JoeBob

If your are more interested in the experience of the BWCA than the Northern Tier patch, it's more affordable and enjoyable to use a private outfitter. Pro: Route flexibility. The only reservation is your Entry Point and pick-up. If you get into a poor campsite one night, move on. Bad weather? Tent up for a day. Leisure. If you're in a good spot, linger an extra day and enjoy the wilderness. Work on Scout skills, teach a merit badge. Unstructured time for campers to bash around an have fun. My approach to covering distance is to get out of civilization. Once you're in deep, logging miles so that you can brag about paddling X number of miles is missing the point. Fishing. Plentiful Largemouth, Smallmouth, and Northern Pike. Walleye, if you know how to catch them, makes the best eating fish. Campsite improvement opportunity. Improve the fire ring seating, clear the landing area, cut back the latrine trail. Blowdown trees were everywhere. Folding saw and tomahawk were in frequent use. Teach Paul Bunyan before you leave. Hammocks! They pack light, sleep well, and not allowed at Philmont. Group composition. Without YPT concerns, you can take anybody you want, as long as you stay with in the BWCA rules. My dog was an excellent bear alarm. Con: No patch. You have to plan more yourself. http://bwca.com/index.cfm? Bear in mind that some portages are more difficult due to the vertical content. Three miles of flat and smooth is easier than one mile of up and down, especially if it's steep and rocky. Go prepared for the bugs. Avoid black fly season. Mosquitoes after dark can be brutal on the way to the latrine. Avoid marshy campsites. Our best was an exposed point on Disappointment where the breeze kept us bug-free for 2 days.

Retaining existing volunteers would be an easier approach. I left because of the piles of paperwork and redundant time wasting training. Those of you who have been around long enough know. Y'all keep after it. I admire your patience.

Sale still pending. BassPro has lowered the offer. Gander Mountain has declared bankruptcy. It's not competition with each other, it's online shopping. If you like to handle your gear before donating your cash, support your local store.

If the river is rising towards the recommended max, stay away. If the river is high and into the strainers (standing timber, downed logs creating obstacles in the current) it's very dangerous. If this is a flowage that floods regularly (not as much debris), and is on the way down, it shouldn't be a problem. Some rapids that are a challenge at regular levels may be washed out and easier at high levels; but some twists in the channel that are usually calm at low levels, may become swirls, hydraulics,or pillows at a higher level.

Where's the fun in that? BTW: Beavah won.

Tahawk - Nice! Even pulled me out of the Lurkers' Forum. I didn't want to hijack the thread into another anti-WouldBadger discussion. But the very fact that they waive any training or experience requirement and try to suck in ANY DAMN BODY THAT THEY CAN GET does emphasize that WB is about either indoctrination or money. If WB was once 'the pinnacle of Scout training', it ain't no more. Would you like fries with those beads?

Training requirements for WouldBadger elevate the perceived prestige of the course. Beads are your admission into the 'Old Boys' club, so being a Wouldbadger is helpful if you want other scouters to talk to you as an equal.

"Two Boy Scout camp employees said they were fired last month after trying to rescue an injured bald eagle in Virginia." http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/13/two-boy-scout-camp-employees-fired-after-helping-injured-bald-eagle.html Read the comments.

I'm with Beavah. Y'all are wearing a neckerchief, right? Do the rules tell you specifically how (or where) you have to wear it?

SSF: Would you mind sharing what you think these reasons are? What cinched it for me was the SM refusing to sign the final MB Blue Card. There must be a hidden agenda.

Is the an official BSA policy on boys recruiting boys? Seems like most of this discussion is about Adults recruiting boys...

I think you're working with a brush fire scenario, where the fuel is consumed quickly and the fire moves on or starves. I'm describing a mature timber burn, where the blaze can take hours to die down and the smoke days.

