Lindsey Black and Crystal Dean

Ropes was a very exciting course. It was something we will never forget. For us the hardest part was not the actual climbing but the teamwork. It took a lot of teamwork to do the tasks we were assigned in the first lesson. We had a bullring and fourteen strings tied around it. Inside the ring was a pipe about an inch tall with a tennis ball sitting on the top with the pipe and the bottom of the pipe against the ground. Our job was to lift up on the strings so that the ring would lift up on the ball. We had to walk around in a complete circle. After that each one of us had to step through a hula-hoop someone was holding - all without dropping the tennis ball, which was still sitting in the bullring. It wasn't easy. It took about sixteen tries before we finally got that tennis ball and ring up off the pipe. (We weren't putting enough tension in the strings before we tried to lift.) After we figured out what we were doing wrong, we made the circle and went through the hula-hoop successfully on the next try.

The second task involved trying to "save" people with a "cancer cure". There was a rope hanging from a tree and two feet on both side of the rope was a pole lying horizontally on the ground on the side we were on. There was a crate on the other side three feet wide and two feet long. Behind the crate there was an average size hula-hoop. There was a cup of water (The cancer cure) for the sick children on the other side. The area between the two poles was supposedly the black hole. Our job was to get all sixteen of the kids in our dorm and the cancer potion on the crate and in the hula-hoop without falling out. As we went along Erwin our teacher would come along and tap use on the shoulder. This tapping meant that you had gotten bit by a poisonous misquote and were now mute for the rest of the task. We don't know how but we finally completed our goal. It wasn't an easy thing to do.

The next lesson was the most entertaining. We split up into two groups to do the climbing. Half went to the pamper pole, a telephone pole with handles on the side of it. You had to climb to the very top and jump for a trapeze about five feet away. The second group went to the zip-line, a climbing wall that when you get to the top you attach yourself to a telephone line and slide down. We think everybody in our dorm did it except for one camper. The pamper pole was more difficult and quite a few people didn't make it all the way up. Ropes were very exciting and an all around good experience. We all are more understanding on teamwork and a little braver for having trying it Camp Carter will be a fond memory to reflect on for the rest of our lives.