This year we only have programs scheduled for August and September at the Soaring Spirits Camp, but we could put together a special "Grizzlies & Glaciers" trip for your school in July that could involve community service. June can be a bad month for bugs (mosquitoes and black flies), but they are pretty well gone for the season by the middle of July.
This is an ideal time of year to take advantage of the salmon runs and your students could gain community service hours by helping the camp build a traditional native smokehouse. This project would offer a real immersion into Gitksan native traditions as the 10th graders would not only help construct a traditional smokehouse, but join Gitksan fishermen in the age-old tradition of netting salmon, cleaning the fish and smoking them.
There is probably no better way to understand the importance of salmon as a resource for Northwest Coast native peoples than to experience a summer fish camp where everyone works together catching the fish, preparing them and tending the alder wood fire that slowly cures the meat. Best of all, students will be able to retu home with smoked salmon to share the rewards of their labors with family and friends. Skeena River sockeye salmon is famous throughout the world. As this is also the best time of the summer to pick wild berries, students can also take home their own wildberry jams.
In addition to the smoke house leaing experience, students will gain insight into the region by spending a day canoeing down the Skeena River in a traditional native canoe. They can spend another day climbing up through the forest to swim in a beautiful alpine lake in the Seven Sisters Range and explore alpine meadows where marmots live on Hudson Bay Mountain. There will be time to watch grizzlies feed on salmon in nearby Southeast Alaska and to view the Salmon Glacier, one of the largest ice fields in North America. Spending a night in a historic bunkhouse at North Pacific Cannery, the oldest salmon cannery on the coast, students will gain a keen insight into the history of salmon fishing and processing.
We can get the price down on this trip by spending more time at the Soaring Spirits Camp and less time in hotels and aboard charter boats that the three itineraries on our web site include. I''d still need a little time to work out a custom itinerary for your students and a budget for their trip, but we can definitely do this far below the cost of the three programs we are currently promoting for this summer. If you''re really interested in pursuing this and we can agree on the best dates, I''ll get right on it.
Let me know how many days would be ideal for your students and I will detail a custom itinerary for your school that keeps the costs down as much as possible. It would be great to have your 10th graders be part of building the Soaring Spirits Camp - a camp that is intended to be a leaing center for youth from all over the world.
