The Good, the Bad, and Ugly

Saturday, June 13

Ok, so….I have bunch of good news and a bunch of bad news.

Some good news is this has been an unexpectedly somewhat eventful week and I’ve already done some things that I have been looking forward to since I accepted this internship. Tuesday morning started off with a boring all employees meeting and getting my defensive driving training. This was done by driving around in “Beastie,” this huge old truck that doesn’t tell you what gear you’re in-let me tell you that sucked parallel parking on a hill. This was followed by being given gear and then receiving a call for a SAR (Search and Rescue)!

This guide was leading 2 or three other people on a steep snowfield, when someone tripped and the guide and one boy fell 300 ft down the snowfield. The guide broke his ankle, and the boy had a spinal injury (this is some bad news, but on the more positive note, it could have been a lot worst and the boy was released from the hospital the next day). Anyways, I helped to hike in some gear and then assisted with the litter carry for the guide. Some more good news that goes with this, I get paid for rescues! Now, in, I’m really hoping to go on more rescues, not only for the money, but the experience-to put some of my EMT training to use (not to be morbid of course). They had 350 rescues last year (this includes the winter though).

So after I was part of a real SAR, I had the training to be in a SAR all day Thursday and Friday. Thursday was just the basics on how to be prepared, who is in charge (the chain of command), driving safety, how to package a patient, and use the litters. Then we actually practiced a SAR scenario, where we carried the litter with the patient over various terrain. Friday we went to Wild Basin to learn Basic Technical SAR-with knots and setting up anchors, etc. (While I was there, I saw a couple of interesting climbing routes I want to get on eventually).

Wednesday…I actually can’t remember what we did in the morning, but in the afternoon we were working on setting up an orienteering course for training next week. With a partner we were all put at different points and had to follow the compass to the same spot so make sure all the given degrees were correct. My partner and I ended up going through some wetlands. It wasn’t that bad at first, then we hit the center where the streams were a good deal deeper, wider, and the brush much denser.

Oh, some more good news, I went climbing for the first time since I got here on Thursdays after training. We went to these cliffs called Jurassic Park. Can’t wait to try this 5.9 route called the “Edge of time” (aptly named)-it looks fantastic.

Ok, the rest of the bad news. Yesterday evening I got my bike (no that’s not the bad part, that comes next). So right away, I put it together and go for a bike ride. In the first 10 minutes, a bird FLIES INTO MY BIKE! I know it’s hard to believe! I can’t figure out whose fault it was, but either way, to my despair, it happened. So I turned around right away to check on it. I could see that its right wing is probably broken. I try calling some people to see if they knew anyone who might take in injured wildlife, but I couldn't get ahold of anyone. So I decide to continue my bike ride, and give the bird some space to recover, incase it was just a little ruffled up and needed time to recover. It was still there an hour later-looking a little better than before, but the wing was definitely broken-it kept it tight to it’s side, and the tail feathers were a little messed up. I was in a rush to get to the coffee shop (I swear I am not a shallow person) to look up recipes online for bread, check my online banking and that the SCA forms were finally set. All before it was too dark to bike back; so I decided to give the bird a little more time, to try to get a hold of people again before I did anything. 2 hours later when I came back, he was there and I had failed to find a place to take it too. I couldn’t leave him there to just suffer. I knew what I had to do, what was the more merciful thing to do, but I still hesitated. I stood there for about 10-15 min, and then finally, as I apologized while crying (a little-give me a break it was my first!), I picked up a rock, and smashed it. I will spare you the details. So much wanting to be a hunter.

With a heavy heart, I head home for a late night of baking granola and bread.
Today was a much brighter day! Weather wise and mood wise. I got a short run in the morning done, then went on a long hike with a friend who is one of my co-workers-Luke. We hiked a little past Lawn Lake (which is where we had stopped for lunch), hoping to reach the saddle which supposedly has wonderful views, only to turn around early because the once clear blue sky now showed signs of a likely thunderstorm. We still got about a 12-12.5 mile hike in, with about 2640ft elevation gain. And I have all summer to finish the hike. We then had dinner in Estes Park, went and checked out (or climbed) this huge boulder near my place that has this neat traversing problem on it.