5:00 am Hazel, Yael, and Chaney wage the greatest battle in the prank war to date. Their weapon was unknowingly gifted to them by their foes. In the dead of night, they steal the Instructors’ food bags, toss an avalanche beacon in each, and bury them in the snow.
7:00 am Courtney, Virginia, and Chaney are woken up by Irati yelling “Courtney get your foot out of my face.” Chaney and Virginia are spooning, or, as Virginia likes to refer to it, “Chaney kneed me in the back 8 times last night” Needless to say, quigloo living is snug.
8:00 am Cooks prepare the backcountry staple we all grow to love: frozen ziplock eggs. The occasionally inextricable pieces of plastic add both texture and flavor to this fabulous feast.
8:05am: We pause to take in the stunning snow-dusted pine trees that form our new backyard
8:10 am: the Instructors realize that their food bags have gone missing. Chaney yells “avalanche” and the I-team realizes that their food bags, and more importantly–their coffee, lie buried underneath the snow, waiting to be found using the avalanche safety techniques they taught us the previous day. As the old adage goes, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach Yael how to fish and she’ll steal your breakfast.
9:30 am: Ethan is hitting the “booter aka jumping off a small ski jump he has built. After having had great difficulty with paddling, he has found a sport he is truly good at. His booter, a modern masterpiece, is artfully decorated with some orange mio.
10:00 am: the ski tour begins; time to get the yayas out.
10:01 am: Douglas falls, laughs it off, and returns victorious to the “skin track” (what we call the trail we make through the snow).
12:00 pm: Zach’s ski jumping prowess teaches us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
2:00 pm: return to the “Hot Tub” for an environmental studies lesson on “the sublime” while surrounded by breathtaking mountains. The hot tub is named so because it is a circular hole we’ve dug out in the snow to have class in–it resembles a hot tub, that is, if the hot tub were made of snow.
4:00pm: Hazel starts a tackle war, Zach proceeds to dominate the snow tackle circuit.
4:15 pm: Yael proves to be the Tony Hawk of sleeping pad skateboarding. Claire and Emma watch anxiously. Olivia decides to join and executes a couple of respectable wipeouts.
4:30 pm: eat 100 pizza rolls with the help of your 3 other cook group members
5:30 pm: Mir starts cooking dinner
5:31 pm: Mir’s kitchen lights on fire
5:32 pm: Mir‘s kitchen floods
5:33 pm: Mir’s whisper-light gets clogged
5:34 pm: Mir runs out of fuel
5:35 pm: Mir rallies from the many absurdities of her kitchen time and cooks a delicious dinner!
7:00pm: Have a lovely community circle where we answer the question “what is the best gist you’ve ever given someone?”
8:00 pm: We successfully melt snow into boiling water and retire to our slumber tubes with warm baby nalges
