Dry Socks are Good

Just got a phone call from Cadyn our intern from PSU. He's not with one particular group - instead he's been visiting multiple groups this week to conduct a safety review of the expedition.

We have quite a few policies and procedures that we have written down which say how we should be running our programs. We train staff and students in these policies and Cadyn is looking to see if these written policies actually translates into safer actions in the field.

He'll be making a report to our Risk Management Committee next week once the expedition is over.

But that's not what I wanted to write about just now. He called to check in and to let me know he'd seen Dave, Adam and Jade's group and a little while later Laurel, Doug and Matt's group.

Dave, Adam and Jade's crew had just come over the summit of Mt. Mousilauke and Laurel and Doug's group were about to go in that direction. It turns out that the crew that had already summitted had found some snow on top. Not a surprise to us since we've been seeing pictures and hearing stories about this all along here on the web site, but Dave hadn't of course and this was the first time his crew was up that high so they were a little surprised. It turns out that quite a few of the students got snow in their boots and had pretty wet socks.

Along saunters Cadyn with the mission of reviewing safety policies in action. Now, not only was he to do this, but he also had a super secret mission. Cadyn had stuffed his pack before he left with dry long jons, wool socks, and other goodies. When Dave, Jade and Adam's crew came down off the mountain they must have been proud but also a little cold and damp. I'll bet he could have got any price he asked for if he was selling the dry socks he had in his pack! As it was he said he gave out all the socks he had with him and turned proud but cold students into proud cozy students.

Students will be at their final camp sites tonight and will no doubt break camp in record time tomorow morning to meet their pick ups. All students should be back on campus by around 11:00am and should be done with cleaning up and returning group gear by noon.