MattR

That guy is inspiring. I have a bunch of scrap ceder that I've saved for no other reason than someone said it would make good slides. Maybe I'll go try one.

If you have extra sleeping bags you can layer those as well. One problem with a zipped up bag when I sleep on my side is I get compression at my shoulder, so it gets cold. I have a second bag that I unzip and use as a blanket over the first. I have a zero degree inner bag that's really only good down to about 10 for me, and then either my summer bag (good to 30) or a 10 degree bag. I did fine at -20 with that and everything else mentioned. BTW, what to wear inside the bag is another topic. If you wear too much then the bag doesn't evenly heat, and you can get cold feet. So I just wear long undies and socks. I've seen scouts wear their snow pants in their sleeping bags and they both sweat and get cold feet. Another thing is what to do with water jugs to keep them from freezing. We bury our water jugs in snow, all together. Snow is a great insulator and very little ice forms in the jugs. One last point is that all sorts of miserable weather during the day can be made up for by a cozy night. Part of being comfortable is attitude and feeling the heat can make up for wind and snow dumping on the outside of your tent. A 12 yo scout gets a lot of street cred after doing all this and then telling their non scout friends. That's what really warms me up.

Good question! Sleeping bags are worthless where you smash them down. That and the fact that the ground is cold means you'll freeze if you don't have insulation directly under you. So, if you're on an uninsulated blowup mattress you will have very miserable night. Same goes for a cot. You need insulation underneath. Not sure you'll need it but I put an army surplus wool blanket on the floor of my tent. Also, I wear a hat to bed. If it gets real cold I make sure my neck is covered as well but that's just me. The sleeping bags that tie up close around my face don't quite work. I move around too much.

I'll add to @DuctTape. More thin insulation layers are better than one thick one. The point is to stay dry and just warm enough. You don't want to sweat, otherwise you'll get wet. While synthetics do much better than cotton when wet they don't do as well as dry. The goal is to be "comfortably cool." You can lose a lot of heat from your head, neck, hands and feet as well as wrists and ankles. So, don't forget hats, mittens, boots and reasonable socks. (And extra socks and mittens for those that get them soaked playing and watch out for snow in your boots.) I also have long mittens, neckies, and gators but I get cold easily. Don't forget to drink and eat. It's harder to stay warm if you're dehydrated or hungry. Finally, stay away from the fire unless you're going to stay for a while. It doesn't make sense but your body will crank up its metabolism to generate more heat. If you stand by the fire for a few minutes to warm up then you'll slow your metabolism and feel really cold once you walk away from it. It seems to take a long time to get it going again. The latest thing I've learned is that since I'm now over 60 my metabolism has really slowed. Cold weather camping is harder. Have fun for me.

1922, according to https://www.troop97.net/bsahist4.htm

Sorry, but I'm still stuck on the million dollar building. I went to the county records to see how much our council office is worth because it is not anywhere close to a million dollars. It is a very old house that had some interior walls moved around. Anyway, it's worth roughly $1000. Five years ago it was about $2000. Sounds more like the principle on a loan but this is the county property records. Using the gis tool I found it's wedged into a corner of a city park that's worth over $12M. I suspect it used to be the caretakers house for the park. Anyway, I still don't understand the need for a big scout office. More importantly, I don't think the size of the office nor the size of the council is nearly as important as the people that are hired and their motivation. Hire good people, give them the motivation to make a quality program (as opposed to getting gold epaulets) and let them figure out what's needed.

Our camps are mostly located in rather desolate areas. No cell service or internet at most. Also, most scouts live closer to scout offices than camps.

Without getting too deep into the theology, giving them the ideas might be counter productive in the long run. Giving them the task is like giving a poor man a fish. It would be better to teach them how to fish. Rather, help the scouts discover their own ideas. From their viewpoint, who would really appreciate some help? With anything. If a scout knows someone that really hates all the trash on the ground then picking it up is great. Same goes for teachers and school supplies, parents and toys, elderly and snow/ice/newspapers. Are their other children that could use some help with stuff, school work, learning to hit a baseball, play jacks or just get invited over to play. People have needs and where they can't fulfill them on their own is where there's an opportunity to be kind.

@fred8033 , don't airplane companies need to report failures? While it would certainly be uncomfortable at first it would help everyone start talking about it. And that would do a lot to reduce the trauma.

I moved the sub thread about YP to BTW, @Muttsy, I thought you said you weren't coming back unless we banished skeptic. Anyway, welcome back.

