Giving to the Mountain

A leaky roof fixed, wood split, trails blazed, trash picked up, boards greased. That's a quick look at the projects some hard working students tackled this week.

I say the same spiel every time we start up a new community service crew, "This mountain is built by your work - it wouldn't be possible without students doing this every fall and spring." The thing is - it's really true! We just couldn't keep up with work on the property only relying on the teachers and staff. What blows me away is when I get really stressed out about what I'm not doing on the mountain an opportunity presents itself to do the work better and put it in the hands of students.
This week I was actually too busy to even really think about the mountain. But I had some students working up there. So I had to keep them meaningfully engaged but I couldn't really spend the time to be up there working with them. It's at times like this that I think I have my priorities mixed up and I should ditch the meeting or whatever and get up on the hill.

So I really only had time to check in with them and hand them a list of projects - mostly things I've been trying to get to for months but haven't been able to. Next time I'd see them it was always, "We did everything on the list, Mundahl - what next."

Possibly the most exciting project the crew tackled was cutting a trail from the top of the ski hill over to the upper lift shack. I haven't had a chance to get up on the mountain to take a look a their work, but I'm looking forward to it.

Bob followed the trail up there a few days ago and found the Chevy engine in good enough shape he plans to salvage parts from it.

Thank you, crew. I appreciate your work.