February 27, 2009

Last weekend, eight brave Rocky Mountain Semester students took a leap of faith and joined the ranks of about one hundred hearty Nordic-skiing obsessed Leadville natives (including several High Mountain Institute faculty members and spouses) and competed in the 6th annual "Leadville Loppet, a 10, 22 or 44 kilometer Nordic ski race. Meanwhile, the rest of RMS XXII participated in the event by running an aid station for the racers, offering handfuls of GORP and cups of Gatorade, water, and even moral support.

While the day started out with a beautiful blue sky and incredibly warm temperatures, the racers promptly encountered their first brush with adversity. Kirk, one of our daring RMS XXII participants, in his delirious, half-wake routine that morning, managed to grab 2 left foot ski boots, instead of the desired left and right boots. With help from a very generous HMI Science faculty member, Miss Audrey Kruse, Kirk was lucky to participate in the 10k race with both a left and a right boot. She came sprinting to the starting line with about 2 minutes to spare and the gracious Kirk greeted her with a hug and a smile (and later thanked her with a bag of M&Ms too).

All in all, the 10K (6.3 mile) ran relatively smoothly, save several graceful wipeouts on the massive hill leading to the finish and the HMI aid station. We ended up with all High Mountain Institute participants finishing the 10K, and a couple even placing within their age groups. It was very fun to compete and cheer on racers from the aid station while carrying on the tradition of HMI helping out with this fun event. It left everyone with a feeling of accomplishment and a new learned appreciation for the grit and determination of intense Nordic athletes.

Following the Loppet, we ran right into ski week here at the High Mountain Institute. The purpose of ski week was for all of us to begin learning telemark skiing before the winter expedition. We started the week by getting season passes. We all made ridiculous faces for our pictures and then we took our newly minted passes to Ski Cooper, the local Leadville ski resort. We were placed into skill groups based on ski experience, and we hit the powder without or heels locked in (something unique to telemark or "free-heel" skiing). During ski week, our faculty and staff members converted into telemark ski instructors. It was fun to see them teaching us on the slopes and then have them in the classroom a few hours later.

The first day was quite an experience, since it was the first time that most of us had ever been on telemark ski or on skis in general. We all came back to the vans dead tired and not looking forward to an afternoon chalk full of classes. It was hard to keep our energy up all day – with a morning full of hitting the slopes and then so many classes in the afternoon. But, the snow was great to us and during the week we got about six inches of new powder to frolic in. The highlight of ski week was the day in which we all dressed up ridiculously and went skiing. We had lacrosse players, cowboys, and a rare appearance of Batman all over the mountain. All and all, it was a great week to be in school.

Classes at the Rocky Mountain Semester continued to crank along, in spite of it being ski week. Right now, in science, we are doing a unit on snow. We just completed a lab during which we dug snow pits and measured the different layers of snow. In Precalculus 1 we are working with using sine, cosine, tangent in quadratic equations. Algebra 2 students are working on synthetic division. The students in Spanish and French are working on articles and past participles, while in English we all just finished reading The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. Our capstone project for this book is an analytical paper, so we definitely have plenty to do inside and outside the classroom.

This week's update highlights the goings on of one particular RMS class, US History: Western Perspectives, with Matt Turnbull. We just completed talking about Fredric Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, which said that the frontier was a process and not a place. We read many articles supporting or criticizing Turner's thesis, and then as a culmination project we put Turner and his thesis on trial. Every member of history class chose a type of person to attack or defend Turner's thesis. There were two lawyers and a court reporter also at the trial. For the trial each person wrote a page about why they were for or against Turner's thesis, and five questions for the lawyers. The lawyers created opening statements and were in control of the trial. This trial was a really interactive way to end the unit, taking everything we learned and using it to defend our points. One really interesting part about the trial was improvising based on the information we knew, having to answer questions on the spot about what we were claiming. The trial was definitely a fun way to use the knowledge we had gained.

As if the Loppet, ski week and classes weren't enough, this week was filled with fun activities! On Saturday, RMS XXII went into town for some evening skating. We skated together, drank hot cocoa, and enjoyed each other's company in the fresh night air. Everyone enjoyed skating and the activities that followed during the rest of the week. "Storytime" was a popular activity in which three students read Dr. Seuss books to a group of Rocky Mountain Semester listeners. In the knitting activity, students at various levels knit hats, often helping each other out. The Choir, broken up into baritone, alto, and soprano sections, also had a good time learning a new song. Other students had fun creating new routes on the climbing wall, tutoring fifth graders at the local middle school, while still more students created friendship bracelets in Who's Hall. It was a great week of activities for us.

RMS XXII has definitely been very busy lately, with activities, skiing, and classes, of course. We're all definitely looking forward to the upcoming and fast approaching winter expedition.

By: Kirk Seaman, Conant Neville, Charlotte Zelle, and David Cutler-Kreutz