Camelot Keyholder Trip

Summary
OwnerMITOC Gallery Administrator
Creation Date2004-11-08 10:19:33 UTC-0500
Description


Fall 2004 Camelot Keyholder Trip
Date: November 6-7, 2004
Location: Camelot, of course!
Participants: Bilal Zia (manager), Chris Glazner, Anne Lightbody, Erika Boeckeler, Jered Casper, Adrien Smith, Juan Rivas, Julie Wright, Abby Carey, Alice Rose, Mike Ratta, Jose Espinoza, Bryan Woodruff, Will DelHagen, Punyashloka Biswal, Kriti Jain, Brenden Epps, Luis Loya, Peter Zarth, Ben Jackson, Celeste Chudyk, Matthew Long, Henry Hall, Tom Turner, Chris Barnhart, Tran Le, Greg Wallace, Mike Whitson



We set out early Saturday morning for the Fall Camelot Keyholder trip, a work weekend to make our cabin a better place to visit, and teach people how to take care of it properly. The group leaving from MIT arrived late to find several people waiting in the parking lot. We got busy gathering fallen trees, clearing trails, cutting and splitting firewood, and putting the finishing touches on the sauna.

Lesson Learned: How to tell the difference between pine and hardwoods. On accident, a lot of pine was splt and mixed in with out hardwood supply for the inside stove, causing us to have to go through it all and resort the wood. Hardwoods are for the stove, softwoods are for campfires.
With the final touches this past weekend, the sauna has become openly available to use by keyholders trained in its operating. A shoerack was built on the porch, and a few loose ends were tied up to make it look really nice.
We worked to deepen the dipping pond below the sauna by raising and improving out dam, and tried to improve the rock steps leading to the water.

Saturday night, we had some burgers, kicked backed, relaxed, learned about the cabin and it's history, and several of us tried out the sauna, even running down the steps in various states of undress to jump in the hovering-above-freezing water below. As Brenden stated later: "Damn, this feels like smoking up, having sex, and then eating a whole chocolate cake." Glad we could do that for you.

We finished up wood cutting after a very late rise Sunday morning. A few plans were made for future improvements all around, like better blazes on trails, and ideas for a seasonal porch covering for the sauna in the winter.

After cleaning up by noon, the remaining folks wanted to get in a short hike, so we headed up the road a little ways to hike the Welch Dickey Loop, which amazed all with its fantastic views and interesting trails in exchange for a very modest effort. We took out time, had fun, and got back to our cars just in time for sunset.

As is becoming tradition on trips that feature Mike Whitson, we had a hearty dinner at the Tilton Diner on the way home. Here's to another great season of use at Camelot!