Vine Cutting Recap

A little late, but I wanted to make sure I got this out.  We had a fantastic and productive day cutting vines and freeing trees from the death clutches of the invasive vines choking our forests.  I hope all the scouts and our non scout volunteers felt their time was useful and productive.

The volunteers broke into 3 groups and worked three different areas of the Preserve.  Over the course of the day we had 26 scouts and volunteers helping.  I would like to thank our new scouts for a tremendous effort and for getting Mrs. Tate to come out and help us.

I ran into the property steward this week and she was really impressed with our effort and said she thought she needed to rent a wood chipper to dispose of all the vine cuttings we made around the property last Sunday.

The full photo record of the day can be found on our Troop album on line at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114081196567743974684/BaxterRoadVinecuttingApril2015

Behind the Scenes Work to get ready for Camping

Our SPL and the three Quartmaster spent their Saturday afternoon waterproofing and applying UV protection to the new Troop tents as well as the older ones and making sure they were all in good working order.

Then when they were done the Quartermasters split up and took possession of their Patrols equipment for the Spring camping season.  The Quartermasters job is to make sure that all equipment is cared for properly and is available for use on each campout.  Not the most glamorous leadership role but during a campout you know if you have a good Quartermaster or not.

If they do their jobs well you will never remember who your Quartermaster was.

Good job today guys.

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.