Catalina Island Camps receives Safety 1st Award

Safety 1st Awards

Catalina Island Camps receives this award in 2009 for the 6th consecutive year.

Will Evans, Director of Safety Education at Markel stated, "Camps and clubs must meet stringent criteria to qualifyfor the Safety 1st designation.They must have a proven safety record for at least three consecutive years, undergo formal assessments and inspections, and participate in continuimg education and certification programs. These facilities deserve to be recognized for keeping safety a top priority."

The Kerns 15 years at Catalina Island Camps

The following entry is written by Holly Kern who has lived at Howlands Landing since February 1995 with her husband Tom and their three children - Haley, Hannah and Tommy. Holly is currently the CIC Food Service Manager.



Friday January 30, 2009 1:15 pm

I am leaving for a weekend conference in Pasadena, Ca that begins at 7:00 pm. As it is only 1:15 in the afternoon and Pasadena is only 53 miles away as “the crow flies” you might be inclined to say “getting there by 7:00 pm shouldn’t be a problem”. Well considering I’ll be traveling first by camp boat to Avalon, then cross channel on a commercial ferry, and finally endure mainland gridlock on the northbound 110 through downtown LA, I’ll be lucky to arrive in time.

Friday is a beautiful sunny day with calm seas, so my husband Tom suggests the 40 minute coastal boat ride to Avalon over the hour and forty minute car trip through the dusty interior of the island. I would agree except today I am dressed in a skirt and sweater set, I have a suitcase, and the dock has been hauled out for the winter. We will need to launch our rowboat through the shore break to reach the 17 foot camp skiff on its mooring. Tom decides to row out first and beach the skiff which means I will need to toss my duffle aboard, hoist myself over the bow, all the while keeping the boat off the beach. Unfortunately, the boat has been on its mooring awhile and the pelicans have used it as a habitat. In addition to the other challenges, I will now also need to cautiously avoid multiple piles of bird guano strategically located on the bow. When Tom approaches the beach, I wade out to the catch the boat, toss my shoes aboard, and attempt to power lift my middle age body over a chest high bow, all the while trying to keep my dignity and my skirt modestly situated. As luck would have it, my purse which is strapped over my shoulder, becomes hung up on the bow cleat and I am literally “hung up” and still hanging over the bow as Tom throws the boat into reverse to keep it off the beach. I am humbled, but not disgraced, as I once again laugh at myself and this wonderful alternate lifestyle chosen for us.



Once aboard and my dignity restored, Tom assures me with “don’t worry honey, nobody saw that”. We throttle up for the lovely trip to Avalon where the second leg of my trip will begin as I catch the ferry to Long Beach. A few minutes into the trip I question myself, “Why did I bother styling my hair prior to a 40 minute boat ride?” It is just another small challenge of rustic island living. Arriving polished and perfectly coiffed at an event is not an option. I like to fondly refer to it as “island grunge” and I wipe the dried salt crystals off my legs. Those of you with campers here at CIC became familiar with “island grunge” when you opened your camper’s duffle after 2 weeks at camp


Haley and Hannah,our two daughters, will meet us in Avalon to catch the ferry. They are especially excited to go “over town” and do some shopping and Starbucks on Colorado St. Their day began at 5:00 a.m. at Howlands Landing. They boarded the school bus in Two Harbors at 6:15 am and attended school all day at Avalon Middle and High School. They commute nearly 4 hours a day to attend school. This limits their opportunities for after school activities, sports, etc. so this trip overtown is highly anticipated.

Prior to attending school in Avalon, both girls attended the Little Red School House in Two Harbors for Kindergarten through 5th grade. Our son Tommy is currently in 3rd grade at the one room school house. The commute to and from Two Harbors is usually done by boat and has it has challenges. We always keep a spare dry set of clothes at the school in case of accidental swamping, etc. Tom and I still laugh when remembering Haley’s first dip into the icy winter waves. She was in Kindergarten when large storm surf capsized the dinghy. Haley was safely fastened in her PFD (life jacket). She became disoriented when she hit the icy water and attempted to swim down rather than up. The PFD prevented her from going under so all that was above water was her bobbing bottom and her thrashing kicking legs. Tom grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and yanked her head above water. There was dead silence for nearly 3 seconds while she gasped in a large breath and let out a wail heard all the way at the Boy Scout camp next door. Tom assured her also, “don’t worry honey, nobody saw that!”