Hey Stosh, I dinged your answer. Your idea might work if you have a leisurely moving fire, in a dependable wind, with navigable terrain in the direction that you want to travel. If you're waiting downwind of an existing fire for a freshly burnt area to cool off enough for you to move into it, the smoke, cinders, and heat might ignite you. In a wildfire situation, if you can't escape the flames on good trail moving across the direction of travel, the article's approach to surviving being burnt over is valid. The basic idea is to get enough dirt and sand on top of you to insulate you from the heat, to not catch fire itself, and to provide enough porous surface area for you to breathe through and somewhat filter the smoke. I'd say that a wool blanket with 5 or 6 inches of loose non-flammable cover would be ideal. A plastic tarp, not so much. The idea is to cover your buddies, and somehow get the last man underground. Sheltering in a ditch or crevasse provides some protection from falling trees and limbs. Being low helps keep you cool as most heat rises and the thermal mass of the earth will stay cooler, but you're still gonna get some radiant.

Kansas. Hmmm. Hills will be a problem; different muscles, different blisters, different speeds. Pop quiz: Is it easier to hike uphill or downhill?

Watershoes = Tevas http://www.teva.com/men-sandals/original-sandal/1004004.html?dwvar_1004004_color=BLK#start=3&cgid=men-sandals Get a size larger than you would normally wear to protect your toes from impact with underwater rocks. They're not BSA approved; but they are the best thing to wear in the water. (Jungle boots make my feet rot.)

Should I have said 'testicles'?

Let me be less subtle: No balls in Scouting.

She had her little brother go in with her to buy it. He bird-dogged me: "Dad, you gotta go look in M-----'s trash!"

Bang on!

Stosh, you Blankity Blank, I almost sent you a login and password for the Lurkers forum, where I'm hanging out. A side note that should on no way be considered a contribution: My 16 year old Catholic school daughter got me good by leaving a pregnancy test in her trash...

From the link: "No one in a Scouting setting has been seriously injured in one of these to date, and we prefer to be proactive and cautious in our approach to this activity. Hence a multidiscipline task force comprised of program, marketing, development, legal, risk management, and health and safety professionals and volunteers has evaluated the risks of their use, reviewed their accident history, as well as the positions of various state and federal agencies on their use. This task force has come to the conclusion that the orbs (of any size) do not have a part in either the program or as an activity of the Boy Scouts of America or its affiliates." These people have to be actually trying to ruin Scouting. Make what you will from the colored text sequences.

4- It's a job where it's okay to be fat. Skinny cooks make people nervous about their cooking!

Sadly, the OA has out-lived its purpose. There are so few boys that would qualify (or even want) to be 'Honor Campers', that the troops desperately need to keep them in the troops for their experience. And wearing loin clothes and dancing around in the firelight is just so politically incorrect. Probably a YPT violation.

Do not prepare a batch of PowerPoints and expect to have your library appreciated. The new guys will be bored, and the old guy will go home early. Come up with games/challenges that get your participants involved. Knot Races: 6 folks to a team. A list of 6 knots. (Use the knots from T21) One piece of rope. Each person uses EDGE to teach the person next to them a knot from the list until all knots have been tied. Have the least experienced pick first so that they get to teach the simple knots. Scout Handbooks allowed. Pioneering Challenge: Move a bucket 1/4 full of water that is 10 feet from the sidewalk to the sidewalk without any of your team leaving the sidewalk. Divide into groups for challenge. (6 to 8 per team is good) Materials: misc posts and staves 4 to 6 feet long, assorted ropes and cords. Teams have to select a leader, make a plan and execute it. Include the pro-scouters, so that they learn to work with the volunteers. (Our winning team had 2 guys build a tripod with a rope loop hanging that served as a fulcrum a few feet onto the grass. 2 guys lashed 3 sticks together to make a 10 foot pole. The least experienced fellow tied a knot around the end to keep the bucket handle from slipping off. Passed the 10 foot pole through the loop, speared the bucket handle, pushed down on our end and rotated the bucket onto the sidewalk. Fun!)

You may want to research 'The Prisoner's Dilemma', aka 'The Game of Life', before heading up. WB uses it to evoke an emotional commitment, but it sometimes goes very wrong.