Pictures from July 18, 2010 (password required)

"The Mystery Machine"

"The Ghostbusters"

Not only was it Olympic Sunday, but we also had a “sleep-in Sunday!”  This morning we let the boys come up to breakfast at their leisure.  Many chose to sleep-in just a little, while some took full advantage of the extra time!   We had some events going on in the dining hall and lodge for those that woke up early, including Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast and a few Looney Tune classics!

After our leisure wake-up we headed down to the lake for our morning service lead by our most enthusiast counselor, Ashley Upchurch.  She focused on the importance of relationships.  Our morning service was followed by our Sunday choice period where the guys had options including bouldering, paddling, ping pong, disc golf, swimming, and many additional opportunities.

We started the afternoon with the kick-off to our Olympic festivities.  As many of you know, we divide camp in half and create a situation that requires a resolution.  The resolution involves the events of all camp Olympics.  This year the teams were the “Scooby Doo and Mystery Machine crew” vs. “The Ghostbusters.”   The costumes were great and the excitement even better.   All ended well with the “Ghostbusters” pulling ahead in the end, giving them first-bell rights at dinner.  As usual the focus was on the events and fun.

Our three-day climbing trip took off just after lunch today for the Red River Gorge in Kentucky.  They will spend the next three days climbing some of the best sandstone in the southeast.  Our head of climbing, Chris Dorrity, has many connections up there and a lot of knowledge about the area.  He has arranged with two different landowners to get the kids on some private rock faces others only dream of climbing!  Chris has been heading up our climbing program for over five years.  He is well known and a well respected climber in the southeast.  He recently finished a bouldering guide book for Rumbling Bald; “The Rumbling Bald Bouldering Guide,” which has turned in to the “must have” guide for this newly developed area.   Like most all of the young men we hire here at High Rocks, Chris is not just an amazing climber; he’s a great role model for our boys who also climbs very well.  He has added a lot of wonderful attributes to our program and continues to make it better every year while he leads these boys to new heights and takes them places they have never imagined.

As we head into our last week of the session, there is still a ton of excitement ahead.  We’ll keep you posted on all the fun!  Have a great night!

Don

 Pictures from July 17, 2010 (password required)

Adventures on the New River in West Virginia

The last Saturday of the session!  Of course next Saturday is parents’ day, but that is quite a different day.  It’s hard to believe we only have a week to go!  I know many of you are excited while some of you are just starting to enjoy the peace a quite.  However you feel, we hope that you realize that these four weeks during the summer is not only fun, but part of your son’s education.  We have saturated these boys with knowledge, physical endurance, creativity, socialization, and many skills.  We pair that with a whole lot of self reliance, teamwork, perseverance, friendship, and fun to complete an experience matched nowhere else but High Rocks!

In about ten days I will ask all of you to take part in a very important study; one that not only affects High Rocks, but many of the amazing camps here in the mountains of North Carolina.  The study is designed to show the economic impact of summer camps in our mountain communities.  You may not know it, but summer camps in our area are getting hit from all sides including permitting, building codes, school calendars, and even the DOT.  As a founding board member of the North Carolina Youth Camp Association (NCYCA) I have committed to helping North Carolina camps in many ways.  One particular way the NCYCA is currently helping is this Economic Impact Study.  Help us give camp a say with legislatures by showing your support of this study and the importance of summer camp!  Be on the lookout for the e-mail a week from Tuesday.

So, back to camp!   I woke up this morning to once again continue a long tradition of camp directors here at High Rocks making pancakes for the whole crew on Saturday morning.  Dan Noland did the bulk of the work, but I was definitely a strong second.  We made more cakes then the boys could eat!  

I stepped out of the kitchen and into assembly to get these still-sleepy boys ready for the day.  I enjoyed leading the morning motion song and the excitement of getting them jazzed up for the day!  The morning continued with a group of boys heading off to a wonderful horse show, pirate day down at the climbing tower, a treasure hunt in sailing, and other cool games in paddling and archery.  The boys of hiking made some sort of Mexican crepe all morning.  A wonderful sort of pancake smothered in butter, toasted in a pan, then covered with cinnamon and sugar.  It was a great time in activities today.

This afternoon around 5pm the boys headed back to the cabin for a much needed shower and a change into clean clothes.  We then enjoyed a nice dinner on the lawn and wrapped up the night hosting the girls of Keystone Camp to a square dance!  What a great day!

There are some great shots from the three day whitewater trip on the New River in West Virginia.  A great trip for a group of our most experienced paddlers.  Have a great night!