Along with the mishaps and challenges, there are the unexpected tardies to school due to exciting encounters with pods of dolphins, surprise whale sightings, and the beloved bald eagle that toils near Lions Head. We even spotted a sea turtle off Big Geiger. Tommy was twenty minutes late for school when Wilson the Bison was camped on the narrow dirt road in Cherry Cove. There was no place for Wilson to go as to the right was mountain and to the left cliff. He wasn’t in the mood to be rushed. As I cautiously tried to pass him, he would charge the car then proceed forward at more of a “sashay” than a trot. He didn’t seem to understand that class started at 8:00 am.

The benefits of camp living far outweigh the challenges. When we were hired by Catalina Island Camps thirteen years ago, we knew little about camp and its benefits to kids (and staff). Our Christmas card this year boasted that 2008 was the first year with all three Kern kids enrolled at CIC. Haley completed the Campers in Leadership Training (CILT’s) and thus completed her career as a CIC camper. She is anxious to continue on as a CIT, staff, …who knows? Tommy thoroughly enjoyed four weeks in Tugboat with fellow super heroes and is asking for six weeks in 2009. Hannah not only survived, but enjoyed her 2008 Yawl experience. She was able to resist the familiar warm blue glow of the family T.V. visible from her cabin. (I believe it can be more difficult for our children to experience success at camp as they see us, the house, our pets when tired and stretched both physically and mentally) Hannah keeps in touch with Yawl mates though email and text messaging and is looking forward to the summer of 2009.

Would we trade our wet, sometimes cold, commutes for a warm heated SUV and a Starbucks coffee? Would we trade summer “Snooze You Lose”, Saturday special events, Monday night pasta, Tuesday night chicken, Wednesday Mexican…(yes, the menu is always the same!) for shopping centers, movie theaters, and take-out restaurants?

I don’t think so. We love both the adventures and misadventures of camp living. We especially love CIC!

Kenta Ferrin -- CIC Counselor and Teacher

The following post is written by Kenta Ferin. Kenta was a CIC counselor in 2006 and then entered the Teach For America program. Kenta returns to CIC this summer.


“Mr. FERRIN!!! AHHH. Mr. FERRIN!!! I HATE SCIENCE. I CAN’T DO THIS. I DON’T WANNA BE HERE.” Wow, the first two things that popped into my head on my first day of teaching were, “Who is Mr. Ferrin?” and “What did I just get myself into?”

Well, Mr. Ferrin was me, Skip Kenta (last name) Ferrin. I had just started on my two year contract of teaching in a low-income Title I school with the national organization, Teach For America. I was lucky enough to be placed on the North Shore of Oahu, not too much to complain about there. Beautiful skies to soul search, huge waves to soul surf, and big mountains to look upon. However, I was given the biggest challenge of my entire life…to teach 180 6th graders the ins and outs of Physical Science. I had just graduated college in Virginia…with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. How in the world was I going to do this? In addition to full-time teaching, I was required to enroll into the University of Hawai’i to obtain my Masters of Education, which I was to complete through night courses. Was anyone aware that there are only 24 hours in a day?



Thus began the beginning of my Teach For America journey. Everyday I woke up to teach classrooms with too many students and not enough chairs, a subject that I had no grasp upon. I had no idea where my beakers were or what they looked like. I spent all night researching atoms, energy, and the periodic table, and simultaneously switched off to finish the research papers and lesson plans that my professors had assigned to fulfill my University of Hawai’i requirements.


Well…let’s just say that first year flew. And did my students learn anything? I HAVE NO IDEA. Sure, the majority passed the end of year test analyzing their content knowledge. But that is not what I cared about. What I cared about is whether or not my students learned about friendships, relationships, sharing, caring, failure, achievement, and, most importantly, the desire to be a well rounded citizen that would some day have the ability to take his or her own learning into his or her own hands.


