By Innara, Gr. 8
The morning of February 23rd, York House’s Grade 8’s departed on a coach. Three hours later, we finally arrived at our destination – Manning Park Resort. When I got out of the coach, I realized why we needed to bring so many layers. There was snow everywhere and the temperature was pretty cold, but the view made up for it!
We grabbed our luggage and headed to prepare for our first activity, snowshoeing. After we were taught how to put on the bulky snowshoes, we left for our three-hour hike. Even though the trek was tiring, it was definitely worth it for the astonishing views! When we got back we relaxed in our cabins, which was well deserved. Around 5:00 pm we started cooking dinner with our cabin chaperone. My group had chicken strips and for dessert we ate lava cakes, all the food groups!
After we finished dinner, we all went out for a walk in the forest. The sky was dark and clear of clouds, so you could see the stars. Once we returned, we stayed in our cabins and went to bed at 11:00 pm. Most mornings we woke up at 7:00 am and had breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs, cereal, oatmeal, and toast.
On this particular day, after breakfast, we set off in our ski gear for our skiing day. We were all put into different levels and, since I hadn’t skied before, I went to level 1, the bunny hills. I don’t know why they call them the bunny hills because from where I stood those “bunny hills” looked like the scariest things I’d ever seen. Once we got our skis and had our first light, we attempted the bunny hills and, after falling quite a bit, we succeeded. We broke for lunch and then headed back out for some more skiing. When we were finished, we headed back to camp and, after some free time, we made our second dinner.
After dinner, my cabin played lots of cards and then headed to bed. On our third day, we went cross-country skiing and skate skiing. Once we got our gear and practised trying not to fall over, my group headed out cross-country skiing on a trail. We fell over and bumped into each other, but improved our skills.
After all our hard work, we got the pleasure of trying skate skiing. That didn’t go too well for most of us. We fell over for what felt like a million times and at the end we had really sore muscles, but it was worth it. Again, our skills were much improved as almost none of us had ever gone skate skiing before. When we finished our trail ride for skate skiing, we headed back and fed some birds called Whiskey Jacks. It was really cool to have them land on you and we found out they really liked Cliff Bars.
For the rest of the day, we hung out in our cabins and played games until we went to a campfire and then some of us went ice skating. For our last dinner, our cabin had pizzas and lava cakes and our whole cabin joined in for a game of ‘cheat’. Most of us went to bed pretty late that night, but we all got a really good night sleep after our hard day’s work. We all got to sleep in until 7:30 am on our last day. Once we made breakfast and packed, we headed back home. Three hours later, we arrived back in the city with our phones, computers, and most importantly of all, wi-fi!
Our trip was amazing and I enjoyed it thoroughly. This was the best camp I’ve been to, but I was glad to come home and see my family and watch Netflix. Thank you to all the teachers who came with us and put up with all our complaining. Manning Park was a winter wonderland that made this school year much more special.