🧗🏻 Loon Lake Leadership Retreat

Welcome! PLP 10 returned to Loon Lake (a beautiful retreat centre in Maple Ridge) this year for a 3 day leadership course. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, which I’ll be reflecting on in this post. Keep reading for a slideshow at the end with a bunch of photography I did while at Loon Lake!

When we arrived at Loon Lake, we hit the ground running with the leadership course lead by Pinnacle Pursuits. One of the first things we did was setting 3 goals for what we wanted to get out of the program and how we were going to achieve them. My goals were:

1. I am looking forwards to learning to become a more effective leader
2. I hope to have lots of good memories of the fun, learning and peer bonding from the trip
3. I want to learn to make learning fun 

Some ways I could accomplish these goals were by stepping out of my comfort zone, participating fully/giving each activity my all and having an open mind.

We also got bookmarks with a quote written on it, I chose the quote:

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” – Ghandi.

• • •

We learned so much in the 3 days that I can only write about a few of the activities that I really enjoyed and learned from, or this blog post will be much too long.

Orienteering & Scavenger Hunt
I worked in a group with Makenna, Cooper, Theryn and Julian for a  scavenger hunt. The goal was to work together to find all the checkpoints and solve the questions or riddles at each. Our team turned out to be very good at having fun, but not very good at quickly finding checkpoints (or unscrambling words…). We definitely could have done a better job at being more focused and make more use of the compass to help us find the checkpoints.

We then switched to low ropes which I really enjoyed. We began by doing an activity where one person stands in the middle of a small circle of other people. The person than goes as stiff as a board. They then fall and let the people forming the circle pass them around. It was a very weird but not overall unpleasant experience. We then helped support each other as we attempted to cross a thin wire a few feet of the ground, which I succeeded at.

Rock Climbing
Another activity we did was a rock climbing. Although the climb I did was quite easy, what I really enjoyed about the activity was seeing how everyone cheered on and encouraged everyone else. I also took a lot of photos which I’m really happy with:

High Ropes
We also got to do the high ropes. This consisted of crossing a thin wire about 30ft off the ground with only a few ropes hanging down to hold on to. I was surprised how difficult it was, especially getting on and off the wire. 

The other activity we did in tandem with this was a milk crate stacking challenge where two people were attached to a rope and had to climb the milk crates as the height increased. Unfortunately we ran out of time before I could try being one of the people attached to the rope, but I was able to help with encouragement, holding crates together, and of course photo documenting the challenge:

Trust Falls
Perhaps my favourite activity we did was trust falls, and I don’t mean the kind you usually did with friends in elementary school. I mean falling 6ft from a chair stacked on a table into the arms of your peers. We built up to that by doing smaller trust falls. I believe that these trust falls were an essential part of building trust and developing closer bonds with each other.

Challenges
We also did a series of challenges in the gymnasium at Loon Lake. The one I felt sparked the most learning and conversation was trying to have a ball touch everyone’s hands while remaining in motion as fast as possible. Our team spent a lot of time trying many different ideas but none of them were as fast as the other team. Someone then had the idea to check @plpseycove instagram and see if Ms. Willemse had posted a video of the challenge. Turns out she had. We tried their method and managed to get a quicker time than them. This sparked a rather long and detailed discussion later that night as to wether that was fair. I was proud of the conclusion we all came to by the end of the conversation that we had all worked together to find the best solution: the first team found the technique and the second team perfected it.

Emotional Intelligence Competencies
We did an activity in which we traded cards with emotional intelligence competencies to determine our strengths and areas of growth. We then filled out this page on what we’re good at now and where we can focus on to grow in the future:

This activity tied directly into our personal credos.

Personal Credo & Logo
One of the most powerful things I believe we created was a personal credo. A credo is “a statement of believes of values that guides someone’s decisions and actions. It is a guiding principle or set of principles. A credo defines what you stand for.” After a lot of revisions I took my credo from a “grocery list” to a series of sentences that I could use to check progress. Here’s my final credo which I put on a photo of Loon Lake to use as a wallpaper for my iPad:

We also made a “personal logo” to show who we are and our values. This logo is to be turned into a sticker by Ms. Willemse, which I really look forward to receiving!

6 SMART Goals
Before we left Loon Lake, we wrote out 6 SMART goals. Pinnacle Pursuits defines SMART as:

Simple – is it broken down, step by step?
Measurable – what by when?
Attainable – is it achievable?
Resonant – how exciting is it?
Thrilling – Are you ready to commit and take action?

I set 3 goals to achieve this term (by the end of January 2023):

1. Redesign my art and photography website
2. Maintain high math grades (<90%) → ask questions, understand why math works
3. Spend more time outdoors

I then set 3 goals to achieve this year:

1. Maintain high grades but cut down on times spent on homework
2. Spend more time with friends and family
3. Get to know PLP 10s’ and non-PLP 10s’ better

• • •

I feel that after the retreat, I now have a lot more respect and trust for the many unique individuals that make up the PLP 10 team. I had a great time, pushed myself out of my comfort zone, determined areas for growth and established deeper connections to myself and my peers. I hope that PLP may consider doing a retreat like this annually to continue all the wonderful learning and bonding we did!

Slight side note: I took photography as an elective this year, and I was thrilled to be able to take a camera (Canon Rebel t6i) to Loon Lake and take photos of the activities, the lake, peers and friends. Please enjoy some of my favourites from the 850ish photos I took while at Loon Lake:

Thanks for reading!

Photography © Fraser W (Fraser.Artist). All rights reserved.