Alpenguides - Our Camp Staff
The #1 reason to choose Alpengirl as your summer adventure camp; The Alpenguides!
Alpenguide duties go far beyond typical camp counselor jobs by providing wilderness medical care, evaluating and managing risks, leading adventure activities and by planning and preparing delicious meals with campers.
Your Alpengirl teen camp guides are seasoned outdoor women who have an excellent rapport with teenage girls, are experienced leaders in adventure travel, and are intuitive educators. These skills are combined with professional certifications such as Wilderness First Responder, Lifeguard, and Yoga. Alpenguides are positive and fun role models with superhuman powers!
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Nature Girl Known Superhuman Powers: When in nature, Nature Girl can meditate on inner calmness and relaxation and surround the group in a bubble of peace that allows them to proceed with greater ease and grace while accomplishing group tasks in the most harmonious of natural environments. She is what is known as a "calmist" - a person with the superhuman power to calm others around her. Abilities: Nature Girl is a superb fire starter known for starting campfires with only sticks, no matches. She's an excellent strategist on missions in the field and is known for carrying out duties in a relaxed and aware state of being. History: Nature Girl was enthusiastic about the outdoors right from the Get-Go! Early years were spent mud slinging with her two older brothers in the backyard creek of their childhood home located just outside of Atlanta. This type of activity developed into a somewhat cleaner and more physically demanding sport of barefoot sand slinging on the beaches near their home in Honolulu. And, while living on an island near Seattle, Nature Girl, refined her motor skills and elevated her roughin' it skills by swimming in the freezing cold waters of the Puget Sound, camping out under the stars on the trampoline, and toboggan racing downhill in wintertime "Trash Can Lid Luge" events. In 2000, Nature Girl, moved to Montana to complete a degree in Psychology at Montana State University in Bozeman. It is here that she really immersed herself in hiking, trail running, snowboarding, fly-fishing and camping. After graduation, Nature Girl worked as a kids' wilderness therapy field instructor in Utah and Montana. Here she gained valuable outdoor youth leadership experience by combining her love for outdoor adventure with her college degree in Psychology. As an Alpenguide, Nature Girl continues in her quest to share what she loves about the outdoors with a younger generation of Adventuresses. Nature Girl is Wilderness First Aid and CPR certified. Current Base & Operations:Bozeman, Montana. Nature Girl can be found snowboarding, snowshoeing and attempting to play ice hockey in the winter and fly-fishing, hiking and camping in the summer. She is a year round crossword puzzle nerd and loves cooking. Right now, she's most likely out exploring the local trails and rivers with her chocolate colored canine companion - Chester. |
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Gusto Known Superhuman Powers: She can transform her body to become gusty winds, winds strong enough to bear her aloft for free air travel to her many far away destinations. Abilities: She excels at table tennis and snowboarding and is an above average singer and dancer. History: Gusto, a native from Sweden, has taught outdoor education based sea kayaking expeditions in Alaska, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Honduras, Greece, Croatia and Scandinavia since 1986. As a former sea kayaking program coordinator for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), she was responsible for leadership, risk management, program and instructor development. In 1996, Gusto and her husband Skier Dude, founded Crossing Latitudes, which specializes in reindeer trekking and sea kayaking trips in Scandinavia, Greece, Alaska and beyond. Gusto is a Wilderness EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) who volunteers for the local Search & Rescue group in Bozeman, Montana. For the last 10 years Gusto has worked for the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS and teaches wilderness first aid courses and Leave No Trace (LNT) courses. Gusto (or one of her trusty gusty cohorts) co-leads the Alpengirl Scandinavia trips. The next Alpengirl Norway trip is offered during summer 2010. Current Base & Operations: Bozeman, Montana & the world at large. She's busy movin' & shakin'; she's always on the GO! |
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The Creative Wonder Known Superhuman Powers: The Creative Wonder's superhuman powers to create and wonder first appeared in her as a baby while hanging from a barbed wire fence by her diaper. While hanging out, waiting for her mother to retrieve her, she wondered about the flowers, the smells, the sights and the sounds in the field around her. Then, out of curiosity due to her wonderment, she reached down, tugged on some long grass and started weaving to pass the time and ended up creating something new and beautiful from the natural world. Abilities: The Creative Wonder is able to add creativity to any activity she and her friends are doing, and is always one to swap fun facts and share her curiosity and awe for the natural world. The Creative Wonder is an expert at writing snail mail, especially postcards, and tries to write at least one everyday to various friends and acquaintances, just to brighten their days. As her fingers dance across her stationary, the rest of her body boogies across the trail as she's always ready for a dance party. History: The Creative Wonder's first ever adventure happened before she could even walk. In hopes of playing in a field of poppy and lupine flowers near her home in northern California, she crawled away one morning when her parents weren't looking. Although she didn't get very far that time, (her mother found her hanging by her diaper off of a barbed wire fence at the edge of the field), she has since been exploring and playing in fields of flowers all over the west. After nine years of rolling around poison ivy patches chasing after turtles, snakes, and other critters in the woods near Redding, California, she moved to a small town in Colorado where her passion for the outdoors really took root. She hasn't looked back since climbing her first fourteen thousand foot mountain in the Rocky Mountains there, and spent most of her weekends throughout middle and high school hiking, rock climbing, or snowboarding and skiing all throughout the state. Expanding her sights to the rest of the west, she spent four years exploring the Olympic Peninsula, Cascade Mountains, and the Puget Sound in Washington state while finishing her Biology and Environmental Studies degree at the University of Puget Sound. Since moving to Montana, The Creative Wonder has been eagerly learning as much about the area around Bozeman as possible by taking advantage of all the wonderful ski areas, national parks, and wildlife viewing around. The Creative Wonder has worked coordinating the outdoor programs of her college, for many years at a residential camp in Colorado, and for the Montana Outdoor Science School and Bridger Bowl Ski Area in Bozeman. After disappointedly finding out that she was too old to be a camper in an Alpengirls trip this summer, she excitedly agreed to be an Alpenguide, so she would be able to share her passion for the outdoors with all of the girls she'll meet. Come explore Montana with her! Current Base & Operations: Bozeman, Montana. She holds Wilderness First Responder first aid and CPR certifications. When The Creative Wonder is not out on her bike around town or in her hiking boots in the hills, she's poking around local yarn and bead stores to fuel her creative side of making jewelry and knitting. |