And let me tell you one thing, those essential skills, those skills needed to have a child become a better citizen, are most easily learned at a place where “standards”, and “curriculum” do not have an iron grip on their ability to learn, but in a place where creativity, play, learning, physical activity, friends, enemies, frenemies, and the like all gather in one place. This place would be camp.

All children deserve the right to the best education possible, which is the belief that pointed me towards Teach For America in the first place. However, my two years in the classroom have reinforced the notion that the best education can occur, and does occur, during the one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, or eight weeks a child spends at a summer camp (specifically Catalina Island Camps!).

Fast forward to the current day and I am a little less than 4 months from the end of my Teach For America commitment, and a little less than 4 months to another beautiful summer at Catalina. I cannot wait for the sugar rushes, snooze you lose, early morning PBA, making friendships that will last forever, and most importantly, watching campers change and grow into confident, caring, well-rounded future bloggers.

Nate Erlandson and the US National Jr. Biathlon Team

The following post is by Nate Erlandson, Catalina Island Camps Assistant Site Manager. Nate works full time on the island making sure camp is functional and safe for all our programs. Nate came to CIC as a Power Boat Driver, became an instructor in our school year program (Catalina Environmental Leadership Program), was the Lead Boat Driver the past two summers and has worked in his current position since September 2007. Nate is a graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota.



I got involved with a sport called biathlon when I was about 14 years old. Being I grew up in northern Minnesota where skiing is commonplace, I feel I should explain the events involved for our warmer climate readers. Biathlon, a winter Olympic sport since 1960, (while it debuted in 1924, it took 36 years for the competing countries to agree on the rules) combines the disciplines of cross country skiing and rifle marksmanship. The sport has its origins in Scandinavia where Norwegian soldiers would use it as an exercise in military training.

A biathlon competition consists of a race in which athletes ski around a cross country track in the form of a loop that starts and finishes at an outdoor stadium. At the stadium is a shooting range consisting of 30 lanes with corresponding targets 50 meters downrange of the firing line. A race is either three or five ski loops with a shooting round between each loop. Thus, an athlete will shoot either two or four times depending on the race format. The shooting bouts are always half in the prone position (lying down) and half in standing position. The prone and standing targets are different sizes and to come up with some analogies…a standing target is more or less the size of a DVD, while a prone target is about the size of a half dollar. Keep in mind the athlete has just finished racing a 3km loop and they are trying to hold steady and control their breathing with a heart beating around 160 times per minute. Each athlete carries a .22 caliber rifle on their back while skiing and upon entering the shooting range will choose a lane and shoot 5 shots at the 5 separate targets in their lane. The black targets when hit will turn white so the athlete knows how many hits/misses they have. This is important because the athletes must complete an additional 150 meter loop for each target they miss. As in most races, the athlete with the shortest total time wins.

I raced cross country skiing and some biathlon during college with my last Junior World Championships in 2003. After graduating in 2006, I was excited to switch things up a bit from Minnesota and not only move to California, but proceed straight to Catalina Island to begin working summer camp as a boat driver. I liked it so much I also stayed for the CELP program in the fall. During my first winter on Catalina my old, and the current, coach called me up and asked me if I would like to accompany the Junior National Team to Italy as a wax tech for the athletes at World Championships.


This year marked my third “annual” trip as a wax tech and since we are in a pre-Olympic year, everything was held Canada…though not at the 2010 Vancouver venue. We spent the last week and a half in the beautiful Camore/Lake Louise/Banff area. The competitions took place at the ’88 Olympics venue and the hospitality was amazing! Our days would begin at 6am testing different waxes and ski structures before the athletes arrived at 8am. After finding what we considered the fastest combination of the day we would wax the race skis and then go out on course to cheer our athletes on. It’s always great to see our athletes do well and it’s also fun to hear the many languages and cheers from the 20+ countries that usually compete. Unfortunately there are only 2 athletes and 1 coach from Spain, making my Spanish rather useless, but thankfully most teams speak English as their second language!

While I had to return to Catalina for work instead of accompanying the other ski guys to Vancouver for a trial of the Olympic tracks, I can still say I have the privilege of enjoying the best of two worlds, small winter breaks at world class ski venues and the warm quiet beaches of Catalina year round. I am already looking forward to next year’s competition in Torsby, Sweden! Thanks for the time off Tom… 

Suz goes to China!

