Category: Scouting

Last weekend was the biannual Klondike Derby put on by the Timpanogos District of the Utah National Parks Council of the Boy Scouts of America.  My troop was one of the troops that attended.

Honestly, it was a good time.

Others before me learned that it's much more comfortable and much easier to NOT sleep in tents when winter camping.  Snow tracks into tents and makes a mess that has to be cleaned up or the tents will mildew.  Tents are hard to get warm, and even if one DOES get a tent up to a reasonable temperature, if that tent is pitched on a good layer of snow, the tent starts to sink in the melting snow and sooner or later ends up with a pretty good layer of water on the floor.

Instead, my troop sleeps in "burritos" under the cold, January sky.

A "burrito" is a pretty great idea actually.  It's constructed by placing a sleeping bag and blankets (or a sleeping bag inside of a sleeping bag) on top of a few inches of foam rubber and then wrapping the entire bundle of warmth and insulation inside a "tortilla" of plastic sheeting.  The plastic keeps the heat in and the cold wind out.  When it's time to go to sleep, all one has to do is open the top of the burrito ever so slightly and then burrow down into the middle of the insulation.  Excess plastic at the top keeps snow out, but can be opened up to let just the right amount of air in.  I've now slept in a burrito twice, and both times, I was snug as a bug in a rug.  It's nice to be able to throw the burrito directly down on the snow and sleep comfortably through the night.  Believe it or not, I actually sleep better in a burrito than I do on a cot in a tent.

There is one problem with a burrito that I have found though.  People exhale water vapor when they breathe.  Water is a product of the human metabolism, and the plastic surrounding the burrito holds it in.  When the water vapor hits this cold plastic, it nearly instantly condenses back into water.  The excess plastic at the top of the burrito becomes wet, and unavoidably, there is some dripping.  It's not enough to get one wet, but it can become annoying.

For example, last Friday night, I was sleeping peacefully on my side when a single ice-cold drop of condensation hit my forehead above my eyebrow, then dripped down all the way across my forehead and dripped off into the sweatshirt I was using for a pillow.  THAT woke me up, I'm telling you!

The solution to this problem is to burrow just a little bit deeper into the burrito, which I did, and promptly fell back asleep.

I had 17 scouts at this Klondike Derby.  They did very well at most all of the activities during the day.  Team building was a breeze--they figured out all of the puzzles quite quickly.  They got all of their knots tied correctly except for the sheet bend, but that's a hard-ish knot to tie.  With that many of them pulling their Klondike sled (think dogs pulling a dog sled), they did very well there too.  They paid attention and participated during the first aid activity.

But at the last station of the day, everything fell apart.  The last station was fire building.  We had already told them that they weren't being graded on how well they lit a fire.  On the score sheet, they didn't even have any points allocated to whether or not they actually ended up with a fire.  The points were mostly allocated to participation and attitude.

Without going into details, I'll just say that 17 boys turned a fire building activity into a bickering match.  You can imagine how fast our points dwindled.

In the end, my troop took 10th place out of 27-ish troops.  That's not too bad.  But they would likely have been in the top three had they cooperated better on the fire building activity.

Lessons learned by the Scoutmaster:

1. I still like sleeping in burritos
2. When the camp is far away from the road, don't take all of the cooking stuff up to the camp.  Just set up a kitchen area down by the vehicles.  It saved us a lot of time and energy!
3. Boys LOVE playing in the snow.
4. No matter how many times you tell boys to bring LOTS of extra socks, you'll still end up with a boy wearing only one pair of wet socks inside cold boots.
5. I need to teach my scouts how to light a fire.
6. I need to teach my scouts how to pick a good knife.  Some of the knives they were using to make kindling...  Oy...
7. Campouts are a lot of work, but they're great learning experiences for boys.

I learn something new on every camp out.

This time, I learned that I need to have a rule that if you transport boys TO the camp out, you have to transport boys home FROM the camp out.  One of the leaders (the 11-year-old scout leader) had to leave after breakfast on Saturday morning.  I had asked one of my scout's parents to come up and pick boys up at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon.

The camp out was a lot of fun.  We were drizzled on until about 10pm on Friday night.  But we stayed dry all night and the next morning.  The rain started up again at about 10am.  It wasn't bad until 11:30 or so when there were 3 or 4 lightning strikes.  Then it started raining hard and steady.

Fortunately, we had broken camp.  The boys came back from the closing flag ceremony/awards ceremony soaked to the bone.  I had stayed behind to get lunch ready.

After a quick lunch, we were ready to hit the road.  The only problem - the parental unit that had volunteered his chauffering services was nowhere to be seen and the rain was coming down harder and harder.

I decided to drive down to the entrance of the camp to see if he might be waiting for us there.  As I left our camp site, I slid down a now muddy road to another dirt road that was quickly becoming a soggy, soupy mess.  Once I got out of the upper area, the roads were better maintained and I was able to easily make it to the camp entrance.

No parent.

