Winter Emergency Survival

Last weekend, the scouts and I went on a winter camp out. We were originally scheduled to go to the Klondike Dirby, but since they wanted only ex-marines to attend in terms of skills, we didn't qualify. So we decided to make our boys men in our own way.


We got a cabin up at camp No Be Bo Sco to serve as our base camp. But since the purpose of this trip was to survive, we had the scouts immediately start building emergency snow shelters when we arrived that night.


This scout is piling snow onto his shelter because it is an excellent insulator. The outdoor temperature got down to about 10 degrees overnight. But under several inches of snow, the temperature didn't drop much below 30 degrees. That is a big difference that your body can appreciate. One scout was so comfortable, he overslept.


In the morning we had breakfast and then started on our orienteering hike. We went straight up a 400 foot slope to intersect the Appalachian trail up in the Delaware Water Gap. The climb was tiring. The scouts dragged their feet almost the entire 2.5 miles back to the cabin. Every time we stopped to look at our maps, they would all flop in the snow and lazily lob snowballs at each other and hoped they wouldn't have to move to avoid being hit by them.


This was the view from the trail. At the base of this slope was our cabin. When we got back we had a leaders versus scouts snow ball fight. The spent a while building a rather impressive fortress from which to launch their barrage of snowballs. But when we arrived, the other leaders and I split up, out-flanked them, and stormed their fortress from higher ground in a matter of minutes. It was a lot of fun.

This was the general condition of the scouts on the drive back. Mission accomplished. We now have some real men in the troop.