Saturday, June 6, 2009

Update

Just a quick note to let ya'll know what I've been up to.

School ended a few weeks ago, on April 22. After spending a week doing whatever I felt like at the time, I started at Aspiro for the summer.
If you don't know what Aspiro is, you probably don't know me very well.
Aspiro is the Wilderness Adventure Therapy program where I worked for a good portion of last year. I'm back until school starts again in the fall.
My first week of work was with the young adult group. We hiked into and through Coyote Gulch, a desert canyon that feeds into the Escalante River in southern Utah.
Instead of having a week off, I spent the next week doing some guide training stuff.
From the guide training I went right back on trail, this time with the girls' group. Our itinerary took us to the Ouray area, just west of the Utah/Colorado boarder, near Grand Junction.
Ouray might just be the most beautiful place I have been with Aspiro. The canyons we hiked though would open every few miles into broad grass meadows where we often disturbed grazing herds of elk.
But the highlight the Ouray trip was when one of the girls spilled a pot of boiling water on her foot. I got to practice some of my new EMT skills (I passed my final written exam a couple of weeks ago!), and Victoria learned a lesson on the instable nature of ultralight backpacking stoves. I hiked about 18 miles to the car, drove it to Colorado for gas, and drove as close to our injured student as I could--about four miles. Victoria was able to hike out wearing her Crocs--apparently hiking boots aren't terribly confortable when you have a blister three inches long, two inches wide, and an inch and a half tall on your ankle. Go figure.
After a much needed week off (I flew home to San Jose for a week of "rest"--rock climbing and surfing), I was back on trail, this time in Saint George for a week of climbing and babysitting.
Now I'm writing at a library in Orange County. I'm spending my week off sailing with some friends who have bought a 29 ft sailboat. Their plan is to learn something about sailing so they can sail to Australia. They will be leaving in December. I've been invited to come. We'll see how it goes.

2 comments:

martha said...

dude you are the most outdoorsy person i know, i think. i dare you to sail to australia. that would be crazy.

Kelly Porter said...

Nic - I found your blog post rather randomly. As Victoria's Dad, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you caring for her when she spilled the boiling water on herself. Thanks for all your efforts!

Kelly