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You are outward bounder
So why do we do it?
What good is it?
Does it teach us anything?
Like determination? Invention?
Improvisation? Foresight? Hindsight?
Love?
Art? Music? Religion?
Strength or patience or accuracy or
quickness or tolerance or
Which wood will burn and how long is a day
and how far is a mile
And how delicious is water and
smoky green pea soup?
And how to rely
on your
self?
Terry and Renny Russell, On the Loose
Kara, Becky, and I were becoming extremely self-conscious of our ever-increasing body odors, so we stole the little bar of emergency soap from the first aid kit and washed ourselves at the lake. Lee actually jumped in completely into the freeeeezing cold water!!
The rest of the crew got back to the campsite at around 9:30am. We broke camp soon after and headed without the instructors for an area around Storm King Peak, which we were going to climb the next morning. We had a kind of funny occurence happen along the way. As we were hiking along, we passed by this other Outward Bounder not in our patrol who was on Solo, a part of the course where you are alone for 3 days without food and you're not supposed to have any interaction with anyone else. It is a time of reflection. We were given strict instructions not to speak to anyone we happened to come across on Solo. We just waved and he waved back. The guys decided we should eat our lunch really close to him. We were barely out of eyesight because of a large rock that seperated us. Anyways, Lee & Trevor were being their usual troublemaker selves and started talking real loud about how wonderful the food we were eating was. Then they started yelling questions like, "hey Solo, want some of this chocolate cake we're eating??" and stuff like that. It was obnoxious but funny as hell. When we finished one of the peanut butter jars, Trevor went to the solo's tarp and threw the empty jar to him and said "enjoy!!" When he came back he told us this (he said he was going to do it, but we didn't believe him!!!) We just couldn't believe he had done that. I thought the guy would tell his instructors and we'd get in serious trouble, but it was still funny.
We finally met up with Sara, Markian, and one of the instructors of the Soloist that we had seen earlier. They wanted to show us the way up the mountain because it was difficult. Was it ever difficult! At one point I fell and my helmet got stuck in between some rocks and the strap was choking me and I couldn't breathe. I started screaming bloody murder and Becky came and got me unstuck. (Looking back now that seems rather amusing, doesn't it?)
Anyway, we finally made it somewhere around Storm king and began to set up camp. We learned about "fixed lines", which is a peak climb that uses ropes. We practiced on the ground how to use them until this awful storm (complete with hail) hit us and we all ran under the tarp. That is, except for Kara. She stayed out and tightened all of the tarp knots while the rest of us huddled under the tarp. As if that wasn't enough, she goes down the hill (quite a ways) to fill up the pots with water for dinner!! Lee said, "she's just a goddamn ANGEL!!" And that was the day we started calling Kara "Angel"...smile
That night we were kind of hoping it would still be raining the next morning so that we wouldn't have to climb Storm King Peak, because they wanted us to get up at 3:30am!!! Ugh!!