Don Gentle

Pictures from July 16, 2010 (password required)

Tonight we continue our “guest columnist” event as Ashley Upchurch takes the stage to write a little about camp from her  perspective.  -Don Gentle

Evening, y’all! My name’s Ashley UpChurch. I work down at the barn teaching lessons and working with the apprentices, training them to be future riding counselors (fingers crossed). I’ve been a counselor at High Rocks for four summers, and half way through that I spent a summer as a riding and cabin counselor at Camp Green Cove.  I graduated in 2009, and I spent the past year teaching Language Arts at a bilingual school in Armenia, Colombia down in South America. Having flown in from Colombia 3 days before the Four-Week started, I arrived to camp just hours before the kids rolled up the mountain. It was the perfect beginning to another incredible summer.

We’re just coming over the big halfway point, and this week is living up to its usual expectations.  Alex mentioned yesterday that the kids are heading out left and right on trips all over the place. We saw a caving, a paddling and a climbing trip head out early this morning (the dining hall at breakfast and lunch has been pretty calm all week), and they’ll be headed back in tonight. This evening the 5-day hike comes back, surely happily worn out and with plenty of stories I can’t wait to hear. Tomorrow the New River paddling trip will rejoin us as well, and after a quick morning barn trip, we’ll have one of those all-in Saturday afternoons I personally enjoy so much.

Last night was an exciting one for the barn. We first sent two trail rides out during 5:00 free period, and they all got to help turn horses out to pasture before having dinner with Jane Williams, the co-founder of camp. Supper Rides are a new development at the barn this summer, and it’s been a huge success so far. It’s neat to watch the kids interact with Jane, who they don’t get to see that often. Many campers choose to have dinner at Jane’s instead of going on the barn overnight.

Luckily for me, some campers still like the overnight. After the Supper Ride, Sumner Williams, Jane’s grandson, and I took our overnighters on a beautiful trail called Fern Gully (aptly named for the lovely ferns spread around most of the trail). We ended our trail in Upper Pasture to spend the night with the horses. After bare backing around the pasture for a while just to have some fun, we let our horses go for the night and set up camp.  S’mores plus a couple games of Mafia (a camp-wide favorite, as I’m sure you know) saw us into the night, but it was cut short by some much needed rain. We scurried into our tents (and I into my hammock), and settled down for the night, all silently hoping the rain would let up.

This morning I woke to find the boys rather damp, but all smiles as they packed up camp and rounded up their steeds. They were sports about the rainy night, and as we bare backed our way into camp I heard snippets of conversation about how much fun they had. The part I found funniest of the whole night was when our oldest boys tried setting up their tent, concluded they didn’t have tent poles, sent delegates in search of new poles, returned with the wrong set of poles, and ended the whole ordeal finding the original poles under the tent!

Tomorrow the barn staff will be taking any riders who would like to go (which is most of them) to a horse show in Tryon, NC. We’ll be watching local riders compete over fences and in groundwork, and what’s more we get sodas! The horse shows have often been a huge success (one summer we even got to pretend to be horses out in a field near the show and put on our own little event), so I’m predicting tomorrow will be a fun day for the High Rocks riders! On a side note, our 2-week Minis have been doing awesome.  As riders, they’ll be staying around camp tomorrow to get as much saddle time as possible in the next week. Speaking of that, I can’t believe we’re already a week away from Closing Day.

I hope you all enjoy this last week; I know I certainly will! Have a great weekend as you keep up with what’s going on here at camp.

- Ashley

Pictures from July 15, 2010 (password required)

Tonight I asked one of our newest counselors, Alex Gregor, to write the blog.  Alex is a graduate of Davidson University where he earned his degree in Anthropology.  Since his graduation he has worked at Davidson in their Outdoor Program and as an employee of their IT Department. In the upcoming days we will have more of our outstanding counselors contribute to the blog as well. –Hank Birdsong

Fun on the waterslide!!

You might have marked yesterday as Bastille Day. At High Rocks, we didn’t follow up on our July 4th fireworks display with another, but there was plenty of other excitement at camp.

Extended trips are in full-swing at this point. As soon as one group of campers returns to camp, another one is headed out the door. While climbers returned from three days at the Obed, a popular climbing area in Tennessee, a group of advanced paddlers prepared to depart for West Virginia’s New River Gorge. At the same time, another group got ready to head out for an overnight trip Worley’s Cave. The trip leaders, Ben Little and Elizabeth Thompson, had their participants take a look at a pair of coat hangers before they set out. The US Geological Survey says that if an underground passageway is as big as the space within a coat hanger, then it’s big enough to squeeze through. I was ready to take their word for it but several of the campers, who returned to camp today after spending the night underground, confirmed that a coat-hanger-sized tunnel is plenty big to crawl inside.

