Sweet Briar College seniors Amanda Baker and Sara Rothamel traveled to Ecuador during the winter break for a kayaking trip. The trip was organized by
Endless River Adventures, with cooperation from Sweet Briar’s outdoor program’s office – better known as SWEBOP – and funds from the Leadership Fund.
Endless River Adventures, which is located in Bryson City, N.C., was co-founded by 1984 Sweet Briar graduate Juliet Kastorff. The company offers whitewater rafting, fly fishing, kayaking and mountain biking trips.
In exchange for the financial assistance, Baker and Rothamel promised to share the leadership and kayaking skills learned in Ecuador with the Sweet Briar community.
“They are both excellent instructors for SWEBOP and are already talking about teaching new skills to participants at the kayak pool clinics every Wednesday, taking students out on the James River on their own … and presenting a slide show to the SBC community about their trip to Ecuador,” SWEBOP director Laura Staman said.
Rothamel wrote the following blog entry about their adventure for ERA’s Web site:
The Fight for Foreign RapidsFor us, this Ecuador trip really started in spring 2007 when Juliet and Ken came to Sweet Briar on their college tour. During their visit, they gave presentations on past school trips to Costa Rica and Ecuador, along with a boat demo featuring the love of our lives, the EZG 42.
After the presentation, the SBC boaters were completely jazzed about the idea of spending Thanksgiving break in Costa Rica during the fall, which was the original plan. After spamming campus with advertisements and organizing interest meetings, we found that we had a small group of people who were interested but had two major issues. One, we are poor college students and two, missing Thanksgiving for many people was a deal breaker in obtaining parental funding.
While broken hearted over our abandoned international plans, the crew settled for a more affordable but equally amazing trip to the Nantahala. After hearing more about the international trips and having such a wonderful experience with the ERA staff we began formulate plans for an Ecuador trip.
In spring 2008, Laura Staman, the outdoor program director, launched a large advertising campaign and Amanda and I focused on fundraising to reduce the poor college syndrome. I designed three bumper stickers to sell as a fundraiser and Amanda helped with distribution. We reached out to outdoor retailers, sold stickers in our cafeteria, advertised on boater Web sites, and contacted alumna and raised over $400 between the two of us.
In addition to the logistic preparation, we began intentionally training. Every week, we attended and helped lead free roll clinics in the school pool. We led several trips on the Balcony Falls section of the James River with SWEBOP to recruit more students and refine the river reading skills of the more experienced boaters.
We even made a few trips to the Nantahala with and without SWEBOP to adjust to big water. By the end of spring semester, we had a small group of very interested and dedicated women.
Come this fall, time to put down a down payment and organize flights, we found new roadblocks. Despite an attempted joint trip with Lynchburg College, we still did not have enough participants for qualify for supplements from SGA, and our numbers were even further reduce when one of our girls broke her foot and a second was denied parental blessing.
So it came down to us. Although the fundraising money helped, we still had a struggle with the financial feasibility of the trip, so we turned to the college Leadership Fund. Two essays, a leap of faith plane ticket purchase, lots of budget planning and almost a month of anxiously awaiting a response later [and] we both received compensation for our plane tickets in exchange for our continued participation in organizing kayaking clinics and a PowerPoint presentation for SWEBOP upon our return. It was official; we were finally going to Ecuador!
For all of our hard work we earned 12 amazing days (not including travel), exploring everything we could get ourselves into with our wonderful Spanglish skills. For six days, we were on the tributary rivers of the Amazon with some of the most respected kayakers in the industry. The team was a blast and hanging out off the river was just as eventful.
We were pushed to our limits and learned more than I ever expected in such a short period. Juliet is one of the most inspiring examples of what Sweet Briar women have been able to accomplish and I hope she and ERA can keep pushing students to get out into the wild.
