Rise Up Climbing!

It feels so good to be back at Sweet Briar!

SWEBOP has already jumped into the new school year by welcoming the awesome class of 2015 and preparing some of our trips! On Wednesday, August 31st, we led our first trip of the year to the Rise Up Climbing gym in downtown Lynchburg. We had a great turn out, needing to take two vans, and I believe these pictures say just how much fun we had.

Our next trip to Rise Up Climbing will be September 14th! Come stop by the SWEBOP office if you're interested in having as much fun as these girls!

Beach Trip Fun!

Last weekend SWEBOP took a group of students to a beach house off the Eastern shoreline. The beach trip is a campus favorite, giving students the opportunity to get off campus, enjoy some ocean breezes and meet new students. Now that pictures have been posted on facebook, I'm sharing them with you:

Snow Tubing and Outing Cabin

Hey friends!

So I (AB) had a very busy weekend this past weekend and led not one, but two trips! They both had awesome groups and both were a lot of fun. I think I actually looked at JC at one point and said, "Can you believe we're getting paid for this?"

We went snow tubing at Wintergreen for the first time this past Friday which was a very different experience from skiing. After a few last minute time since we didn't realize our session started at 7 and not at 4 (oops!) we ended up leaving, and getting there by around 6:50. Once we got to there we pretty much just let everyone go, but since all our participants were seniors it ending up being like a huge bonding time. Snow tubing is like giant slides for adults!

Outing Cabin was also a lot of fun, though I didn't catch as many pictures. We hiked up there and stopped to show them the 300 year old tree, along with the hidden graveyard on the way back. Once we got up there a lot of people explored it while we were sweeping it out and then building the fire. It was pretty chilly that early in the morning so the warmth was definitely welcomed. We went over the packet and then made nomy hobo dinners for lunch! My favorite. It was definitely a very active and fun group, we even had a professor and a staff member and his family with us!

Here are a few pictures of both trips!

The slides that the tubes go down.. there were a few you caught air on!
Trekking back down from the outing cabin- there are still A LOT of leaves up there.
The Outing Cabin group before dispersing!
And the tubing group before we started!
Last but not least me, JC, and Alexis posing for a picture before going down!

Have I mentioned I love my job?

Berks

Caving

This past Saturday Swebop took a total of 11 people caving at Crossroads cave. Mike Hayslett and Clarke Scott are two male leaders that tagged along with us and taught us so much about caving along the way. They were both super awesome instructors, and we were all thankful for having them. After arriving at the cave we ate our quick Prothro lunches, got on our gear, and were all anxious to start our caving adventure. The cave was awesome, filled with great formations, Pipistrelle bats, and plenty of places to explore. After making our way through many of the passages we took a couple minutes to all sit together on the ground and turn our headlamps off. We all got to experience total darkness and quietness as we sat still listening to the subtle drips and sounds of the cave! It was seriously the coolest thing ever! Overall this was a great trip! After emerging from the cave we all decided that we bonded 1/4 mile under the ground!

Ski Season

Ski season has started up, and SWEBOP is certainly excited. Our skiing/snowboarding/snow-tubing trips are the main focus of our winter-trip lineup, driving at least one van of students to a nearby ski resort every Friday. Our lift-tickets and gear rental is super-discounted so students can afford to indulge in a trip or two without breaking the bank. A diverse group of students take advantage of the ski trips so I'm sure there will be even more pictures later, but until then, I offer you some teasers:

Training Training and more training!

Hey friends! It's Berks here!

This is my first ever blog for SWEBOP so bare with me here =P

So some of you might be wondering what

SWEBOP is up to this semester, and if you're not, you should be, because it's gonna be awesome. Right now, all of the instructors are pretty much

booked every weekend with either trips or training. Every year we do a lot of the same

training to make sure it's still fresh in our minds. This past weekend we had Wilderness Rescue Training and American Red Cross CPR/First Aid training. CPR and first aid was mainly a refresher for most of us, and ended up being a lot of fun simulating fixing up hurt people and CPR. For Wilderne

ss Rescue training we learned lots of knots and how to beam people (move them without moving their spine, and all that fun stuff), AND the highlight of the day was the z-drag. The z-drag is a rope setup that we would use if we had to put someone in the litter (sort of like a stretcher but not really) and help them up the hill. For all you non-engineer type people out there it's a way for us to use a rope to hold the load instead of us! We didn't get too many pictures from this ev

ent (but we did get a lot of weird look

s from girls going to dinner) because we were all either on the litter team helping carry it and our patient or on the team who was working the ropes, but here's my favorite of the day:

Because it was a simulation, we picked KM to be in the litter and stuffed her in the litter pretty tightly. Laura told us it was themost padding she'd ever seen put in a litter! KM ha

d a lot of fun with it, though, as you can see from this picture. We had to stand her up, flip her over (things we wouldn't do in a real emergency- promise! We were just seeing how tightly she was in there!), lift her over the desk in the post office, then under it, and then around the lower quad to where we hooked her to the z-drag. Through this all KM talked to us and "threw up" meaning we had to tip her a lot. Though, she paid her dues when she got out and she and I had to put all the clothes we used to pack her in back into the gear room!