One of the things I appreciate the most at High Rocks as a counselor is the variety that each day offers. In my role as one of camp’s photographers, I spent most of my morning chasing the campers with the craziest hairdos, trying to get some photos worthy of sending home. I spent some time on the tennis courts, the archery and riflery range, and one of our pastures while horseback riders trotted past. Just a few days before, I was taking photos from an eddy on the Green River. Not long after that, I was hanging off our climbing tower from a rope, taking photos as guys screamed down the zipline. For a photographer who loves the outdoors, working at High Rocks is a dream job. I take photos all morning and then teach mountain biking all afternoon. It’s a great community of people to spend time with and I think one of the camp t-shirts pretty much sums it up: “If it’s awesome, we do it at High Rocks.”

When I got to camp for staff training earlier this summer, I was really impressed to learn that fellow counselor David Kirby loves to compete in ultra marathons, ridiculously long races that have him running up and down mountain trails for 50, 75, or 100km at a time. David organized High Rocks’ first triathlon, which took place yesterday afternoon. We decided to drop the “ultra” part and keep things short. A group of campers and counselors jumped into the lake for an aptly named “tri swim” (The name’s older than our triathlon but we’ll take it. And if campers do 10 of these in a summer, they get a free trip to Dolly’s…). After swimming out to a couple of buoys and back, we took off on mountain bikes for Chainbreaker Hill, a formidable climb that leads up to a grassy pasture and the top of Jaybreaker Hill, a rolling, grassy descent to camp below. Still dripping from our swim, we blasted down Jaybreaker but slammed on the brakes before we got to the bottom. A herd of horses was having dinner right in the middle of our trail. With a quick detour by foot, we were back on track, riding into camp to start our run around the Lake Loop Trail. About a mile and a half later, we were greeted with cheers and high-fives back at the dock.

We weren’t keeping time at all during the triathlon. All of us who participated stuck together for the entire event, starting and finishing as a group. Another group did the same today, mostly following the same route but doing an abbreviated mountain bike ride. It was a blast for all the guys who participated. One camper who cheered us on said tonight, “I want all of you who did the triathlon to talk to me after dinner. I want to make you shirts, which I’ll give you next summer.”

The whole event showcased the camaraderie, goofiness, and fun that I love about High Rocks. It was a great way to celebrate my 24th birthday, which was yesterday. I’m hard pressed to think of one I enjoyed more.

–Alex Gregor

(ps from Hank- Before the caving trip left yesterday, several of us tested out the “coathanger test” by going through a coathanger from head to toe.  Smaller campers had no trouble at all.  I was able to do it, but there was some grunting involved!!)

Pictures from July 14, 2010 (password required)

Just as breakfast was ending, the hair salon was opening!  Several of our staff created some wacky hairstyles for whoever wanted one; everything from small braids to BIG HAIR!   They sure looked hilarious!  Assembly followed to what was to become a beautiful day!  The weather was partly cloudy all day, high in the mid-80’s, and a great breeze!  What a wonderful day at Camp!

Holy cow are we ever busy!  These boys are running in so many directions it is amazing!  It sure is a lot of fun!  Yesterday was a big treat for some of our paddlers.  We arranged for a group of the guys to meet up with Wayne Dickert, former Olympian and Head of Instruction at the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC).   They worked the river and received some top notch instruction at the gates.  Training that will set them up for success at next week’s Camp Cup event on the Nantahala River.  It was a great day!

Today was a huge day for our Mini II boys!   After breakfast they headed over to spend the entire morning on the high ropes course.  They spent the afternoon in their normal activities, and finally met up for a night in the woods formally known as their “cabin overnight.”  The guys packed up their backpacks and headed out to Lower Rocky Top Shelter, one of five Appalachian Trail style shelters we have on the property.  They will spend the night feasting on the favored “pita pizza” then wash it down with some good old fashioned s’mores!  We’ll get to see them roll in just before breakfast to get washed up just in time to eat.   I am looking forward to the stories.

Tennis had a special treat this afternoon as they headed down to town to enjoy some instruction at Brevard Racquet Club and experience the game of tennis on some top-notch clay courts.  Swimming also had an afternoon trip out.  The swimming staff took a group of guys out to Hooker Falls in Dupont State Forest.  It was a leisure event swimming below the falls and playing around in the huge pool. A perfect trip on for a sunny afternoon.

