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Whats The Coldest Or Most Snow Your Troop Has Ever Encountered?


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I see one problem in winter camping in general, it gets dark too fast. Usually by around 6 pm. You can do some campfire things but cold and dark usually isnt fun and you 2-3 hours until everyones ready for bed.

My scouts play many variations of flashlight tag, german spotlight, etc.  Dark snowy woods are a blast!!

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When i was a scout... this would have been early 1980's in eastern NC.... our troop was camping and it came a freezing rain in the night.  Woke up to everything in a nice thick clear ice layer.... E

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'bout 10 inches of snow -10F no worries. We had a nearby farm we were welcome to call on if needed. Nice valley out of the wind. Perfect weekend. Tents. We did have one boy who needed "thawed out" in the SM's truck. But he perked up right quick and was good for the rest of the weekend.

 

Lowest windchill? Don't know. The weather station on Dolly Sods broke that morning clocking 80mph as a front stalled over the Chesapeak. But that snow was being blown in our faces was probably hurtling across that plateau at 100mph. (Think sand-blasting ice-cold and you get the feeling.)

 

Since then, my line: "Mr. SPL, what be the weather today?"

"<Sun, Rain, Snow> with winds under fifty, Sir."

"Aye, then it's a good day!"

 

Helpful hint: Laurel thickets make good wind breaks. Just remember they often cluster near cliffs!

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I see one problem in winter camping in general, it gets dark too fast. Usually by around 6 pm. You can do some campfire things but cold and dark usually isnt fun and you 2-3 hours until everyones ready for bed.

Bro, winter night hikes are the best! I forgot to mention the one in 3 feet of snow because it was with my crew on a ski weekend and they were in cabins. But all the video games and pool tables and pizza and social time were getting boring, so we set out for a tour of the grounds. It's awesome when a place where you've summer camped turns into a completely different world!

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I live in Texas, what is this snow thing you speak of?

You know that once a year when the news shows y'all driving y'all's pickups into each other for no apparent reason, snow (and it's close cousin ice) is the actual reason.

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I live in Texas, what is this snow thing you speak of?

I live in California and I have no idea what they are talking about either.

 

Wait, there is the white, cold, fluffy stuff that you can drive too and visit in the wintertime. I wonder if that is what they are talking about? ;)

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The most snow was 6 inches overnight on my very first camp out as a boy scout. It had not been forecasted and it was 80 degrees the day before. We were not prepared to say the least. I remember the SM walking through camp at sunup telling everyone to pack up and don't eat the yellow snow.

 

I can't say I remember our coldest campout, we have had several below zero. While we don't a lot of snow in Oklahoma, it does get cold now and then. 

 

Barry

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The most snow was 6 inches overnight on my very first camp out as a boy scout. It had not been forecasted and it was 80 degrees the day before. We were not prepared to say the least. I remember the SM walking through camp at sunup telling everyone to pack up and don't eat the yellow snow.

 

I can't say I remember our coldest campout, we have had several below zero. While we don't a lot of snow in Oklahoma, it does get cold now and then. 

 

Barry

Was your SM Frank Zappa?

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I live in California and I have no idea what they are talking about either.

 

Wait, there is the white, cold, fluffy stuff that you can drive too and visit in the wintertime. I wonder if that is what they are talking about? ;)

 

Yeah, right, I lived in San Diego and there's snow in San Diego County.  I took a group of kids up into the mountains and at 6000' the bus driver told us we would have to turn back because he didn't know how to put the chains on.  Needless to say, good old Midwest winters teach us many things.  It was quite a chore getting them on the duelies, but we got to our destination and got in 3 days of sledding.  So if you S. Calif. boys want snow there's plenty of it out there.

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I was a cub scout in Iowa, but as an older boy and adult have mostly been in the South.... but I have visited the snow plenty, skiiing and other stuff.

 

I would love to have had the chance to winter camp as a scout (beyond my freezing rain story I told earlier...)

I think it would be  great to dig a snow cave to sleep in.

I remember fondly that quite that you get in the woods during a snow.

I think it would be a great experience.

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This topic needs to be changed to worst weather. Living in Oklahoma, we have a lot of server thunderstorms that make the experience as challenging as snow. One of our patrols on a patrol campout had to break camp quickly because the weather radio said they were in the path of a tornado. They breaking camp in 45 mph winds was challenging, but fun. The tornado did hit the area an hour later.

 

I used to love watching a lightning storm and listen to the thunder, until I became responsible for dozens of other parents' kids. It's seemed to follows us everywhere from the back country Rockys in New Mexico and Colorado to the Northern Tier.

 

Yep, snow and below freezing weather was a breeze compared to server thunder storms, at least for me. 

 

Barry

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-17 f

Two feet of fluff

 

BUTANE does not work below 32 f.  Propane heats some houses in this area throughout the Winter.

 

Waterproof-breathable stops working at some point when the little breathing holes freeze shut. Then you are wearing a plastic bag,  NG!  

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This topic needs to be changed to worst weather.

@@Eagledad, the topic is about the BEST weather!

 

It's just every now and then winds kick up to make us feel that hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling that you Okies seem to know so well. ;)

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A couple of cautionary tales...

 

Back as a teenager I was partof a group of scouts on a 3 day, 2 night trek in Scotland. The weather was quite mild at the start, well above freezing around 12C and I had quite flexible boots on. On the second day I managed to get my boots soaking wet through crossing a river. When we got in our tents that night our leader warned us that the weather was due to turn over night, it would drop well below freezing and we should expect it to be snowing by the morning.

 

Idiot here didn't think much of this and left my soaking wet boots in the porch area of my tent.

 

We woke up the next day to the expected freezing conditions, horizontal snow and yes, my nice flexible boots were now frozen absolutely rigid. Having to answer the call of nature all over your feet in order to be able move them is not a lot of fun.

 

January 2010 and another lesson learned..... winter camp is annual mini jamboree affair held every year at Gilwell Park. That year we arrived with 6 inches of snow on the ground and not expected to get above freezing all weekend. It was only when we arrived that we realised that all our lanterns ran off butane (be prepared and all that jazz eh?). Simple solution though was our stoves ran of propane, so we heated water and stood the lanterns in bowls of hot water to get them working.

 

However..... one particularly dopy kid (bless him) made the suggestion, in all seriousness, that we just hold a lighter underneath the gas cartridges to see if that thawed them out..... He was invited to go and try it but that he might like to walk a good half a mile from the rest of us first.....

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