High Ropes and Zip Line

The students aren't the only ones who get to have a pile of fun at Strathcona! Several staff members were lucky the other day and got the chance to do the High Ropes Course and Zip Line here at the Lodge.  With safety as the number one priority, we learnt how to correctly put on our harnesses and how to "double-clip".  Double-clipping means that at all times you have two carabiners clipped onto the safety cable, so that if you happened to slip on one of the challenges, you wouldn't fall.

It's very important to remember that for some people, heights are really scary! Here at Strathcona Park Lodge we promote the idea of "challenge by choice", which means that you decide how far to push yourself, and we let people know that they are in a safe environment. With the cheering and support of our two great instructors and lots of friends, everyone completed the entire course and took the plunge on our zip line! Everyone had a lot of fun and for some, it was a very big accomplishment. It feels great to conquer your fears!

Point Grey

Mini school Point Grey from Vancouver was at SPL last week. The students as well as the instructors had a great time. Some of the groups got the chance to explore a new campsite on the west side of the Upper Campbell Lake. Because the water level is so low, and the narrows between Upper Campbell Lake and Buttle Lake turned into a rapid, it’s impossible to paddle to the campsites along the shores of Buttle Lake.
Instructors found another campsite on the Upper Campbell Lake and named it Cutthroat Trout Point. There is a lot of cutthroat trout in the lake and because the new campsite is right across from Dolly Varden point, it wasn’t really difficult to come up with a name for our new spot.
Some Point Grey students had the honor to be the first SPL-visitors to camp at Cutthroat Trout Point. They did a big sweep and cleaned the beach area. There was some garbage lying around. Stuff that other not so well mannered no trace campers had left behind. Other Point Grey groups went to the campsites on False Echo.
The reconstruction of the swimming bay is done. The heavy machinery is gone and the beach looks much better. Hopefully the water level will come up soon. A few nice warm days with a lot of snow melt will do or a couple of very rainy days will work too. At SPL we opt for the first though.

Bob the Builder

Bob the Builder arrived at the lodge today and he has taken Muck the digger dumper, Benny the robo digger, and Scoop the digger with him. Everybody is excited!
The heavy machinery rolled in this morning. Since the water level of the lake is so low, SPL decided to change the slope of the beach in the swimming bay. Because of the steep angle of the beach, the swimming bay normally gets deep pretty fast. A big excavator, a bulldozer and dump truck, all handled by the same guy, started digging, shoveling and pushing this morning.
It is probably going to be a 3-day job. Having all those big machines in the swimming bay is a bit inconvenient but it is possible to work around the bay. Several school groups are on an out trip this week, so avoiding bay is not a big deal.

Rolling session

What happens when you post an announcement for a rolling session in the Campbell River pool? Before you know almost 20 people sign up and you find yourself figuring out how to get everybody to town.
For a lot of people rolling a kayak is something magical. Almost everybody at SPL, form housekeeper to office employee, wants to be able to pull off that trick. Learning how to paddle a kayak. “Mwah maybe some other time.” Learning how to paddle a canoe? “Not today, maybe tomorrow.” But practicing how to roll a kayak. “I am in, when are we going?”
The traditional kayak roll, or Eskimo roll, is developed in the Arctic by Inuit. The Inuit people have been rolling their kayaks for many centuries; for them, the ability to roll was a basic survival technique. A missionary, writing in 1765, described ten methods by which an Inuit righted his craft, including full- and half-paddle rolls, and rolls using the harpoon or just the hands. A significant observation in the account is that once the paddle was positioned, the kayaker applied 'a flick of the hips' to recover.
The C-to-C is the most common roll. It involves an initial torso rotation along the side of the kayak, so that the paddle moves across the surface of the water to a position at a 90 degree (right) angle to the kayak. The paddle is then pulled across and a hip snap is applied.
The sweep roll, also called screw roll is probably the easiest roll to learn. In this roll the active paddle blade is brought from the setup position away from the side of the kayak and then across to the final position in a continuous fluid motion.
The hip flick is the most important move when rolling. The paddle is only used for support. You don’t need big arm muscles to pull off a roll. Another important thing is to keep your head close to the water when you are doing your roll move. It is very natural to get you head out of the water first, but that’s wrong. Leave your head in the water as long as possible.
It’s going to be fun tonight!

Food

Dinner on our out trips is going to be so good this year. Matt (out trip coordinator) and Jessie (kitchen chef) changed the menus for out trip food a bit. We are almost going to serve ‘haute cuisine in the bush’ now.
Next week all the instructors are going to have a workshop on how to prepare the new meals. The Strathcona blog is proud to be the first to present the new meals:

Meatless stroganoff with smoked tofu
A beautiful dish with the finest smoked tofu and delicious egg noodles. Sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions smothered in a very tasteful cooking wine.

Mexican style couscous
The best couscous from Morocco combined with the best Mexican refried beans! This is bush fusion cooking as bush fusion cooking is meant to be. Fresh tomatoes and a mouthwatering home made salsa!

Sheppardless Pie
Forget the Sheppard, who needs him anyway? This pie is fine without. Delicious Prince Edward Island mashed potatoes, ‘bud the spud from the bright red mud’. Lentils and fresh vegetables of the day. Topped with grated cheese, this is a pie you need to try.

Strathcona Burrito
The number one in the Mexican kitchen! A nice burrito stuffed with tasty rice, refried beans, home made salsa, sour cream and real Canadian grated cedar. Eat you heart out, José.

