GO-Adventures! Blog

Coming Soon - NEXTeams - 'The Next Step in Team Development'

2008-02-12T22:12:00.000-08:00

While technology continues to make the world more interconnected, internal workings of organizations both large and small seem more and more disconnected. This disconnect can be caused by a number of factors - ironically the technology that propels us forward being one of them... The disconnect can have one or multiple causes, from a simple misunderstanding between two employees to a misinterpretation of the overall mission of the organization. Whatever the reasons, and whatever the problems, organizations often benefit from the help of mediation and facilitation. NEXTeams is a company whose mission is to get to the root of an organization's internal and external challenges, identify these barriers to success, working within teams to map out a strategy for overcoming the adversity, and helping the organization implement the plan. Combining goals/needs assessment and personality testing, with expert facilitation and experiential education tools, NEXTeams is the Next Step in Team Development.

Over the next month, I will be posting regular updates on the creation of this unique team development program, and I welcome any feedback from clients, professional facilitators, and anyone interested.

Stay tuned!

ARTBA Portables

2008-02-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

Had another great Portable Team Challenge event with American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) last week. The group was made up of project managers from around the country, and their goal was to get to know each other better, learn effective communication skills, and build trust. Although they were a pretty high functioning group, they were also willing to really share during the debriefs following each activity. Naturally, this helped make the experience more than just a fun event...

Caving with Talbot Park Baptist Church

2008-02-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

Wow! Great trip last weekend with the kids from Talbot Park Baptist Church. The kids had a great time, worked well together, weren't afraid to get a little wet and dirty... It doesn't get any better than that.

We got a couple of great shots of "the Wedding Cake" a flowstone structure in the upper chamber of the cave. Here's one that gives you an idea of the size. This structure grew from minerals deposited through a seam in the ceiling of the cave.

Here's a happy caver coming out of a hole down in the "Popcorn Room." Popcorn, or 'cave coral' is made when a mixture of minerals and moisture are squeezed through a porous rock. Once the moisture is released, it feeds the growth of a coral-like mineral deposit which vaguely resembles popcorn.

Finally we have a picture of ice stalactites and stalagmites growing near the entrance to Indian Cave. The icicles are very similar to actual speleotherms, and give us a great idea of how the amazing structures grow underground...

Dressing for the Outdoors

2007-12-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

Dressing for the Outdoors

Have you ever been caught outdoors without an umbrella or raincoat? Do you remember how it felt? First you got wet, then cold, then miserable? Perhaps things became a bit more worrisome – your teeth began chattering, your fingers and toes got “frost nip,” you began shivering uncontrollably. Every year thousands of people are caught unprepared by a sudden change in the weather. For many, the situation becomes even more desperate, leading to hypothermia, frostbite, and sometimes death. Following a few simple rules can make the difference between a fun adventure and a miserable and potentially dangerous one.

When planning your next outdoor adventure - be it a hike in the woods or a multi-day backpacking trip - keep these rules in mind:

Check the Weather-
Before heading into the outdoors, it is important to check the weather reports for the next couple of days. Knowing what to expect will help you in deciding which clothing will be appropriate for your outdoor adventure.

Leave a Note-
If you are planning to head into the wilderness (anything away from telephones and people) be sure to let someone know your plans - where you will be, what you will be doing, when you expect to return. In the event of an emergency people will be able to get to you quicker if they know where to look!

Dress in Layers-
Wearing multiple layers will keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Remember the three-layer system – base layer, mid/insulating layer, and outer/shell layer. Adding or removing a layer helps your body adapt to changes in your activity level and temperature. Here are a few rules of thumb:

Base Layer-
The base layer is the one next to your skin - your underwear. Although you might think it’s relatively unimportant, choosing an appropriate base layer can make a huge difference in your comfort level. In winter, a wise choice for your base layer is non-cotton long underwear (tops and bottoms) made of either a natural fiber (silk or wool), or a synthetic fiber (polypropylene, nylon). The benefit of choosing non-cotton over cotton underwear is the way that the fabrics react to water. Cotton fibers are hydrophilic – they absorb water -- whereas non-cotton fibers are hydrophobic – they repel water. As more water is absorbed, less heat is retained, which translates to you getting colder faster. Choosing hydrophobic materials will allow both perspiration and rain to be repelled from the body – thus enabling your body to retain heat for longer periods of time.

