Ambassador Adventures: Kai Holloway Climbs Out West

Hey Flowfold!

 

I wanted to give you an update on some of our adventures this year.

 

After we sailed from Maine down the East Coast and to the Bahamas last year, we left our sailboat in Florida and spent the summer back home on Cliff island, Maine. It was awesome to be home, but in September we left for our epic van/camping trip out west, where we’ve been visiting as many national parks as possible. My brothers and I like to earn our junior ranger badges. We’ve also been rock climbing and bouldering as much as possible. My Flowfold Optimist day pack has been AWESOME for carrying my climbing gear, especially when there is long or difficult approach. I like that it is super lightweight and has an outside gear loop to clip my climbing shoes to. 

  

 

Some of my favorite highlights from this adventure have been climbing at the Happy Boulders in Bishop, California and hiking and climbing in Yosemite National Park. I had my eleventh birthday in the Badlands in South Dakota, where we slept on a tarp under the stars and woke up to big horn sheep standing nearby. We saw snow in Glacier National Park and Crater Lake, and soaked in hot springs in Yellowstone, Wyoming and Mammoth Lakes, California. My brothers and I love camping every night and cooking over an open fire. My job is usually to collect kindling and get the fire started. We named our van Fryian after a dragon in a book we liked. It is a Honda Odyssey and my brothers, and I have a cozy bed in the back. Our mattress is a crash pad for bouldering.

 

Our cook stove is a little stick stove that runs on kindling. We just feed it tiny sticks we collect on the ground. We’ve had some great meals on it. When were in Olympic National Park, Washington, we sometimes had a hard time finding dry sticks, but ever since we arrived in the desert it’s been no problem.

 

 

We just arrived in Death Valley and they get less than 2 inches of rain a year!