Goat Mountain
What improves group coherence and team spirit? To overcome difficulties together, to reach a common goal and make the experience that you can trust and rely on your colleagues. How many productivity improvements seminars are based on this idea, charge fortunes for sending their participants through scary situations to be overcome with a little help of their friends.
Most probably the organizers of the D0-workshop in Vancouver had this in mind, when proposing an excursion to “Goat Mountain”. It was labeled as an “easy” hike, the difficult one taking off to “Crown Mountain” - only some of the toughest collaborators took this option. There were no indications like “do not wear high heels” or “backpacks only”, and most of us imagined a lush promenade on forest paths as neatly maintained than Michigan Avenue downtown Chicago.
We couldn’t be more wrong! Goat Mountain means you should be as agile as a goat to make it up there – I can feel my sore muscles today not only in my legs, no, shoulders, arms, I am wiped out. The number of injured ones is not known yet – I crossed Thomas at breakfast this morning, he has a twisted ankle. Anyone else? Among the best outfitted participants: Serban wearing a trench coat and me with my Champs-Elysee purse. We went through mud and snow, over stones and roots, and we made it! Well, about 10% of the participants: at some point Dugan and Yann decided to turn the party around, yet a few of us further ahead went to the summit! Up there, the fog started to dissolve and we had rewarding lunch, except 
for Frederic and Mathieu: their sandwiches were turned around in a trustworthy colleague’s backpack – Mike, one of the organizers with us, dispensed spare sandwiches on them. Then, the sun came out (want to see my red cheeks today?), that allowed to dry socks a little and to have an astonishing view on Vancouver Bay. Mathieu, thanks for the pictures!
Back to base camp at Grouse Mountain, we relaxed watching the “world famous lumberjack show” (we were too late for "birds in motion" ) – go to Vancouver, go to Grouse Mountain, and don’t miss it!
PS: Gordon is a ....
Lame??? :-)
Posted by: Gordon Watts | June 17, 2005 at 12:29 AM