@FIRST_LIGHT

I am very tired after spending the weekend camping in the snow with the Boy Scouts. We took the 12-13 year old patrol of 5 to the Klondike Derby organized by our local council. It was a blast.

The weather was pretty good - overnight low of 12 degrees Fahrenheit / -11 degrees Celsius and no wind or snow. All the boys came well prepared, with warm layered clothing, good tents, winter sleeping bags, and insulating foam pads. We filled them with warm drinks and hot food before sending them to bed, each with their own Nalgene bottle filled with boiling hot water so they could start the night reasonably warm.

This morning we got up and participated in a variety of Scoutcraft events: orienteering, timed fire-starting contests, home-made dogsled races (pulled by boys), and other games. The boys really enjoyed it. They set the record for fire-starting by going from zero to boiling water in just 9 minutes, and they got a three minute bonus for starting their fire with flint and steel so their official time was 6 minutes.

We had to head home a little early so we didn’t get to race our sled against all the other troops. But the powers that be did let our boys do a time trial race that will count for competition, so we’ll find out how they did tomorrow via email.

It’s always quite a production taking five adolescent boys into the wilderness in the winter and bringing them back alive AND in good spirits. Things worked out well this time.