Spring (sort of) Hike

How did we know we were on our Spring hike?  Because it was cold, windy and snowing.  This was the third year in a row that our Spring hike was snowed on, and it is now a Troop 4 tradition.

Despite the conditions, or maybe because of them, we had a fantastic and memorable hike in Bear Mountain State Park.

We started in the Bear Mountain Inn parking lot and hiked along Hessian Lake until the trail took us up the mountain.  Up 1100 plus feet, across rocks, boulders, and unmelted snow.  

With most of our climb coming in just over a mile of hiking this stretch of the hike was by far the most difficult, but everyone managed and I was particularly impressed with our new scouts who went up the mountain close on the heels of our older scouts.

Once at the top we stopped for lunch, and the rest of the hike was an easy walk through the woods on nice wide trails with rock stairs carved into the mountain.  A much easier way down than trip up.

A total of almost five miles was covered in about three and half hours including rest breaks and our stop for lunch.

Our new scouts started to learn more advanced map reading skills and learned how to estimate hiking times using a map to count miles and elevation and turn that information into a rough estimate of the total trip time.

For the complete photo record of the hike check out our photo page at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114081196567743974684/BearMountainHikeMarch2015

Now that it's finally Spring we are ready to launch into campout season.

Klondike Derby

Great weather, great event, and great scouts.

Finally a perfect weather day for a Troop 4 outing.  The sun shone, the temperature was just right, and the wind was calm - all making for perfect conditions for a Klondike.  There was more than enough snow for the sleds and for building a Quinzee Hut for shelter.

The event went off without a hitch and our three senior scouts from the Batmen Patrol did a fantastic job putting together the stations and running them by themselves.

Chris ran the firebuilding contest.

William worked the shelter building.

And Henry held down the knot tieing. 

I hope all the scouts walked away feeling confident that as a group each patrol has the skills to do basic survival camping.  Both groups were able to: quickly boil water proving that when you venture outside properly prepared with matches, tinder and kindling you will always have heat; build simple winter shelters to protect themselves from the elements; and knew the basic knots that would allow them to set up a tarp or shelter, anchor a rescue rope, or build from scratch some useful wood gadget.

They also were able to come up with the correct answers to common first aid problems encountered with firebuilding, being out in the cold, and in hiking/climbing.

Most impressively they worked as a team with all members of each Patrol contributing to the competition and their Patrol's success.

Our next step is to make sure that all members of the Patrols know all the skills and knowledge used this weekend and then begin the process of expanding on that basic information with ever more complicated and challenging sets of wilderness skills.

Finally, I was extremely happy to see 17 young men having fun together and still being respectful of their surroundings and the other people using the preserve.  They were courteous, kind, and cheerful all day.

I can't wait to go camping with this crew.

For a full photographic record of the day please check out our online photo album at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114081196567743974684/TroopKlondikeDerby2015

If anyone got any good shots please email them to me and I'll add to the photo album.