Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Youth campouts

This last week was an opportunity to go to Goblin Valley. I am an assistant scoutmaster of boys from 14 to 16. I have to say that although they are good kids, they know very little about being in the outdoors. Perhaps that is because they have no interest in being outdoors, just in playing video games and riding skateboards. This is unfortunate.

The day of the trip I called the scoutmaster to check on food. I was bringing instant oatmeal and tang, left over from other trips. He said "Oh, perhaps I had better get some milk and fruit fro breakfast." After agreeing that would be good, I found that of the three meals, two would be at fast food joints. Not a good tradition for survival situations. No fast food along the trail, as far as I know. it would be good for the boys to learn to cook outdoors and take ccare of themselve instead of depending on the leaders to not only provide the foosd buyt prepare it, serve it, and clean up after them. That is what happened. Of course, all I did was bring the food, boil water, and provide garbage containers.

The boys played capture the flag, and after some loud talk settled down about 11 p.m. At three a.m. one of the leaders came to me asking if we had a spare tent (I had four). It seems as if one of tthe younger scouts had an adverse reaction to the fast food, and suffered projectile eructation. sprayng himself and the other two boys liberally with the partially digested remnants of his meal. This was truly unfortunate. It was cold, he had to get his hair washed, the tent and three sleeping bags were unuseable, and we needed to get them all back to sleep. Luckily I had brought along three spare sleeping bags and the boys were redistributed in other tents. The tent was not salvageable, and was retired from use.

We traveled through Little wild Horse slot canyon the next day. A fun trip, but I needed to get the boots broken in a bit better next time. I used to carry a 60 pound pack for a total trail weight of about 240. I still have a trail weight of 240, but I can only carry a 20 pound pack now. It works on the hips, mostly.

I will post some pictures of the trip and other things as they come available.

2 comments:

  1. Well, I don't think we ever had an experience quite like that with you. Someone needs to toughen those boys up!

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  2. I agree with Lydia! Maybe that is why you are an advisor! Teach them to grow hair on their chests! Like us! HAHAHA!

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