Why is the sky blue?

Nice question this morning: Why is the sky blue. A bit of a trivial question maybe, but knowing the answer might be useful when there is a need for breaking an awkward silence during a party. So here comes the answer (with some help from siencemadesimple).

The atmosphere is the mixture of gas molecules and other materials surrounding the earth. The composition of the atmosphere varies, depending on your location, the weather, and many other things. The atmosphere is densest (thickest) at the bottom, near the Earth. It gradually thins out as you go higher and higher up. There is no sharp break between the atmosphere and space.
Light is a kind of energy that radiates, or travels, in waves. Light is a wave of vibrating electric and magnetic fields. It is one small part of a larger range of vibrating electromagnetic fields. This range is called the electromagnetic spectrum.

Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see. Light from the sun or a light bulb may look white, but it is actually a combination of many colors. We can see the different colors of the spectrum by splitting the light with a prism. The spectrum is also visible when you see a rainbow in the sky.

The colors blend continuously into one another. At one end of the spectrum are the reds and oranges. These gradually shade into yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The colors have different wavelengths, frequencies, and energies. Violet has the shortest wavelength in the visible spectrum. That means it has the highest frequency and energy. Red has the longest wavelength, and lowest frequency and energy.

Light travels through space in a straight line as long as nothing disturbs it. As light moves through the atmosphere, it continues to go straight until it bumps into a bit of dust or a gas molecule. Then what happens to the light depends on its wave length and the size of the thing it hits.
Dust particles and water droplets are much larger than the wavelength of visible light. When light hits these large particles, it gets reflected, or bounced off, in different directions. The different colors of light are all reflected by the particle in the same way. The reflected light appears white because it still contains all of the same colors.

Gas molecules are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. If light bumps into them, it acts differently. When light hits a gas molecule, some of it may get absorbed. After awhile, the molecule radiates (releases, or gives off) the light in a different direction. The color that is radiated is the same color that was absorbed. The different colors of light are affected differently. All of the colors can be absorbed. But the higher frequencies (blues) are absorbed more often than the lower frequencies (reds). This process is called Rayleigh scattering. (It is named after Lord John Rayleigh, an English physicist, who first described it in the 1870's.)
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

Joke

What do you call a three legged donkey?
Wonky Donkey

What do you call a one eyed, three legged donkey?
Winky Wonky Donkey

What do you call a piano playing, one eyed, three legged donkey?
Plinky Plonky Winky Wonky Donkey

What do you call a blue suede shoe wearing, piano playing, one eyed, three legged donkey?
Honky Tonky Plinky Plonky Winky Wonky Donkey

What do you call a blue suede shoe wearing, piano playing, one eyed, three legged donkey who is in love?
Honky Tonky Plinky Plonky Winky Wonky Donkey looking for a little Hanky Panky

Water level

Secondary school McMath is here and they brought some pretty nice weather with them from Richmond. It is sunny and warm. This weekend the first hummingbirds were spotted on the property. Hopefully this means that we will not get any frost anymore.
The water level of the Upper Campbell Lake keeps on dropping. That is a bit of a worry. Paddling from Upper Campbell Lake to Buttle Lake through the narrows is impossible. The narrows transformed into a rapid and it is running pretty fast. This week a few instructors will go down there to try to run the rapid.
The water level is so low because it is not raining enough. Despite the lack of rain BC Hydro continues releasing a lot of water at the different dams between the Upper Campbell Lake and the Campbell River.
We all hope that the weather will stay warm and the snow in the mountains will melt fast so that lakes will fill up again. BC Hydro is going to cut down on the releasing as well between now and the end of April.
The water supply for the lodge is not in danger yet. The pump is still deep down in the lake although the boys attached to the pump start showing.

Music

It has been a musical week as well at SPL. A visiting First Nations school K’ak’ot’latsi based in Quatsino Sound near Port Hardy played their school song in the Whale Room. One of the parents Tom Wamiss, gifted with dark toned voice, also sang a beautiful First Nations song to thank SPL for its hospitality. The school kids accompanied him by playing on traditional drums.
The school group is part of the Quatsino First Nation and the traditional language is a dialect of Kwakw’ala. Tom has learned the stories and songs from his father and he introduces students to the traditional culture of his people.
Friday the students from Island Ukulele arrived for a day program. Only for a brief moment their instruments came out of their cases. The kids were way to busy with paddling and zip lining. The few accords they played sounded amazing though.

Hibernation

SPL definitely came out of its hibernation this week. Almost hundred girls of the Queen Margarets School (QMS) in Duncan arrived on Tuesday for their week of adventure at SPL. The Whale Room was busy again, the sauna was roaring and the paddling bay full of boats. This is the lodge in optima forma: lively, thriving and a bit chaotic so now en then.

A bunch of new instructors got their training last week and they are ready to roll. The weather has been cooperative so far, a bit of sunshine and not too much rain. The lack of rainfall has a downside to it. Because there is not a lot of water falling from the sky, the water level in the Upper Campbell Lake is lower then normal. In stead of walking down to the lake, you have to descent to the waterfront. Getting big freighter canoes in the water is therefore an adventure on itself.

Next week the grade tens of McMath will arrive for their week at SPL. They are going to do an adventure program. High ropes, rock climbing, canoeing, an overnight, zip lining, these guys are so lucky!