Sierra Club Outdoors Nation:
The following trip report and testimonial was written by student Vimary Toribio from NYC ICO, a new CatRock Sierra Club Youth Leader describing the recent leadership retreat which featured caving, hiking, rafting, fishing, and swimming the weekend of June 7 and white water rafting the weekend of June 28th alongside ELLIS High School.
That same night we got to make a BBQ. The food was delicious. And not only was it good but we also used teamwork to make it so it made it taste even better. After that we saw a movie about leadership and teamwork called Coach Carter. The movie itself was really inspiring. It is about a basketball team that needs to learn that to be on a team, you need to support your teammates both inside and outside the game, because if one person fails, they all fail.
The next day breakfast was also divided to everyone to participate. After that, we went caving, Before going into the cave we had been playing some trust games. For some people it was hard because they had to overcome trust issues. But you have to learn to trust your team and know that they won't let you fall. Those activities helped when going to the cave because if one of us couldn't actually go up the rocks they would lend you a hand a push.
We also had an incredible rafting trip. It was really a challenge to carry the raft to the river, but we figured out that we could switch sides if one of us got tired. Again, the keyword was teamwork. Also we got to actually interact with new people and learn about them and their lives while sharing jokes and laughing together, on a really beautiful river. We even saw a bald eagle! It was really fun to get closer to people I already knew and meet amazing new people.