Welcome Trippers... Now Get Outta Here

We pride ourselves on our hospitality, and we tend to think that we're pretty welcoming of our new staff. Unfortunately, for our trip leaders, we wish we could have taken some time to chat, maybe give them a meal, and give them the North Star treatment. Unfortunately, for three of our new trip leaders, we had to send them away almost as soon as they got here.

Today was a big day for the summer of 2012; we had our first new staff arrive. Yup, its still May, but trip leaders get some extra training. Each of our trip leaders has to be a certified Wilderness First Responder and life guard. The WFR course is the industry standard, a nine day certification course that gives our trip leaders the skills to deal with the situations that arise in the back country. We hire great trip leaders, and giving them the WFR certification means that all of our campers are going on trips with folks who have top notch training.

So for four lucky trip leaders, this meant heading to Camp Manito-wish for their WFR training. Kyle Beecher, Sarah Crockett and Eli High all started their days in faraway places. The three of them caught early flights, leaving their hometowns as early as 6am, and they headed to Minneapolis, where our driver picked them up. After their flights, they drove three hours to North Star, but only for a short time. Since the WFR course starts tomorrow morning, they spend the night at Manito-wish, which is two and a half hours away. Just in time for their arrival, a heavy rain was falling in camp. In typical trip leader fashion, they were unfazed. They unloaded their stuff, repacked, and then, less than an hour after arriving at camp, they were headed to Manito-wish.

At the course, they'll meet up with our other new trip leader, Youssef Azmani. Youssef is from Milwaukee, so he drove straight to the WFR course. This is the tripper's life, and seeing how easily they dealt with a day full of hectic travel gave us lots of confidence that we've got another great group of trip leaders.