Snowshoeing with the Boy Scouts

Since I work on most Fridays, I only go camping with my troop about every other month. On the off months I try to take them on a weekend adventure, and this month's activity was snowshoeing! Saturday morning we met at the church and carpooled to the trailhead of Green Pond, near Snowbasin Resort. After fitting everyone's snowshoes and ensuring everyone had the gear they needed, we headed down the trail. As we got quite a bit of snow overnight and it was still snowing, we were breaking trail, so it was good for each boy to experience leading the troop. At our turning around point we discussed some avalanche safety and winter survival techniques.

One of the boys didn't let us know he was going to show up, so we were short a pair of shoes. It worked out though -- I let him use mine and I brought up the rear after the trail was packed down enough for my boots. As you can see, whenever I got off the trail I post-holed pretty deep! 

One of the leaders and boys had to return early, so it wasn't a very long hike, but I think it was just perfect for some of the boys who were not used to tromping around in the fresh powder.

The week before our snowshoeing trip, we organized a community service project for which Ogden Recreation Outlet offered free rentals for the boys and leaders who participated. I was unable to attend, but our troop performed some trail clean-up and maintenance for the Ogden Nature Center. I felt pretty proud, as these have been the first outings that I've organized and successfully pulled off! Many of the boys enjoyed themselves and said they'd do it again.

Klondike Derby

This week our troop put the finishing touches on our race sled and we headed out to East Canyon State Park for our annual Klondike Derby winter campout!

The assembly crew

That night we chowed down on hobo dinners and dutch-oven peach cobbler. The other leader and I were only woken up once from a boy who was too cold, and after getting him up and moving he slept the rest of the night just fine. In the morning before the sun was up over the mountain we enjoyed a balmy 14 degree morning before the sled races! Unfortunately, one of our boys fell while pulling our sled and we didn't make it very far in the preliminaries. We might've only had four boys that were able to come, but we sure had a good time together!

The racers

Back home with all extremities and digits intact