Wilderness Survival 2003

Well, another great Wilderness Survival trip this weekend! After a slight re-organization, we ended up with six crews of four Scouts going through the experience, plus three other Scouts and numerous adults in base-camp.

Despite our concerns about the weather, Friday night ended up bringing only occasional middle-of-the-night showers well after all the groups had orienteered to their sites and set up shelter and, in most cases, gotten their fires going to cook their sweet potato. Not a lot of sleeping Friday night, but a good start.

On Saturday, the groups had the chance to cook eggs for breakfast then rotated through stations throughout the day, including a search/first aid/rescue; a fishing/fire-building station; and a timed topographic map reading rendezvous. Each of these activities brought a food reward. Not all groups were up for cooking their (dressed) squirrels for dinner, however!

Though we had some usual Sat. night dehydration/headaches/allergies, the crews did a great job of keeping well, hanging together, improving their campsites, and persevering in the face of discomfort! Most groups slept quite soundly Saturday night even before we came around to check on them, and were up Sunday scouting a large search area for their eggs. They received a final inspection then broke camp and joined us in base camp for a celebratory brunch and worship service.

Many thanks to Frank B. for organizing, to Jim R. for site procurement and advance preparation, to Jim B. for providing the base camp menu and food (we'd better not say what all we ate!), and to our senior Scouts and adult leaders who worked hard to train the crews and supervise the weekend! For those working on the merit badge, there will be a written test to complete requirements on Tuesday. We expect to be able to announce the crew that had best overall scores on activities and the weekend as a whole once Frank has tallied them.