August BKL Camp – Success!
Last week was the second week-long BKL camp of the summer, and I’m happy to announce we escaped without any casualties. In fact, one of the rollerski groups completed their session without any bloodshed! — a landmark accomplishment. Add to that the good weather, enthusiastic campers, and fun activities, and you can imagine that we all finished the week tired but happy.
Throughout the week, GRP skiers and rowers, coaches from the Center, and other Craftsbury athletes led about 20 BKL-ers on half-day sporting adventures. Like the first camp back in July, the first four days included mountain biking, canoeing, biathlon, soccer & games, bounding & agility, sculling, and rollerskiing. There was also lots of swimming, multiple times a day in fact. Pretty astonishing how much entertainment kids can draw from jumping off the dock into the lake.
I helped out with a few different sessions myself, including one rollerski morning where I got a glimpse of the East’s next wave of skiing talent! Some of those little rippers ride a better gliding ski than me, I swear. I also worked with Jeremy Nellis to do a morning of agility exercises.
Bounding exercises on the Upper Soccer Field. Photo: Gordon Vermeer
The ladder hones agility, coordination, and speed. Photo: Gordon Vermeer
The full photo album from that morning is posted on the GRP’s facebook page.
Friday, in a sort of culminating adventure, Dylan and Nils organized a multi-stage adventure race where the campers got to run around the Center doing all sorts of crazy things. It started off pretty tame with a swimming portion and a team log carry, but things started to get exciting when they reached the log bridge — attempting to walk across “Frog Pond” on a bridge of logs tethered to shore and to one another. It was extremely popular, so I imagine the log bridge will feature in future BKL camps. I tried the log bridge myself and fell in the swampy pond shortly after everyone started chanting “fall! fall! fall!” at me.
Rivaling the log bridge in popularity was the tire roll, where teams got to (safely, I assure you) roll tractor tires down a big hill. “Wait, we actually get to roll it down there?!” they exclaimed when instructed to do so.
I filmed the whole morning! There’s a highlight video of the race online — lots of good footage of falls into the swamp.
We capped off the week with a bike trip to the Dreissigacker’s camp and an afternoon of pizza-making and rope-swinging. Judy Geer took a bunch of pictures including the ones below, but check out the whole album here.
Watermelon and pizza with dough from the Center's kitchen. What more could you want? Photo: Judy Geer
One of countless trips out over Hosmer. Photo: Judy Geer
I look forward to seeing all these BKL athletes tearing up the trails this winter!