Preparing the Ropes Courses for Summer

Wednesday

Apr282010

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 5:38AM

Liz Henderson--Program Team Assistant

The last week of April is that special time of year when we prepare all our ropes courses for the annual inspection. Scott Eppler, Matt Ulrich and I have spent the past few days performing maintenance and quite literally
tightening every bolt on the entire course.
It's been my observation this week that Matt and Scott have no trouble hanging or climbing like monkeys to
reach some of the farther bolts, while I prefer the “Koala Bear”
method of
clinging tightly to the pole and just reaching out a little ways. (In my defense, I do go out onto the elements to tighten bolts, but my preference is to hang out near the poles.) In addition to tightening all the bolts on all our courses, we are also doing some maintenance and rebuilding on our Stillwaters course.

Next week will begin two weeks of adventure challenge training. Greg Robinson Ph.D. of Challenge Quest, Inc. in
Oklahoma is arriving to spend time building and teaching. Fifteen students are taking Challenge Course Level One Instructor
Training. The following week will be the Advanced Ropes Course Instructor Training

for a
smaller group of people including Matt Ulrich and Karen
Bartos who
will be facilitating Adventure Challenge throughout the summer. As part of the training students have the option of taking CFM 564: Adventure Challenge
Education for four hours of graduate credit through Wheaton College. Adventure Challenge training is primarily comprised of our
own GPAs and staff, but we excited to have some students from Hong Kong and neighboring
camps join us this year.

REMINDER: Today is the last day to submit a photo for the 2010 Camper Scholarship and Photo Contest Opportunity. If you haven't sent in your photo yet, please email it to liz@honeyrockcamp.org by 11:59pm tonight!

Scott Eppler is a pro on the ropes course.