The following post is from Suzanne Merkelson who is returning to Catalina Island Camps for her fourth year this summer. Suz has been a cabin counselor, skin diving instructor, Lead Diver and will be the Girls Camp Director this summer. She is a senior at Colby College.

January 9, 2009 was an especially strange day for me. By dinnertime, I found myself at a fancy round banquet table piled high with colorful, steaming dishes I couldn’t begin to recognize or name. A bowl was placed in front of me. Looking down, I saw what looked like a simple bowl of pasta, covered in a white sauce. I took a bite. This was definitely not spaghetti.

“Jason,” I whispered, turning to the guy next to me, posing a question that I found myself asking constantly throughout the month: “What exactly am I eating?”

“Shark fin soup,” he replied, happily taking a slurp. I recoiled, remembering everything I’ve learned at Catalina Island Camps about the terrible practice of hunting sharks for their fins. Of course, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was in China’s Jiangsu province, along the Yangtze River. While sharkfinning is looked down upon in the United States, here shark fin soup is a delicacy and demonstration of affluence.

I spent January traveling around China with an economics class from my school, Colby College, which is in Waterville, Maine. Colby has this thing called JanPlan, which is a shortened semester between the fall and spring. As an International Studies major, I’ve been able to take advantage of JanPlans, traveling all over the world: teaching English in rural India my sophomore year, backpacking around South Africa and Lesotho my junior year, and now China. Our class focused on the Yangtze, which is the third longest river in the world and the center of trade in China. We visited factories, toured a panda breeding center (let me tell you, these guys are the cutest things in the world), saw steel being made, hiked up a Taoist mountain, and celebrated Chinese New Years in Shanghai.

We also learned a lot about dams. China is on a dam-building spree, and one that is incredibly controversial. We began our tour in Shanghai. With Shanghai’s thick and potent air pollution, damming seems like an environmentally sound fix to China’s massive growth. However, when we started to visit the dam sites upriver, the answer was suddenly not so clear.

Part of the last week was spent hiking along Yunnan province’s Tiger Leaping Gorge, in the shadow of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, home to the southernmost glaciers in the northern hemisphere. We traveled through villages inhabited by Tibetan and Naxi (“Na-she”) minority people, and hiked for awhile alongside an old man with a smiling weathered face, leading his mule up the trail. This was one of the most stunningly beautiful places I had ever visited (other than Catalina, of course). It was also in danger—the government has a proposal to build a dam along this part of the river. If it passes, a dam would create a reservoir that would forever change this bucolic area and the life of the people who live here.

China is a country that loves superlatives. The most populated country in the world is home to the largest dam, the largest container shipping port, and third longest bridge—all of which I had the opportunity to visit. The Chinese people are incredibly proud of what their country has achieved. Millions have been lifted from poverty at an enormously rapid rate. Yet they face challenges in learning to solve the environmental and social problems plaguing many parts of the country. To me, the sharkfin soup is a good analogy for what’s happening in this fascinating place. China is both anxious and ready to prove its riches to the world (just look at the opening ceremony of the Olympics). It also is about to come to terms with the repercussions of that growth. Hopefully China can enjoy development in a sustainable way.

After all, imagine what camp would be like without leopard sharks.

Ready to Blog!

Good Morning Catalina Island Camps!

It's time to tell you more about everything CIC.

First, you can now find Catalina Island Camps on Facebook. Discover more about the network of people at Catalina Island Camps. Campers, staff, parents and their friends are all becoming fans of CIC. We hope you will join us as well.

Second, beginning tomorrow, February 9, I will be posting regularly to this blog with stories from our amazing network of current and past staff as well as campers and parents. I think you will be amazed at what a unique and talented group of people are part of our children's lives. We are going to start with a story from current staff member Suz Merkelson about her recent trip to China.

If you have an interesting story to tell about CIC I'd love to hear it. Who was a camper in the past decades? Who are second and third generation campers? What do you remember about CIC that made it special to you? What years did you work at CIC? Do you have old pictures to share?

And of course, tell your friends about Catalina Island Camps and maybe you'll help them create their own stories as well.