Freya Mayer - Summer Job: |best|

Her official title was “Adventure Guide.” Unofficially, she was a safety inspector, a crisis negotiator for terrified tourists, a knot-tying savant, and, on one memorable afternoon, a minor arborist. "I’m not going to lie," Freya says, peeling off a pair of well-worn leather gloves. "The first two weeks were brutal. My hands were shredded. I was coming home smelling like pine resin and sunscreen, and my shoulders were screaming from hauling harnesses."

Freya didn’t spend her summer in a sleek downtown internship. Instead, she could be found at 6:45 every morning, keys jangling on a carabiner clip, unlocking the gates of West Coast Canopy Adventures —a high ropes and zip-lining course nestled in the old-growth forest of Lynn Headwaters. freya mayer - summer job

Instead of panicking or shutting down the course (which would have cost the company thousands in refunds), Freya improvised a solution. She called the owner on speakerphone, walked him through the visual inspection via video link, and then meticulously re-torqued four loose cable sleeves herself using a manual winch—a tool she had only watched YouTube tutorials on the night before. Her official title was “Adventure Guide

The job was physically demanding. Between guiding groups of eight through the canopy, Freya was responsible for daily cable tension checks, gear inventory, and what she calls "the art of the pep talk." My hands were shredded

And sometimes, that bridge is made of rope, suspended 80 feet above a creek, swaying gently in the wind. Freya Mayer is a student at the University of British Columbia. West Coast Canopy Adventures will be hiring for the 2025 season beginning in March.

"Normally, a supervisor does the high-risk checks," she explains. "But it was just me and two new hires. We had a booking of 30 people arriving in two hours."

"She didn't ask for permission to solve the problem; she asked for guidance on how to solve it," says Marcus Tolland, the owner of West Coast Canopy Adventures. "That’s a rare filter. Most people see a broken system and walk away. Freya saw a broken system and asked for the wrench." The group of 30 arrived—a corporate team from a downtown tech firm. Half of them were terrified of heights. Freya’s environmental design coursework focuses on human behavior in physical spaces. She realized the zip-line platform was no different from a badly designed transit hub.