the green spot blog

Have I mentioned that 2018 is going to be an awesome year? Camper mail hit Canada Post today...that means more than 1000 kids are going to be getting notes from their Cabin Leaders and our 2018 Camper Brochure. It's such an exciting time! It's also exciting because we have another brand new program to introduce to you. Wrangler Up! Wrangler Up joins our Pit Crew and Internship Program to help build our next generation of staff. If you guessed that our Wrangler Up program is about training up new Barn Staff - you are correct. It's designed for horse enthusiasts to refine their riding, saddling, and cleaning skills while forming friendships which last a lifetime. Something that we've known for a long time is that when a camper loves horses - they really love horses. We also really believe in training the next generation of staff. We love our Barn Staff and know that it's just as important to train the next generation of horse-loving staff as it is our Cabin Leade...

2018 is going to be full of awesome new things at Evergreen. We've added another Family Camp to our schedule ( registration for Winter Fest Family Camp is open right now ), we're making Charge 3 co-ed, and we're adding two brand new camps to our schedule (Adventure and Wrangler Up). This week and next week, we are going to break down what Adventure Camp and Wrangler Up are going to be like. As our camps continue to fill each year - we're challenged with the question of how to grow while maintaining what makes Evergreen awesome and unique. As we were putting together our 2018 Camp Schedule - we took a hard look at our Out-trips. The campers that absolutely LOVE our out-trips do not often cross over to our Base Camps. There's something really special that happens out at the Tipis and at Foothills Outfitters Camp (Charge and Trails Away) that just can't be ignored. Knowing that these campers are often "once an out-tripper, always an out-tripper...

This last week we started laying the ice down on our rinks. This is always a challenging process because temperature, water, and the surfaces we build one of the rinks on do not always play nice together. And sometimes it involves Rolf, Dylan, and Max to stand in freezing cold water repairing up to forty holes in the poly base. Oh the things we do for the love of Pond Hockey. We really do love it! Our staff are currently skating on Rink 2 to harden it up for more flooding. It's quite the process - while the rest of the province is groaning because the snow and cold weather has arrived...we are out first thing in the morning trying to take advantage of it so that we can get some good layers down on it. We're only about two months away from our Pond Hockey weekend. New this year? T-shirts...awesome, awesome t-shirts. We'll do a reveal when they arrive in December. We're taking team registrations until December 15th. Spots are starting to fill up so don't w...

The Willsonball Pit Josh built for his youth group in Berlin Hannah S. getting hitched! I recently returned from a trip to Germany. As you might expect, it was amazing. I love history, architecture, coffee, and bread and there was a lot of all of those things. Jogee was a pretty happy bear! The reason for this trip was Hannah S' wedding. Hannah was part of our Generation One German volunteers from our partner organization in Germany. It was a great reason to finally make the trip across the pond to celebrate with Hannah and see the place that a good chunk of our staff come from. Our German Volunteers have become a integral part of our staff team. In so many ways - I can't imagine what it would be like to not have Germans on our team. Back in 2012, when Christoph, Jessica, and Hannah first arrived - we didn't know what it was going to be like. Even though we had had international staff in years past - this was going to be consistent. We knew that it would change o...

The staff dressed up for a carnival that we hosted in Sundre It's the time of year again that we want to say a big thank-you to our 2017 Fall Staff! The busy season is just winding down here at Camp Evergreen and we are ready for a much needed rest from the business. Our seasonal fall staff are the people who take on a lot of that business and boy are we grateful for the work they do. Each day they would start before breakfast preparing for the guest groups, facilitate activities and clean during the mornings and afternoons (while also fitting in time to serve meals), and finish off the day by leading evening programming for our groups. They do so much and without their hard work we could not run the quality program that we have right now. Although it is a lot of work out here at camp in the fall we do still manage to have a lot of fun. Our fall staff were on the crazier side and loved to have a lot of fun together. There was a lot of ball hockey that happened this year an...