This year, the Council re-started the Outdoor Skills Institute or OSI. OSI is a one-weekend training event for outdoor skills. This year, they offered Wilderness First Aid, Dutch Oven Cooking, Climbing Level 1 (tower-only), some shooting sports, and a variety of other outdoor training programs. We decided to offer a 1-day Tower-only Level 1 course to allow new adults to get introduced to climbing and still participate in other activities. Ultimately, we had 4 women join our course for a de facto women’s only Tower-only Level one Course.

We covered the basics of climbing, safety gear and protocols, gear maintenance and inspections, as well as how to set the routes on the tower and inspect them. Everyone had a lot of fun, even though the weather wasn’t great. When it was raining too hard, we did the inside rappel. When it wasn’t, we did some climbing and rappeling. In the end, all four graduated with their Tower-only Level 1 cards.