Insulating layer-
The insulating layer is the layer between the base layer and the shell. As before, choosing a non-cotton insulating layer will help to retain heat and wick perspiration away from the body. Two of the most popular choices for insulating layers are wool and polyester fleece. Not all polyester fleece is created equal! The thicker the garment, the more heat it will retain. For thicker garments, be sure there is some way to vent the heat, either through pit-zippers, front zippers, or both. There is such a thing as being too warm!

Waterproof/Breathable Shell-
The shell layer is the first line of defense against the elements. Choosing a jacket that is “water resistant” will help protect you from an early fall shower but might not be as effective during a late spring deluge. Choosing a jacket that is “waterproof” (such as a PVC rain slicker or poncho) may keep the rain out, but without the benefit of breathability you could become soaked in your own sweat. Breathable/waterproof fabrics (such as the venerable Gore-Tex) will provide the optimum combination – both keeping the rain off and letting the sweat out. Once again, choosing a garment with vents (pit-zippers and front zippers) will provide better temperature control.

Protecting the Extremities-
A wool or fleece hat will help with heat retention and can be easily removed to prevent overheating.

Wool or other non-cotton socks are a must for outdoor comfort. Warm even when wet, wool/poly-blend socks can be worn in winter or summer and can even help with blister prevention.

No matter what level of adventure you are planning, by using a sensible layering system and following a few simple rules you can avoid exposure and potential danger in the outdoors.

Keeping EE professionals in the industry...

2007-08-31T01:27:00.000-07:00

I have been working in and around the experiential education arena since 1992, and over the years I have seen hundreds of good and even great adventure educators enter and leave the field of recreation and education. So many talented and passionate guides and leaders seem to slip through the cracks every year that I start to feel like we are just like so many other service-based industries - a great place to start in the workforce, but mainly thought of as a stepping stone towards "a real job." Now, please don't misunderstand me, I know plenty of people who have been around for decades - it just seems that these old-timers are in the minority...

A few years ago I was faced with the serious question of whether or not I would switch careers (just like so many other adventure facilitators) and rather than throwing away the 10 years I had already invested, I chose to start my own adventure business. Seven years later, I am still running my business and I am faced every season with the uncertainty of who and what I will find to help run my climbing, caving, mountain biking, wilderness skills and portable teambuilding programs...

This winter, my plan is to create some sort of network for the adventure guides and facilitators in my area - Maryland/Virginia/Washington, DC - and attempt to generate some dialogue between the professionals who are the lifeblood of our industry. The goal is to get people to know who is out there, what they have in common, how they can help one another, what the industry can offer to them, etc... In the process, I expect us to have some fun!

I'd appreciate any insights that anyone might share with me about how to make this work. If you know of any already existing networks (I mean real-life, successful networks - I've seen a few websites that seem pretty bogus...) I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks to all of you who make (or have made) this industry great!

Eriq Powers
GO-AdventureSports
www.go-adventuresports.com

Portable Team Challenge - July 28th, 2007

2007-07-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

July 28th, 2007

Today we put on another Portable Team Challenge with a group of international students. The kids had been working and traveling together for a couple of weeks already, and this was their recreational team building event. The students showed great enthusiasm, in spite of the heat and sun. A couple of highlights was the successful completion of the "gutterball," and the "magic boots" activities.

In "gutterball," the team had to move a rubber ball down a series of PVC pipes that were lined up like a gutter. The activity took great focus and communication, as well as a good bit of planning before beginning the action.

For "magic boots," the team had to traverse from one side of the "river" to the other side, using only one pair of "one-way" boots. In other words, the boots could only be worn once for each participant, and had to be used to transport 16 people across. Challenging!