The cavers headed out after lunch for our first-ever “caving overnight.”  The guys will head into the cave tonight, then eat dinner, sleep, and hike back out!  Hopefully, we’ll have a few pictures to show you tomorrow.  The mountain bikers headed out for three days over in the Tsali National Recreation Area in the Nantahala National Forest.  Three full days of riding on some world class trails!  Our advanced paddlers head out early tomorrow morning for a two-day trip up to the New River Gorge in West Virginia.  The fun never ends!  Have a great night and feel free to leave some comments if you feel the urge.

Don Gentle

 Pictures from July 13, 2010 (password required)

This can't be true!!

One of the surprising things about being in the middle of the four week session is that, by the time the wake-up bell rings at 7:45, a few dozen people have already eaten breakfast and pulled out of camp on their trips, and camp, especially the dining room, is an oddly quiter place. That’s relatively speaking, of course.

In addition to the two advanced trips that remain out of camp from yesterday, an all-day hike went to the nearby but quite spectacular Caeser’s Head State Park along the Blue Ridge Escarpment at the very top of South Carolina. Besides the virtiginous drop from a granite outcropping over 400 million year old, the park has almost 7500 acres of forest trails and waterfalls and is part of a larger system of parks and wilderness areas, one of the truly special places in our country. Several of the campers’ faces were quite thoughful upon their return this evening. Canoers went to the Nantahala River about two hours west, in the Nantahala National Forest, where the cold water comes from the bottom of 1700 foot deep Fontana Lake and rushes through a deep, narrow gorge. Mountain bikers ventured to Pisgah National Forest, enjoying difficult trails on a gorgeously sunny day. In the afternoon, girls from Keystone Camp came to High Rocks for tennis and soccer, fun for all and a predictable distraction for some of the guys. After an early supper, the upper-middler age group–Chalet and Flattop cabins–went on their “Chill Night” to Sliding Rock and Dolly’s.

We have gotten a bit more rain today, sweet music at rest hour and a welcome change this evening from the heat of the last few weeks. Since many of our evening activities involve getting wet anyway, doing them in the rain adds a bit of adventure.

It is gratifying to see how the older, more experienced campers have picked up on the new two-week campers. They treat them as equals, help them get the hang of activities and are quick to answer questions or redirect a confused wanderer. In part because of this, the guys who got here just yesterday are already full-fledged members of the community.

Thank you for letting us spend wonderful time with all of these fine young people.

Dan Noland

ps. Keep a lookout tomorrow for the pictures from Crazy Hair Day!

 Pictures from July 12, 2010 (password required)

The rope swing rocks!!!

This morning we had some welcome rain to begin the day.  There was no lightning, so all of our activities progressed as normal.  The skies cleared completely shortly after lunch.

The “mini-2″ session began today.  After the new Hillside campers settled in they took a camp tour & decided on activities.  After lunch they began their schedule of activities.

Many of you know that I went to UNC-Chapel Hill & I like to have fun with campers that wear Duke apparel.  I’ll kid them about going to the back of the lunch line  or dismiss them last from assembly.  As a result, there are more Duke shirts seen around camp just to torment me.  Some of the guys will wear a Duke hat, shirt & shorts 7 days a week just for my benefit.  Today Sam & I played in the camper-counselor tennis tournament against Bennett H. (camper) and Alex Gregor (counselor).  Since Bennett is one of my main Duke protagonists, we decided that the loser would have to wear the opponents apparel- if my team won, Bennett would have to wear Tarheel blue for a day.  Needless to say, I’ll be the one wearing a Duke  hat and t-shirt all day tomorrow!  I’m sure the Duke supporters will all want to pose for a picture with me!  It’s all in fun, and the tennis game  was a great time.  Both campers had much more tennis talent than Alex or me.

A five-day backpacking trip headed out today to hike the “Foothills Trail” (http://www.foothillstrail.org/) in upstate South Carolina.  About 77 miles in length, the Foothills Trail is located along the Blue Ridge Escarpment in Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina. 

Our trips are increasing in number & skill level as the session progresses.  In addition to the backpacking trip there were two river trips, a caving trip, a 3-day climbing trip, and a mountain biking trip out of camp today.  If you don’t see your son in any pictures in the next few days, it may be because he’s out of camp on one of the many trips!

Enjoy today’s pictures, we enjoyed taking them!

