders who were going on the hike so we could get all the details then.
We walked out of the room and I was like, "that was a little different than I expected". Trav was like, "ya, but we can do it". I'll just note that he always had a good attitude about the whole thing, while I, on the other hand, struggled a little bit.
So we went to the meeting that night and found out even more great information. We were in charge of a devotional, some of the camp certification, and all of the food for our 3 girls. Well considering we basically had Monday and Tuesday to get this figured all out (because we were going to be gone camping Wednesday-Saturday) we were in, to say the least, a whirlwind. We were running to Wal-mart, Big-5, Sportmans Warehouse, and my parents house, trying to gather everything we needed. We were making calls to borrow equipment from family. Let's just say, we had a lot to put together in 2 days.We left on our camping trip with my family, completely not ready for the 4th year hike and had a great time. When we got home we were running, running, and rushing to get ready. We got it all together by about 1 o'clock the morning of when we were supposed to meet at the church at 7am. But I guess atleast we made it.
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| Me and Trav with our gear. Mine weighed about 38 lbs. and his was about 40 lbs. Luckily we had the backpacks with the metal framing which really helped, but my was it heavy!! |
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| I believe this was the first lake we past. We actually got to see three lakes. 2 on our way and then Island Lake. |
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| Chandler, Megan and Hannah all ready to head out. Chandler and Megan were 2 of our girls. |
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| In the middle of the hike in. Darcy and Chandler. We were happy to have a seat on the ground to take a break. |
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So when we got to Island Lake, all the girls were hungry ready to eat. They all pullled out their sack lunches that they had brought and we enjoyed a nice lunch.Right after that we figured we better get camp set up. We all worked together to get everyone's tents put together. Literally 5 minutes after everyone's tents were set up it started to rain, then pour. Trav and I hopped in our tent to stay dry, but as you can see in the picture above, the girls thought it would be fun to run around and rain dance. Some of them atleast put on a poncho, but there were 3 girls that just got drenched. Then it became even worse....hail started to beat down on our tents. I think by that time, all the girls had got in their tents even though most of them were soaking wet already.We all just continued to wait out the storm. Our tent is a pretty good tent, especially compared to some of the ones the girls brought and ours w as starting to leak at the seams and it had rained so much it was soaking through our rain cover and dripping from above. It rained and hailed for a good 1 1/2 hours before it finally stopped. After we got out of our tents to access the damage, we saw "tent set up"(picture below) and asked what happened?!? This was another couple that were leaders. They had borrowed a tent from a friend and apparently it had been to one to many boy scout camps and had little tiny holes all over it from ashes that had hit it. The couple was soaked...one from trying to get the tarp over their tent in the pouring rain, and two the whole bottom of their tent was filled with water. All of their stuff was wet including their sleeping bags, which was the case with a lot of the girls as well. Now this all becomes a really big problem when you are far away from using anything that you didn't bring with you. They usually only had 1 spare change of clothes because you didn't want to carry too much. In the end, we survived, but we did have a lot of wet clothes and sleeping bags that needed some sun to dry out.
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| You can see some girls in their bright colored ponchos across the way. |
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| Darcy and her friend were always perched on this rock overlooking the lake. |
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| All the girls by the campfire trying to warm up. We did hold severl sleeping bags over the fire the first night to dry them out so atleast the girls could sleep semi warm. |
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| Make shift fire. |
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| Our camp from across the lake. |
After all of our excitement of the first day, we ended up really enjoying our second day. The views were just gorgeous.
The leaders had discussed before going if we should allow the girls to bring swim suits. We thought it would be safer and we would have less liability if we didn't let the girls swim. Well of course on the second day, all of the girls wanted to swim. So because they didn't have swimsuits they created them out of large black plastic bags. We had one leader who had brought his swim trunks so he would taxi the girls across the freezing cold water on the log. (You can see him above on the left of the picture).The girls loved it and had a blast. The stake leaders had brought of 4 horses for the girls to ride. That was a big hit as well.
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| Enjoying our blow-pops. |
For the most part, our food consisted of Moutain House Meals. Bascially you had hot water and let them steam cook for about 10 mins. They were edible and tasted pretty good, but it is nothing like real food.