Here's a couple of highlight shots to give you an idea of the challenges... Enjoy!

Whiting's Neck and Indian Cave Adventure...

2007-07-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

July 7th, 2007

Caving at Whiting's Neck Cave, Martinsburg, WV.

Today we took a family caving at Indian and Whiting's Neck Cave, near Shepherdstown, WV. Great day for caving, the heat outside was 91, but the cool inside the cave was about 55! The two boys and their father had been caving before, but they thought this was the "best cave" they had ever been in...

We started at Indian Cave, then ate lunch and headed up to Whiting's Neck. The boys were 9 and 11 years-old, making them the youngest kids to go into the drop. They did a great job, pushing themselves through the tight squeezes and hauling themselves up the rope. This was Shana's first time into Whiting's Neck Cave, so she had to try everything. She was a trooper, and we snapped a shot of her coming through "Rebirth."

Website down, other new changes

2007-07-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

Xtreme Adventures Butler Camp has started, the summer is in full swing, we're all muddy here at GO-Adventures...and we have a new name! We've changed our name to GO-Adventures from GO-Adventure Sports, because the old name had too many syllables and no one could remember it. Also, the new name is....snappier. Let us know what you think! The search engines are having a bit of a harder time finding our site now, so hopefully everything will work out...

In other news, we switched our hosting provider to Yahoo!, and we're still ironing out the kinks. The website was down over the weekend (curses!), but it's back up now. Soon we'll have all the links fixed up, and I'll get the photos back in to our blog. Things might be text-only for a little while. Hang with us!

People to People - June 24th, 2007

2007-06-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

Our second "People to People" program took place at George Washington University. We ran two groups through a series of teambuilding activities that focused on leadership, communication, problem solving and trust. The biggest challenge for our facilitators was getting pumped up to run another program after the first group. Kudos to the professionals for their excellent facilitation...

Caving with Cousins at Carnegie Cave...

2007-06-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday, June 23rd -

I took Eliza, Rachel and her cousins to a cave near Shippensburg, PA today, and we had a great time. Carnegie Cave, is a horizontal shaft cave that begins with a 200 foot corrugated pipe crawl under I-81. Once we got through the pipe the fun began, and we tried to get into whatever holes we could find. When we got to the back chamber of the cave, Eliza and one of her cousins went off on their own to explore every nook and cranny while the rest of us hung out in the big room.

Naturally, I forgot to take any pictures in the cave, but did manage to snap this photo on the way out...

I'll get more photos next time!

Practical Survival in the Shenandoah

2007-06-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

I just got back last night from a wild and crazy 2-day Introduction to Wilderness Skills (which I think I might rename "Practical Survival: trashbags, bears, and you") course, concentrating on backpacking, with a group of five folks who are all friends and signed up together. One is a writer for a Virginia magazine, so with any luck we'll be able to post a link to the article here when it's published in September! We left from the Matthews Arm campground in Shenandoah National Park on Saturday at close to 2 pm after a late start and a gear shakedown and introduction to map and compass navigation. The first day was spent mostly on working more on those navigation skills, such as reading topo maps, aligning maps to north, taking map bearings and landscape bearings, finding your heading, and more. A photographer accompanied us for most of the first day, with a huge clunky backpack and lots of cameras, but he had to leave before we got to camp because our planned campsite (.3 miles downstream of the tallest waterfall in VA) was already taken by a group of Boy Scouts, and he had to get back home!

We headed about another 1.5 hrs down the trail and found ourselves a stunning campsite next to a wide and deep swimming hole, where we could waterslide down a moss-slick slope into the cooooold water or leap from the rocks above! Speedo-man made a timely appearance at this point, and we laughed at him for the rest of the evening. We made supper together and talked about emergency planning, first-aid supplies and how to use them, backcountry food planning and storage, and off-trail navigation before a popcorn snack and then turning in to our slanty beds.

