By Nathan A. Prusi (Age 13)
Star Rank Scout with Troop 66
My scout troop just had two cool snow campouts (pun intended.) One was an amazing skiing, snowboarding and tubing trip, and another was a tough but rewarding klondike.
Troop 66 on the slopes of Berkshire East.
A Spectacular Skiing Trip
On the 27 of January, we got to the church at 6 p.m. and got our stuff ready to head to the cabin where we would spend the rest of the night getting a fire ready, watching a movie and heading to sleep. The next day after eating breakfast we got ready to leave to the mountain at around 8 a.m. Scouts started skiing and snowboarding at 9 a.m. and some scouts started tubing at 10. At about noon we ate some lunch until the second sessions opened at 1 p.m. During the tubing some scouts (including me) spent a good chunk of time trying to get a pen out of the snow because why not (don’t worry, we succeeded.)
At 3 p.m. we all started getting ready to go back to the cabin. Back at the cabin, we made some dinner and dessert, watched a movie and headed to bed. The next day we got up to get our stuff together and were ready to leave at 8:30 a.m. where we went to the church to put our stuff away and head home.
A Cool Klondike
On February 11 we all went to camp Workcoemen for this year’s klondike. We would be splitting up into two patrols, one patrol that would just go for the day and have closer stations, and one that would go for the night and have further stations. How the klondike would work was that at around 8:45 a.m. we would start orienteering our map with a piece of paper we were given, that had coordinates that we would use. We would use the map to find stations that had a challenge in scouting skills such as: knot tying, cold weather first aid, preparedness and more, we also had to make lunches at one of the stations which would also count toward our score. Depending on how we did with our stations, we would get a certain number of nuggets, which would be a big factor in our scoring.
After we were done with our stations, we would head back to the start so we could have them record our finish time. Usually, we would use a sled to carry our stuff, but because there was no snow, we had to carry all our gear in backpacks. At the end of the first day, the day patrol ended up getting 27 out of the 30 nuggets. Even though we didn’t get top three, we still felt really happy with our score. Then at around 5 p.m. our day patrol left to go back home.
The next day, the night patrol did much better than the first day getting a lot of stations done. Even though they had a rough first day, they still did really well because they still kept on and didn’t give up or blame each other, they just assessed their situation, planned for the next day, and with lots of motivation, persevered. After they finished at about 12:30 p.m. they went back to the church to put their stuff away, and head home.