Letter to Applicant from Lair Director

Dear Applicant:

Thank you for applying for employment at the Lair of the Golden Bear.  If you are fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 2008 summer staff, your Lair experience will be one you'll never forget!  You will develop friendships that will last forever and become a part of a long and rich Lair staff tradition.  You will enter a unique family that will make an indelible mark on the rest of your life.

For those familiar with the Lair, you already know what a magical place it is.  For those of you who are not so familiar, you've got a great treat ahead of you.  The Lair of the Golden Bear is the oldest and largest Alumni Association owned family camp in the world.  It is actually a group of three separate but contiguous vacation camps (camps Gold, Blue and Oski).  These camps, collectively known as the "Lair", are owned and operated by the California Alumni Association, residing on public land with oversight by the U.S. Forest Service.  Located approximately 150 miles east of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Lair sits amidst the beautiful Stanislaus National Forest.  At an elevation of 5600 ft., the Lair is surrounded by lush forest, is less than a mile from Pinecrest Lake and two miles from Dodge Ridge ski area.

Every week of our 3-month season, up to 340 campers at both Camps Gold and Blue and 125 campers at Camp Oski arrive to enjoy a week of fun, sun, recreation and entertainment.  Most families have strong Cal connections and choose to return year after year to the same camp, the same week and live in the same tent (in 2007 nearly 90% of our campers were returnees!).  There are waiting lists for nearly every week at each camp…for 59 years the Lair has been an incredibly popular vacation experience.

Central to camper enjoyment is the Lair staff.  We're looking for creative, team-oriented individuals who will take their job responsibilities seriously and who will breathe life into our summer season in an exceptional way.  Successful staffers are friendly, approachable, reliable, flexible, honest, positive and spirited, among many other things.  The staff interacts with our vacationing campers every single day.  How you approach that interaction will have a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction.  Campers love to mingle with our staff and you have a great opportunity to network with them, and be a positive role model for all of our camper kids.

As a Lair staffer, you will work, eat, play and live with 130 other student staff members all summer long.  In addition to your normal job assignment, you'll be asked to do a variety of other tasks.  You might be serving meals one day and performing in the campfire show that night.  You could be helping to lead an adult hike or roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories at the kiddie campfire with a group of kids. It's an absolutely fantastic experience, and an opportunity you don't want to miss.  Many of our staffers return for two, three, four and sometimes five summers! 

On behalf of the Lair team, I want to personally thank you for taking the time to fill out this application and for going through the entire application process.  I wish you the best of luck and hope that, if you're among the very best applicants, I can welcome you to the Lair family in the not too distant future.

Sincerely,

Mike Yaley
Director, Lair of the Golden Bear