The Ropes Course - Team Building from Both Success and Failure

On September 14th, my Amped Up class took a trip to the UNH Brown Center to learn some ropes-course skills, and more importantly, to build bonds of trust and a sense of team within our moose questing group.  

Upon our arrival to the center, we built a foundation of trust that would help to keep us safe and allow us to complete some of the later activities.  One example of this type of game involves falling to any side and resisting the urge to catch oneself by relying on the group to make the catch.  I felt that this was a beneficial exercise for our group as members who did not previously trust others to catch them learned that the group would not let them fall.    

The next activity was a challenge to move all the members from all four groups across a series of hanging wires in a mere half hour.  Each group was set to begin the challenge from a different place along the series of wires so that there would be two-way traffic across a single wire at sometime.  My group began by sending one-member to reach a hanging rope, which would allow him to develop a method of bringing one person at a time across the first two of four hanging wires.  This system worked well until our members met with members of another group going the opposite direction.  We resolved this issue by using our system in reverse to first bring the other group's members across the two wires before continuing to move our own members.  Again, this procedure worked until we met a different oncoming group that forced a buildup of people on the side of one tree.  We were able to slowly move people across this buildup and to the finish by rotating turns across one wire with the other group, but the time expired before everyone finished.  

Upon reflecting on this outcome, I found areas of coordinated teamwork and areas where further planning would have enabled us to be more successful in bringing all of our members across the wires.  The system of transportation we used was very efficient, and our choice to help out the first group we encountered proved beneficial to both groups.  However, if every group could have planned with each other before the clock began, we may have been able to devise a system for everyone to be successful.  This was the ultimate downfall in not meeting the challenge, but even our failure proved very educational.  We realized that planning is of the utmost importance in being successful, and we discovered who would act as our physical leaders as well as who would act as our planners, organizers and support.  This information would be very useful to us down the road and on the river.

The final part of our day entailed the completion of the ropes-course.  This consisted of three challenges involving teamwork, strength, balance and caution.  The first was to climb a series of wood planks called the giant's ladder.  The second was to cross a log high in the air at the same time as another person, and the third was to perform a leap of faith and touch a hanging ball at the peak of the jump.  These activities further built our sense of team as the members in the air had to communicate well and work together to succeed, and the members on the ground could only help them by shouting advice and encouragement.  As it turned out, humor also played a critical role in the completion of this course by keeping the spirits and enthusiasm levels high throughout the group, contrary to the mood induced by the falling rain.