I decided that this parent's van would NEVER make it through the muddy mess to get to our camp site, so I dropped the boys in my car off (under shelter, of course) and headed back for the others.  I didn't even attempt the last climb to the camp site.  I knew I would be sliding all over the place.  I left the car, walked up to the camp, and told the boys to follow me.  We all climbed into my subaru and headed back to the camp entrance with road conditions worsening by the minute.

We wouldn't have made it without all-wheel drive.  It was a little bit harrowing, but we ended up making it out just fine.  I spent the next half hour trading off which boys were in the car with the heater so that no one would freeze.  Just as I was trying to call to find out where my help was, he showed up and we were able to get everyone home.

WHEW!!

I learn a litte bit more each time I have one of these outdoor activities.  I figure that in another year or two, I might actually feel like I know what I'm doing!

It's been a month ago, or maybe even six weeks ago, that I taught my scouts all about GPS and how it works.  They were excited to soon go geocaching.

Unfortunately, things kept happening that prevented us from actually going.

Finally, on Thursday night, we got to go.  The scouts had a blast.  Geocaching in the dark with a whole bunch of scouts is a little strange.  I had reminded them beforehand to be respectful of people and property and they did a very good job of that.

We ended up visiting 3 geocaches.  At the third geocache, we had just found the cache (after quite a search.  It was hidden WELL) and we looked over and saw what appeared to be a reflective vest--the kind that crossing guards wear.  Someone was standing on the sidewalk, looking at us.  I walked over to the person to make sure that it wasn't a neighborhood watch person or someone like that who was wondering what a dozen people were doing around a tree in a park well after dark.

It turned out to be a mentally-challenged person.  He finally asked me "What's going on?" and I told him that we were a boy scout troop out having some night fun.  He grinned a huge grin and said, "Oooohhh!  Boy Scouts!"  and went merrily on his way.

I think that a couple of my scouts are going to pester their parents to get them a GPS for Christmas this year.

Last weekend was my first campout as Scoutmaster.  We went to the Little Sahara recreation area.

My feet are STILL cold.

It got down below freezing during the night.  One of the scouts had nothing for his feet but flip flops.  Smart.

We cooked and ate breakfast in blowing snow.

But the general concensus was that we had a great time!  Yes, it was a lot of fun.  I learned a bunch of things that will make the next campout go more smoothly.  But we all survivied (even the one with flip flops).

The next one will be even colder...  It's the "Klondike Derby" in January.  *shiver*

Scouting came to the United States in 1910. In 1913, after a serious study, the LDS Church became the first church in the United States to adopt Scouting.

My own experience in the Boy Scouts of America has been dismal.  Dare I say abysmal?

As a young man in the LDS church, I was a Boy Scout.  Because Scouting was adopted as the "activity arm" of the Aaronic Priesthood in the United States, I was expected to go to a scout meeting every week.  These weekly meetings became unbearable for me at times.

I wasn't liked among the other young men my age.  I don't really know why.  Any reasons I can come up aren't valid because they're tainted by anger and bitterness caused by years of painful memories.  But it was certainly very clear that I was the low man on the totem pole.  The teasing and tormenting I endured when I went to "scouts" every week was both unrelenting and merciless.  I won't go into detail, because that's not really the point.  The point is that an experience that, if it went according to the idea, should have been uplifting and gratifying, instead was horrible and hellacious.  When I was a couple of merit badges shy of the rank of Life, I decided that instead of going to scouts every week, I would find something better to do with my time.  I would go where people respected me and accepted me for who I am.

A few years ago (a little more than 6 years ago, actually), my son became a Cub Scout.  I went into my second round with the scouting program with an open mind.  I believed that the problem wasn't with the scouting program, but that it was with a particular implementation of the scouting program I had to deal with.

When I was asked to be Cubmaster, I was excited.  I thought I might actually be able to make a difference.  For a while, I felt that I was making a difference.

Then my son, a year older, moved into the Webelos program.  Unfortunately, his new leaders cared much more about the program than they did about the people involved and the entire experience went south.  I'd rather not go into details (it wouldn't help anyway), but suffice it to say that I was again left with a bad taste in my mouth about the scouting program.

I swore that I wouldn't be involved again the the scouting program.  I didn't want to be involved with a program that had failed me...twice.

Just before my older son turned 12 years old, we moved into a new neighborhood.  Part of the reason we moved was because we saw these same trends in the scouting implementation in the young mens program in the ward we lived it.  Before we bought our new home, we attended church and saw what seemed to be a very different program.  It was very different in a very good way.

The first big campout that my son attended was the perfect opportunity to get to know the leaders that would be working with both of my sons over the next several years.  I got to know these leaders and for the first time in my life, I saw an implementation of the scouting program that focused more on the boys than on the program.

That was 2 years ago, and since then, I've been involved with the Young Mens organization in my Ward.  I've been on several different campouts and other activities.  For the first time in my life, I see the scouting program for what it can be.

And that's a good thing, because...

I was made Scoutmaster today.  ME??  Scoutmaster?  Yikes!