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Miss Grace Forward Known Superhuman Powers: Miss Grace Forward owns an alien "power prism", which to the casual observer could be mistaken for an average camera. When under pressure or facing challenging situations, the alien power prism gives Miss Grace Forward the superhuman power to stay calm and move forward with graceful cat-like movements. Abilities: Miss Grace Forward has considerable expertise in her ability to carry her highly fragile alien power prism to any place and in any weather without ruining it (knock on wood.) She also specializes in impersonating funny voices and strange faces! History: As a sporty youngster growing up in Georgia, Miss Grace was called Catherine. Catherine loved canoeing, competitive swimming and water-skiing, as well as team sports like basketball and softball. She spent much of her childhood building "forts" and riding horses and eventually competed for the University of Georgia on the Equestrian team while earning a Bachelor of Arts and English degree in Journalism and Magazine Photojournalism. Summers during college were spent in Wyoming working as a pack trip guide and horse wrangler or learning to rock climb with friends. It was sometime during these college years that Catherine obtained the alien power prism and discovered the superhuman powers that it provided to her. The circumstances under which Catherine obtained the alien power prism are unknown - what we do know is that she insisted on being referred to as Miss Grace Forward from this point on. After college in Georgia, Miss Grace Forward moved west and based herself in a place she loved, Wyoming. Her professional teaching and guiding experience includes leadership of adults and kids of all ages who are learning to rock climb, participate in wilderness horseback riding pack trips, or learning photography and creative writing. One of her most recent professional adventures was teaching photography to teenagers in a small village in France for a semester - and driving them around the winding, narrow roads of mountainous southern France! She has studied Spanish and French languages and is a lover of adventure travel. She has spent over six months traveling and climbing around the southwest. She's Wilderness First Aid and CPR certified. Current Base & Operations: Jackson, Wyoming. In her free time, you can find Miss Grace Forward backcountry skiing and skate skiing in the winter, mountain biking and climbing in the summer, or hanging out with her scrappy little mutt named Bailey. She teaches photography, video, and art projects for several nonprofit organizations based in the Jackson Hole valley. She also tutors aspiring photographers and writes outdoors-related articles on a freelance basis with clients that have included Backpacker and Sunset Magazines. In order to protect her identity from those who covet her alien power prism, Miss Grace Forward uses her former name Catherine Coe for business purposes. You can view her work at www.CatherineCoePhotography.com |
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Digit Known Superhuman Powers: Digit is gifted with smaller than average digits on her hands and feet that have superhuman scaling strength and tactile stickiness. She also has superhuman ears. Her ears appear normal size most of the time, but, if trouble is on the horizon, her ears open to a massive size and are able to hear all. Abilities: Using all 20 of her durable, gummy, and griping digits, Digit has an extraordinary ability to quickly and easily scramble to the top of rock formations that allow her to have unique vantage points of beautiful views all around her. From these vantage points, Digit has enough space around her to open up her massive ears and inventory the area for possible trouble on the horizon and steer clear of trouble before it enters the scene - her ears, fingers and toes work together for excellent prevention strategies. Digit is prepared for worst, and she always expects the BEST! Her positivism is contagious. History: Digit was placed in a rock climbing harness as soon as she could walk, and grew up exploring and climbing in the Rocky Mountains. As a younger youngin', Digit attended both the Alpengirl Montana and Washington summer camps. As a former teen girl camper at Alpengirl she now looks back and realizes the importance of her Alpengirl camp experiences and recognizes the life opportunities it opened up for her. "My Alpenguides were people I looked up to and they provided me with fantastic experiences and guidance. Their affirmative belief in us as young explorers of the world and in the beauty of the outdoors made a good and lasting impression on me." Digit is a freelance photographer, has created her own photography website www.beccaskinner.com, acted as a regional photography assistant for The North Face Speaker Series, and is employed as a climbing route setter at the University of Wyoming. Digit is very enthusiastic about encouraging others to learn about their cameras and in turn, learn more about themselves as they are experiencing the world through their own personal viewfinder. Digit is happy to be returning to Alpengirl this summer to mold a new generation of Alpengirls and pass on to the new campers all that she gained from her Alpengirl camp years. Digit is certified in Wilderness First Aid & CPR. Current Base & Operations: Laramie, Wyoming. Digit is attending University of Wyoming and is anticipating graduation in 2012 with a Bachelors degree in Social Work. Although school takes up most of her time, she often spends time outdoors with her puppy, Vedauwoo (Vee-duh-voo) and playing at the local climbing area with a rope in one hand and a camera in the other. In the evenings, she can most likely be found telling stories or playing a banjo at a jam session with friends. |
Alpengirl, Inc is an equal opportunity employer |