Scoutmaster Musings

The great wilderness trek of 2010 begins bright and early tomorrow morning. We'll be missing Jambo, but we have two crews of scouts exploring the Cloud Peak Wilderness of the Bighorn Mountains west of Buffalo, WY.
The two crew leaders made their routes, menus, gear lists, and duty rosters. We have our tour permits, first aid training, and practice hikes complete.

Seven scouts and four adults will cover a 36-mile route and attempt to summit Cloud Peak at a bit over 13,000 feet.   You can see the Crew #1 Route.

On Saturday, July 31, the first crew will leave the mountains and travel to Mt. Rushmore where they will meet up with the second crew on their way out. Both crews will perform the flag lowering ceremony at Mt. Rushmore which is a waaaaaay cool thing to experience!

The next morning, I head back to Wyoming with the second crew of seven scouts and two other adults that has chosen a different 29-mile route but will also attempt to summit Cloud Peak. You can see Crew #2 Route.

The routes were made on Gmaps Pedometer which is a great place to make hiking routes, bike routes, or pretty much any route you need. You can view topo, satellite, or terrain. It is very useful for planning a trip and sharing your planned route with parents. Turning on the "elevation" is pretty neat too.
If you follow the route closely, you'll see an occasional squiggle of line (see mile 3 on Crew #1's route). These are spots where we plan to camp. I've not figured out how to place markers yet - anyone have advice on that?

We will have our SPOT Messenger along and I plan to turn it on every morning while we hike. If you feel like checking in on us to follow our progress, see our Real-time Tracking starting Sunday, July 25.

Scout On

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To all you scouts and scouters heading to the Jamboree - HAVE FUN!

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Our week at Many Point summer camp was great! We had 46 scouts enjoy an amazing week of sun, wind, and one night of storms.

On Tuesday night, we were evacuated to the storm shelter for a couple hours. It was quite an event. The staff put in extra effort leading rousing songs for quite awhile. Turned out to be very little weather to actually hit the camp, but we were up very late.

Then, at around 5:30 on Wednesday morning, deja-vu all over again. This trip to the shelter wasn't so much fun. Looking over the lake from our campsite, I could see a wall of white rain moving towards us so there was a bit more urgency. No songs that early in the a.m. :-) Just waiting for the "all clear" which came about 7am.

Two tents and a pop-up shelter got whomped by the high winds, but that was all. After that, the weather was beautiful all week.

I had the most fun I can recall at camp on Friday afternoon when we sailed for 2 hours. I had two new scouts with me and they were pretty nervous about sailing for the first time ever so they wanted to go with someone experienced. I told them I've sailed a lot. I've had my own sailboat since I was younger then them. I sailed practically every day when I was a kid. And, I never tipped over unless it was on purpose. Even when I made big waves in the tub, that sailboat of mine didn't tip. :-)

But, they went out with me anyway and it was a blast. The daggerboard was whistling we were going so fast and at such an angle. One of them did slip overboard once but we wheeled around and picked him right up. Then, the other kept asking to go overboard and finally couldn't resist when we were on our way back in and "fell" over the side. I let him swim the rest of the way in as a "punishment".

Oh yeah, we did have 6 new scouts get a 12-hour bug that really cleaned out their systems (if you know what I mean) and then they were just fine. All in the same patrol, tentmates, one right after another for 4 days. One guy lucked out and didn't get it - even though he was sleeping between two that did.

We've got our campsite for next year reserved and it's a great one! Room for more scouts and close to the action - I'm looking forward to it already.

Scout On

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