Hank Birdsong

 Pictures from July 11, 2010 (password required)

Somtimes summer camp just runs in the family...

We started the day with our usual service by the lake, then some choice period activities to wrap up the morning.  One of the events included the first disc golf tournament for the summer.   We had about 18 boys participate in this “scramble style” best-shot event.  The boys did quite well with the best team shooting 10 under par!

Last night we split up into two groups for a square dance with Camp Illahee.  The youngest came with me to Illahee and the oldest stayed here.  Well… We decided to continue the fun and have all the girls over for some fun.  So we had them back for an afternoon of field games and fun, followed by burgers and dogs for dinner.  It was a wonderful time that made for a lot of great pictures.  Part of the field day of fun was the re-opening of our rope swing!   It is great to have it back in action.  The boys and girls alike enjoyed the ride!

I need to head off to campfire.  Sorry to keep it  so short.  We have a busy week ahead of us and, of course, we’ll share it all with you as it comes.

Have a great night!

Don Gentle

Pictures from July 10, 2010 (password required)

Goodbye Mini I's! We sure had fun! Hope to see you next summer!

What a beautiful day in camp! It was still a little warm, but the breeze lasting throughout the day made it wonderful! Most everyone was in camp today. We still had a beginner French Broad float trip this morning, and a make-up Illahee tennis event this afternoon, but mostly we just enjoyed our wonderful 1100 acres of fun today.

We said goodbye to our Mini I campers this morning. After two weeks of pure screaming fun, they were reunited with their parents and had a ton of great stories to tell. Our Mini II’s come in on Monday. We are so excited to see them. The barn had a series of games on horseback today, which they call Gymkahna. The boys had a lot of fun; check out the pictures. Mountain biking decorated themselves with some fake tattoos and road around on their bikes for Harley Day. Our camper/counselor tennis tournament had several matches today. Zoob and her partner went down after a long fought battle. The bracket continues…

We wrapped up our wonderful Saturday square dancing with Camp Illahee! I had the youngest boys follow me to Illahee, while the oldest half of campers stayed here to meet up with the oldest girls. It was a lot of fun in both locations; what a fine group of gentlemen and ladies Sorry the pictures are so late tonight. I just got back from Illahee and got the boys to bed.

Enjoy some incredible pictures from Brian Hamm, Alex Gregor, and Blair Cannon.  You’ll see some great shots from our “Retirement Home” Bingo.  Many of the campers and staff got into costume again, trying to look a little aged.  There are also a couple great shots of Zoob and myself as “celebrity riders” down at the barn.  We were both selected as guest riders for the day on Friday.  We also captured a few shots from last night’s “Skit Night” event.

Don

 Pictures from July 9, 2010 (password required)

Backpacking in Pisgah National Forest

The second week of tripping built to a crescendo today, and what a day!  In addition to the hikers who left yesterday and were still out in the Turkey Pen Gap area, a large group of rock climbers left early to take advantage of the North Face of Looking Glass Rock before the heat returned. Another crew of pretty advanced paddlers went to the steep and fast Section Nine of The French Broad River, and the mountain bikers sent a group to spend the day peddling in the Fawn Lake area of DuPont State Forest. For good measure, the boys in Hillside, who as mini-session campers will be leaving tomorrow, took their turn on the ropes course. Tonight they will also enjoy their Chill Night, going into Pisgah National Forest to Sliding Rock and topping the evening off with a trip to Dolly’s.

The late-morning free time period served as prelude to what is, rather surprisingly, one of the most eagerly awaited (by campers and staff both) events in all camp: Mini-corndog lunch! It’s hard to get campers in their seats before they are bounding back for more, and the seconds line moves in a tight circle. But rest hour looms to soothe, and today we had a real treat—a shower moved through while we were in cabins, with distant thunder for the sleepers, lower temperatures for all and a bit of rain that was especially welcome to the canoers.

In the afternoon, some soccer and tennis players went to Illahee, a nearby girls’ camp, for good-natured games with much excitement involved, because of the trip itself and also because Illahee will come to High Rocks tomorrow for our second square dance. Choice Period this afternoon was quieter than normal, because so many campers had withdrawn to prepare for Skit Night, where talent, near talent and much foolishness hold sway. Every cabin that chooses to participate lines up an act, gives it a name, signs up for the event and entertains the whole camp in the transformed dining hall. Chase Feree, a counselor who spent the last year studying stand-up comedy, and Andy Glass will emcee the evening.

I hope your day has been as enjoyable as the one we are having here.

Dan Noland