Klondike Derby

Our troop participated in the district Klondike Derby for the first time in several years. There was plenty of snow at Camp Kiesel, where the Snowhorse District has been Klondiking for several year
s. Eric Tuttle and John Sorensen headed up the troop, while Patrik, Cory, Moab, Noah, Connor, Landon and Tyson enjoyed increasing their winter survival skills. We met at the church at 3:30 and were off by 4:00. We were setting up camp immediately. The challenge was that one of the scouts had a tent which wouldn't stand on its own. Therefore, we had the 7 scouts bunk in 2 tents. The leaders dug snow trenches, which were covered with boards and tarps and snow. Scouts had fun that evening eating chili and hotdogs, along with lots of hot chocolate. Morning brought pancakes, scrambled eggs, hot chocolate (again) and bacon. Nobody went hungry! We packed up some of our gear before we headed out for the Klondike Games. We headed down the road with our new sled, which was built by our scout master :) . Then, down to the lake, which frozen with 14" of ice. The problem was that we've had so much snow that there was a slush and snow on top of the ice. We would be walking and we would sink 10" into the slush. Thank goodness everyone had waterproof boots. In the sled race, it looked like our sled took second place. The 1st place sled had mush dogs with snow shoes!

We participated in a compass course, first aid, fire building, cooking and ice rescue.

Back at camp we had great submarine sandwiches, soda and chips. When it was time to leave, none of the scouts were ready to go! The leaders had to threaten the boys to pack up and go, but they were having too much fun throwing snowballs and having fun. To the amazement of all, our troop was one of the last troops to leave Camp Kiesel.

Next year, maybe some of the scouts will build snow caves so they can be as warm as the leaders were!