An Elfin Experience
The Youth Outdoor Education class hikes the Elfin lakes
— Theo Stambler | November 30, 2016
Imagine on a school day, instead of sitting in class you are hiking through the mountains at high altitudes or hiking in thin snow, like our most recent trip to Elfin lakes where Y.O.E. Class hiked for kilometres through vast blankets of beautiful, untouched snow. On these trips you can get away from the busy city noises and go to the peaceful vast mountains and lakes. We learn many things on the trips including trust, teamwork, outdoor survival and much more. The trips can be very physically challenging as we often hike more than ten kilometres a day with a steep incline carrying 30 pound backpacks. At night the the sky is clear and thousands of stars can be seen, along with many shooting stars.
Y.O.E. is much more than just the out trips, we have to take the First Aid Course and study what to do in emergency situations. For the first 20 minutes in every class we do a highly intensive workout that focuses on our core. We then do different things, some of them being geography, group activities, writing in journals, preparing for out trips, and much more. Preparation for trips takes a long time and has many factors to it. One of those factors being our food groups. Every out trip we go on, we bring all our food with us, along with a small stove and pot, we split into small groups to plan all our meals.
One of the few ways Y.O.E. is like other classes is that we are with the same people all year round. Going on overnight trips brings us all very close together as a group, because we are constantly interacting with each other. Ms. Inch and Mr. Kuniss go all out planning our trips and making sure nothing goes wrong then them. Actually, on the first trip I came very close to blowing up a propane tank! If you want to meet new people, push your limits, and see what British Columbia has to offer, you should consider joining Youth Outdoor Education.