Here are a few more pictures from the day!

Speaking of the gear room coordinators (myself and KM), we found the extra manican we usually use for our window displays hiding in with the sleeping bags and decided he should be displayed as well so he didn't feel left out! Note: the creepy man shadow under him is actually the other manican in the window =P

I'm so excited for the trips this semester, and I hope that a lot of Sweet Briar woman are as well! As I'm writing this, I'm watching girls come in ready to go on our first ski/snowboarding trip at Wintergreen this semester! So exciting! Next weekend we have ice skating (which, I'm leading and am super excited about) And this coming weekend we have the Leadership Conference! (sorry for the absurd about of ! there, I got kinda overly excited)

Well that's all for now,

Berks =)

Whether its with the SWEBOP Spring Break Trip or just on our own, KM ’13 and I are hiking a portion of the Appalachian Trail during Spring Break. To prepare, we’ve agreed to meet twice a week to walk with loaded packs, hopefully increasing our endurance and capacity to carry lots of stuff on our backs.

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Of course, to do this requires us to walk around campus with big backpacks on our backs…much to the chagrin of the other girls working out. KJ ’11 snagged a picture as she giggled at us:

Though not yet joining us to 'train', there are already a group of students committed and excited to hike the AT this spring. WE leaders are excited to see who else signs up and how the trip preparations pan-out

Fun in the Office

Don't be fooled by all our beautiful outdoor adventures, SWEBOP instructors work hard in the office as well. Well, we're in the office a lot. We don't necessarily always work hard. Togetherness usually means a good story is ahead. Here's a selection of pictures from around the office this semester.

KM pranks AB while trying to boulder. Three of the instructors pose for a picture at Sweet Briar's homecoming in September
General mayhem in the office as AB and I take pictures on the office Mac and Bearslayer (as she's affectionately called) boulders while we're all waiting to start a pre-trip meeting.

The instructors love being subscribed to Rock and Ice and Climbing magazines...because we love to cut out the pictures.MK rocks a few pieces from the SWEBOP gear room. VL, though not in the head-to-toe long underwear, is still looking good in her SWBEOP shirt.
This job is exhausting. This picture is not at all staged; during a wilderness medicine training we all laid down to nap before resuming our scheduled activities.

Outdoor Climbing Trip

On October 24th SWEBOP went to Goshen, VA for some much needed outdoor climbing! After everyone grabbed some breakfast from SWEBOP we hit the dusty trail around 9am. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the weather was perfect for climbing. After arriving at Goshen we hiked (which was supposed to be a 20min trail to the climbing site... but we may or may not have gotten lost) to meet Laura and Alyssa who had already set up the climbs for us, which was baller! Before climbing we all ate lunch and met the other climbers at the site who were students from UVA. Everyone had their fair share of climbing and we also did some repelling that day! The views were spectacular from the top of the climbs and the fall colors were the icing on the cake to this great trip.

Erin was totally rockin' that climb!

Apology and Canoeing

I'm SOOO sorry it's been so long since the last post! Would you believe and forgive me if I said I hadn't blogged because I was too busy being outdoors? It's true. So many great trips = so little time to talk about them. But our boss always says 'reflection is an important part of any experience' so it's time to sit down and reflect on the first trip of the year: canoeing.

The SWEBOP instructors met the first week in August to a.) meet each other b.) train for the upcoming year c.) learn to canoe. We spent a lot of time talking about communication, teaching methods, working as a group, redefining yourself outside of your ‘normal’ environment and how to…camp. This semester has been very busy, and, looking back, I really enjoyed spending so much time living so simply, taking time to reflect and teach others.

Our canoeing guide, Dennis, was 64 and a world class white water canoeist. We were really blessed to have him as our guide, and he took a ton of pictures and videos of our trip. Here are a few highlights:

Enjoying camp on the 2nd night

VL and AZ paddling Balcony Falls
Me and JC paddle Balcony Falls
JC enjoys Solo Time on her own rock in the river

Updates about other trips this semester should be coming soon from AZ and KM so keep checking back for those.

We're obviously slackers when it comes to this, but if you have any ideas, questions or comments feel free to share!