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.

Ski Weekend Recap - Gore Mountain 2015

 

The flip side to wet weather following Troop 4 is that for winter activities where snow is important we end up with plenty.  Last weekend we went skiing at Gore Mountain and true to form wet weather followed, except this time it manifested itself in fresh snow Friday night (3"),  Saturday night (3"), and all day Sunday providing fantastic conditions for skiing.  All ten lifts and all 100+ trails were open this weekend. 

We stayed in the Camp Read ski cabin and were well taken care of by the Read staff including having all our meals prepared for us by the Camp Buckskin kitchen staff.  The Scouts played board games after dinner and watched some clasic bad movies each night before lights out, and everyone skied hard both days.

Rides up the mountain were comfortable in the Gore Gondola and everyone loved the new high speed quad to the mid mountain which is a tremendous improvement over the old lift.

Saturday we skied from 8:30am to 4pm with only a couple of breaks for food and rest, and we skied another 4 hours Sunday and managed to get out of Gore ahead of the snow storm that dumped another 8 inches of snow Sunday.  If only we didn't have to get back for work and school.