Brrrrr!!!!

I had the great privelege of going camping with the scouts this weekend. I'm an assistant scoutmaster and the YM president (who stayed warm at home (he was sick)) placed me in charge. The scouts met with several other leaders just as I was getting out of work in a town about 30 minutes away from me (all of this within our large ward boundaries), so they went to the campsite without me and I picked my way out there in my little prism on a one lane road that has no winter maintenance.

When I arrived the scouts were putting up a tarp shelter. No fire had been started, it was snowing, and it was getting dark quickly. Groan. I helped finish setting up the shelter and we turned our attention to the fire. That's when I learned one reason why I should not meet everyone at the campsite. Nobody brought dry firewood (one leader supposedly had dry wood that he was bringing). He brought dry kindling, but we had to start a fire with snow and ice covered wood from the ground. It took a good two hours to get a decent fire going. (It worked a lot better in the morning).

During this time, the boys realized that nobody brought tents (reason two for never letting the scouts arrive at the campsite without me). I thought it would be a great lesson for them to figure out their own shelter for the night. Fortunately they have a scoutmaster with charity who left for home (he can't camp away from home for health reasons) and drove back to the campsite with tents. The scouts quickly put their tents up on the slope of a hill right at the edge of our tarp shelter (remember it's still snowing). I put up my little 3/4 man tent a little away from the boys. The other two adult leaders slept in their vehicles.

I could not sleep. I haven't camped in the snow for a very long time. I soon remembered that having slightly wet clothes is not good for winter camping. My ski hat was wet and the neck of my shirt were wet. I was cold!!! I changed my clothes, but unfortunately my sleeping bag was probably rated for cold weather 20 years ago when it was new. It didn't keep me very warm. I also should have had another inch of foam underneath me. Remember that 3/4 man tent I was in, I couldn't stretch my legs straight. My knees were sore.

After starting to drift off to sleep I heard a WHOOSH sound that brought me back awake. Our tarp shelter finally collapsed under the snow. I had to check on the boys to make sure it hadn't fallen on them (since they were at the edge of the shelter). It fell the other way. I was satisfied. It was 2:45 am.

At 6:30 I gave up and got dressed and went and sat in my car while the layers of ice melted off of my body and my core body temperature returned to a level that supports biological processes. The morning was quite warm. The boys had drifted down their slope like a glacier. They managed to snap one of the tent poles that was sucked underneath the biggest young man. We had about four inches of new snow. It was great packing snow and we ended up having a snowball fight. We left as it started snowing. About a mile away from my exit off the freeway I was driving in a white out. I was awfully glad to finally get home.

The next day in church one of the young men reportedly said it was one of the best campouts he has ever been on. He's getting his Eagle Scout award in a couple weeks. He leaves on his mission this fall. Oddly it wasn't his first campout. I don't know what is wrong with him, but at least the boys had fun.