The next morning we had rolled oatmeal for breakfast, went for another dip, and then pitched a 10'x10' tarp in lots of different ways, learning knots and improvisational strategies along the way. Traditional skills dispensed with, we then moved on to primitive/survival skills! The group made a fine brush shelter that fit four sweaty adults inside and kept them nice and toasty warm, emergency trashbag shelters, and found a site for a solar still to get water out of the ground. Then we broke camp and marched a long, slow, poison-ivy exposed trail uphill over Beecher Ridge, finally arriving back at the Matthews Arm campground area for a minimalist fire-building exercise.

A hearty Irish pub dinner and a beer, as well as a few lil' ol' ticks and blackfly bites, rounded out a weekend spent outdoors--the very best kind of weekend!

Photos hopefully to come.

Post-graduation climbing at Sugarloaf Mtn.

2007-06-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

No pictures for this one (I really have to remember to start bringing my camera along--but even when I do, I'm so involved in instructing and facilitating that I forget to shoot pictures), but on Friday morning I took a group of girls from Mary of Nazareth school rock climbing at Sugarloaf on Boy Scout Ledges. They had just graduated from 8th grade and had won the contest to go climbing with two of their favorite teachers, who they teased with all the familiarity of newly-minted equals! The girls belayed and backup-belayed one another after they learned how to manage the rope, tie in, check one another for safety, and call out the climber-belayer cadence ("on belay? belay on! climbing? climb on!"). They all had fun and encouraged one another to keep climbing and keep trying, and I hope they come out for another program sometime soon!

Portable Team Challenge - People to People

2007-06-17T07:13:00.001-07:00

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

A few of my staff and I helped out with a huge portable teambuilding program for 'People to People' (a college prep program for students interested in entering the field of medicine). The high school students were very cool, and did a great job working together and accomplishing the challenges we presented for them.

Adventure Challenge - June 8th, 2007

2007-06-12T05:09:00.000-07:00

On the hottest day of the year (so far!) we headed out to Rock Creek Park and met a group from Georgetown University Medical Center for an Adventure Challenge! The group took part in a self-led, rotational teambuilding program, and in spite of the heat, they were great sports and had a good time...

Butler ROPES Facilitator Training 2007

2007-06-12T04:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend I ran a training for Butler Camp Staff and a couple of my facilitators at the Butler School ROPES Course, near Germantown, Maryland. The team worked hard, learning games, low elements, high elements and rescues... I'm sure they are overloaded with new skills and information!

Here are a couple of shots from the high ropes training day.

What I did on my day off

2007-06-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

I went paddling! I checked out a new spot on the Potomac near Angler's Inn (there's always more to explore there), taught a guy how to hand-roll his kayak (it has nothing to do with sushi!), wiped out over and over in Maryland Chute, and met all kinds of nice people out on the river. I also acted like a pirate around a couple of rafts full of Calleva campers and got a little bit sunburned, and tried to learn a new rolling technique.

All in all, an excellent day off.

Zip/Wall at JR's Pavilions of Turkey Run

2007-06-07T06:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we ran a zipline/climbing wall program at JR's Pavilions of Turkey Run (corporate picnic facility near McLean, VA). Participants had to climb up our challenge wall, step onto a platform that sits 40 feet off the ground, and zip down the 500 foot cable. Fun!

Although the action shots didn't come out, one of the clients was able to get shots of his wife climbing the wall and stepping onto the platform. Enjoy!

Family Fun Day at Butler School!!

2007-06-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

- June 2nd, 2007 - Well, it's been a busy week at GO-Adventures. The end of the school year at Butler School means the beginning of the summer season, and between end of school-year trips and beginning of summer trainings, I re-installed a zip line for the Family Fun Day.

One of the parents was kind enough to make this little video of her children on the zip line - enjoy...

GO-Adventure Sports goes live!

2007-05-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

We are all excited here at GO-Adventure Sports to inaugarate our new blog, with updates from the field and the office. We want to share our stories, pictures, and, most of all, the adventures we enjoy and lead! We welcome your comments, as well.