The Climbing Hall has invoked a sense of kinship as well as rivalry among our semester.
Climbers of all abilities come together to learn from each other and to grow stronger. The Hall has led to incredible physical and mental growth for students, including those who climb every week and who didn’t know how physically taxing rock climbing is before they came to HMI. This physically taxing factor has also made us mentally strong when it comes to persisting through physical hardship. Here, rivals are formed to push each other to new heights, but the Climbing Hall is an all use area. For example, Spike-ball is an incredible sport that is taking HMI by storm. Whether tournament style or just messing around, fun is taken seriously in the Climbing Hall. It is a place open to everyone and within the community at HMI it feels so welcoming.
As we head into our final week on campus, students reflect on the rigor of the past week of academics. 
With our decaying average, the final week of classes count the most, along with the added work of final projects. Last week, many students submitted their final essay for “Ceremony,” the longest novel we have read this year. This was a relief to many, but only one of the major assignments. In P&P we had our personal environmental ethic project (PEEP). This synthesized our topics from the Semester into a thesis about our own environmental ethic. Projects varied from movies, to podcasts, to songs, storybooks, and a Spike-ball net made out of recycled materials. In science, Coco and Klaus’s class had a graphic essay due on ethnography. Students studied an indigenous tribe from where their home town, and connected it to past and present Leadville. Students taking Spanish had their final project of storytelling due on Saturday. Other assignments include an English response re-write, a lyric essay for English, and a final Science chapter and chapter corrections due Tuesday. Although stress is high, students are persevering through these last academic days, which end tonight! With a packed academic week behind us, and a trip to Ski Cooper to look forward to on Wednesday, the hard work will pay off.
As winter has hit us full on now, students have moved inside to hangout. 
Less meals on Who’s porch, but more next to the fire place in the lounge. There is still the occasional snow angels and snow sitting. The runs for AMX are getting longer. Recently there was a 5 mile run up to Turquoise lake using the roads instead of the back path, which is covered in snow. Runs are also getting less frequent as the temperatures are not working out for us in the mornings. A popular workout among students which isn’t running is the Gratitude Workout. This workout includes many movements like self-worth lunges, dancing, high five jumps and more. We have all improved strongly as we are moving closer to the fun-run. We are still finding ways to have fun with each other. Playing games like chess and poker, watching TV together in the library, or even going on the infamous frate (friend date). Frates can be with anyone in the HMI community doing anything, a way to get closer to everyone here. We are all working very hard in our free times to make sure that we can get done and hang with friends as the semester is coming to a close. Everyone is getting excited for the fun run and end of academics, but are sad as we are getting ready to leave.
Activities are a large part of what we do here at HMI whether it be labs, Saturday night activities, or 
activities during Activity Block. Every Tuesday and Thursday we have a 90 minute block period dedicated to activities, giving us a break from academics and allowing us to learn new skills. Some of the activities that have taken place so far this semester include primitive skills (making string, traps, arrowheads etc.), film making, podcast making, jewelry making, Bullet Journal making, Who’s Hall decorating, Pumpkin caring, and much more. Activities have been a large part of our experience here at HMI and we have gained many new skills as a result. With such a strict academic schedule and heavy workload, it is nice to get a break from our normal routine and try something new. We’ve all learned a lot of new skills this semester and plan on building off of these skills in the future. Every week multiple activities take place, giving us the choice on whether we want to expand a certain skill or learn something completely new. We have really enjoyed all the activities we have been a part of this semester and it will definitely be something we will miss when we go back home in a week. I think it is important for us students who spend so much time challenging ourselves academically to get this break and focus on the present.