Cape Breton Camp Out 2013

NCEM has some wonderful resources and some fantastic missionaries running programs across the country. It occurred to us that it might be a good idea to partner with some of these missionaries and make some of these programs available here in Atlantic Canada.

With that in mind we invited Marsden Giesbrecht and Tom Cnossen from Higher Challenge to come to Arrowhead this summer. Higher Challenge is a wilderness adventure camp in Western Canada that offers wilderness camps in the Rockies and northern Saskatchewan.

Tom & Marsden graciously agreed to come out to Atlantic Canada for two weeks of their busy summer. The first week we spent scouting out the Cape Breton Highlands. Because we had not run a camp o this nature before it was important for us to get the lay of the land.

Merrill at Cape Clear, Cape Breton Highlands, NS

Tom at Cape Clear, Cape Breton Highlands, NS

We enjoyed some chowder together at Meat Cove.

We camped on a bluff and were lulled to sleep by the droning of the fog horn.

It was a successful scouting trip and we developed a good idea about how best to approach the camp out. We returned to ANBC and began the packing and preparing. Tom & Marsden are experienced masters when it comes preparing for this sort of thing and we learned a great deal about food preparation and planning.

Marsden packing the food barrels!

Tom preparing the hamburger to freeze.

All loaded up and ready to go.

The following week we had 6 campers join us for our first Cape Breton Camp Out. It was a learning experience for all of us as we selected campsites and events for the week. It was a great week and became quickly clear that we can host some wonderful camp outs in the future in Cape Breton.