Steamrollers and Nightcrawlers.

Raise your hands if you have NEVER been camping before??? When that question was echoed throughout our campsite, my hand was the only one to go up. In my defense, I grew up with a mom who would work three to four twelve hour shifts a week and a step-dad who either worked from home or had to drive to Kirkland to go into his office. Needless to say, I was laughed at when my hand rose.

Every year our cross-country team goes on a short camping trip (two to three days). This year we went up to White Pass (Elevation: 4500 feet), which was about an hour and fifteen minute drive from school. Nothing too far. We were scheduled to leave at ten, but with Kevin's impeccable punctualness, we didn't even leave until 11:11 (Maybe that was a sign of good things to come). Turns out it was.

I was told by some of the upperclassman that the previous year was like hell on earth. It was sunny one day, but the following day a deluge engulfed their campsite. They (Everyone who went, as well as all of their belongings) were drenched. Yet they all came back to potentially endure another two nights of hell. When we arrived at our campsite, we quickly unpacked and got everything settled. The girls shared three tents, while the majority of the guys (Eight of us) all fit into one tent. This tent was HUGE! We fit eight guys and still had enough room to steamroll and nightcrawl.

On our second day, we did a hard workout up at the summit of the pass (Where an annual summer high-school XC camp is held). The workout consisted of:

1.5 mile WM
6:00 min Tempo
4 x (3:00 hard, 2:00 easy)
1 mile recovery jog
4 x 400m w/ 200m jog recovery
1.5 mile CD

It was a tough workout. The elevation was definitely played a factor, not to mention the terrain. Speaking of tough terrain, during one of the "3:00 hard" intervals one of our top guys fell going around a corner and sprained his ankle. His ankle swelled up to the size of a tennis ball in a matter of seconds. We helped him along the trails until Kevin met up with us with his bike. He was able to get back to the vans and get some ice bags on his ankle, but for the rest of us, we still had to finish the workout. After the fartlek intervals, we jogged back to the vans to grab some water and meet up with Bryan to start the 400's. They were on a relatively flat area along the lake, which was a lot easier than the rolling trails we traversed during our tempo and fartlek intervals.

After the quarters, we did a nice cooldown by the ski lifts and piled back up into the vans. All of us were exhausted from that workout and just took it easy the rest of the afternoon. We played several games of Spoons (Scott is the Spoons Champion of the World as he won six straight games) and Egyptian Ratscrew (No real winner lol.) That afternoon we had two people (Connie and Jon) swim 300m in glacial run-off water to a random island. Mind you, the water was probably about 40 degrees (Pretty f***ing cold). Everyone else, including Kevin, just watched them, making sure that they made it to the island (And more importantly back to shore) without too many leeches on them (Four people got bitten by leeches while we were swimming in the river/lake).

So much happened at camp, that it would probably take me a good ten full, in-detail paragraphs for me to correctly explain everything that happened at camp. While it is unfortunate that the people reading this won't know everything that happened, the memories that I will take from the camping trip are irreplaceable. Team dinners, team bonding, late-night fire talks, ice baths, raccoons, no showers, steamrollers and nightcrawlers, rolling logs, and jumping off of rocks. Those are only a handful of memories that occurred during those two days. So now when anyone asks if I have been camping, I can now look curiously around and think back to White Pass.