Team Building in the Backcountry
“The weather is supposed to be better tomorrow. You guys will have a great time. It’ll be rad!” So said our guide in the evening before our trip to the High Uintas Wilderness — the team building event at our very first LifeOmic Dev Summit.
I have been fortunate enough to have been part of many leadership retreats and team building events, some of them very unique. I remember being part of a live orchestra, deeply immersed in every motion from the maestro and every note of the instruments, learning what it means to be a servant leader and how to bring out the best of the team. Another activity was a live escape game where our team was locked in a room and had to work together and find clues to help us escape in 60 minutes.
The LifeOmic team-building event was something else altogether. Instead of what you might expect from a bunch of clinical scientists, bioinformaticians and cloud developers (i.e. a ‘hackathon’ using whole genome data generated by LifeOmic’s Illumina NovaSeq 6000 machines), LifeOmic’s Dev Summit team-building was a backpacking/hiking/fly fishing/rock climbing trip at 10,000 feet altitude, with overnight camping in single-digit weather!
Oh boy.
And it turned out to be — just like the guide said — rad!
No other team building event I’ve experienced brought the team together like a family more than this one.
Each of us had pushed the boundaries in our own way. And together we all came back knowing more about our fellow team members and trusting each other more.
All without a single workshop, presentation or preaching. It was simply through the company along the hikes, the challenge of rock climbing, the relaxing chitchat around the campfire, the crisp air after a fresh snow, the awe-inspiring nature, or perhaps surviving the night together in tents and mummy bags in 9°F.
Individual challenge and team bonding combined — this was the experience of a lifetime. What an amazing event sponsored by our CEO, Dr. Don Brown! Now we are ready to push the boundaries of precision medicine.
Enough said. Let the photos do the talking. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Credits to Chris Hemp, David Fuller, and Swee Seong for some of these awesome photos.
While it was a mix of gold, red and green leaves down at Park City, weather up here was very unpredictable. It could be sunny in the 60s and dumping snow in the same day.
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A group of us went fly fishing in ice-cold water. See that ice floating on the far end of the lake?
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Less than an hour into it, we unanimously agreed it was too cold and we weren’t catching anything, and we needed to warm up.
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Meanwhile, our guides helped set up ten two-person tents and started a bonfire at our camp site. The second group returned from hiking as well.
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Afternoon hike around Lake Crystal. The weather intensified a bit.
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Dinner time. We were lucky to have a great chef taking good care of us. The trout was delicious. If you have to ask, we might have caught those while fly fishing earlier, as far as we could remember ;-)
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There was also abundant supply of beer, wine, even bourbon and whiskey. It turned out I was pretty good at Cards Against Humanity. Shhh, don’t tell HR — Oh right, we don’t have one yet. :-)
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The morning after. We all survived! I can proudly say I stayed in one of those far-off tents. Check out that view!
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A group of us went rock climbing after a nice hearty breakfast. I wasn’t one of those dare devils. I went with the second group on a 5-mile hike to the top of Mount Watson instead.
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Amazing view from the top!
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I had a little fun with the panoramic photo. We named this one “Watch the Watcher”. You’ll find out why in one of my upcoming LifeOmic Top Ten articles.
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The trip wouldn’t be complete without an awesome team photo!
Thank you again, Don, for bringing us on this breathtaking adventure!
-EZ
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P.S. Huge thanks to our guides from Inspired Summit — Shaun, Wes, Cindy and Blake. They were fun, knowledgeable, and very accommodating. The aerial footage they took for us with their drone was a super nice touch. The food was also top-notch thanks to Chef Adam of the Twisted Fern.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on October 17, 2017.