Locked until I split off the YP sub rule thread

I was thinking about the kerfuffle between @skepticand @Muttsyand how it's just the same arguments. It seems nobody really sees a simple answer so some say chuck everything and others say it's really not that bad. So emotion takes over from solving problems. (BTW, there will be no banishing of forum members.) I thought of one thing that really could both help reduce CSA and also improve average unit quality, which I admittedly harp on. The key to whether a unit is providing a good program is really a matter of trusting the leadership. Nothing brilliant there but trust is an age old problem, not to mention the first point of the scout law. Look at what it means to be true in the ancient view of that idea and it takes a very long time to be true or to trust someone. Now, consider what it takes to become a SM. Fill out some paperwork, do a background check that is questionable, find some references that will be ignored. Now you can take kids camping. I used to hear about all of the problems the district commissioner had with other units and I didn't have any of those problems because I took the responsibility very seriously. My troop knew me for 3 years before becoming the SM. When we changed COs the only holdup was in developing trust, it took time before they were comfortable with me. For most other units, especially now, it's not years of getting to know someone and watching how they interact with children, it can be days. The issue is what is the minimum to develop that trust of the leadership? In hindsight, what I went through should be a minimum, rather than exceptional. The character references should be a lot more than random people circling options one through five. Every other scouting organization outside the US has groups of units, one for each age range. That might help create more opportunity to watch a potential leader interact with scouts and develop trust. The more people watching the fewer chances for failure.

We split the group in two and each half did something like 4 days kayaking while the other went hiking. Then we swapped.. You could go kayaking twice! Or, maybe you can teach this guy to be comfortable in the water. It could be an incredible adventure for him.

Sea kayaking. We rented equipment and had a guide (ocean currents and tankers are not to be trifled with) but the experience was incredible for us land locked folk.

Without ranks she could use the merit badges as intended, a way for young people to learn about some interesting fields. If she's at all interested in leadership then turning some of those merit badges into a program for your unit might be a way to create some interaction between her and her friends. Finally, ask about eventually having patrol meetings in her rehab facility. Scouts is about having fun with friends.

This is a people problem compounded by bad communication that is easily solved. Maybe the council exec and the chief of police should go have a cup of coffee together and get to know each other.

Just a couple of observations with pioneering: Use rope made from natural fiber rather than nylon, poly, etc. It just sticks better when you have to pull the lashing tight. A good lashing is tight. Pull it tight often while you make the lashing. You know it's really tight when you can hear the rope creak. Start off by learning just the lashings you need. In the above drawing only a tripod and square lashing are needed (along with a clove hitch and any knots to hold up the pot). So just focus on that. There are lots of details about where to put the various parts of the lashing and how to go from, say, wraps to fraps, but as a simple rule, just keep everything close together. That will help the lashing stay tight, the poles standing and the scouts smiling. After their first success they, and you, can start looking into finer details and more lashings.

Before this sub thread on jarts and dodge ball goes off into the bad place, let's end it and get back on topic.

What practical power does she have to "encourage" them?

Good for the scout. I've seen people taking selfies with full grown bull elks in rutting season. "Well punk, do you feel lucky?"

Or never let the adult side of things hold a scout back from having fun - with the safety caveat.

We did the Wind River Range in Wyoming. That was where the bugs were but it was stunning. My understanding is that the start of August would be fine there but don't quote me on that. We tried to do a 50 mile loop in about 6 days and we were just beating ourselves up. My GPS said we were doing something like 500' vertical for every mile horizontal. So about a mile vertical every day. We finally decided to cut a corner off of our loop and make it 38 miles or something. The scouts started smiling. Now, this was all because I, the old man in the crowd, pulled a muscle in my knee because I wasn't drinking enough. (First of all, who has ever pulled a muscle in their knee? Second, do as I say, not as I do. Finally, they did start smiling after I hurt myself, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.) Anyway, Wyoming might be quicker to get to from DIA but there are more towns and fun things to see in Southern Colorado. We have done backpacking trips that are 5 days or so and then we add on something fun like river rafting. It's a nice mix of pushing yourself and then just having fun. We did another trip in the Frying Pan wilderness somewhat close to Aspen and then spent a couple of days in Glenwood Springs. The only problem we had was we wanted a loop and couldn't find one so we bushwacked over a pass. Not exactly the safest thing with all the loose rock but that was just 2 hours out of the whole trip. The most incredible part of that trip was waking up at 2am to pee and seeing the stars. I've never seen clouds of stars before. It was so dark at night and there was no moon. I just stood there and stared up until I froze and jumped back in my tent. I should have just dropped my tent but for some reason we were expecting rain. Thanks for the memories!

There are a lot of nice backpacking trails in Colorado. So much that I've never been to Philmont. Philmont isn't about beauty, so I understand why scouts would like it. To answer your question, no, I haven't taken scouts to the San Juans. So you can get better specific trail information from others. However, in other HA trips I've taken scouts in Colorado and Wyoming, the things I'd be aware of is that 1) June in the high country is not summer, it's late winter/early spring and I've had 10 foot snow drifts to deal with over July 4th. Given the run off, trails can be very wet and muddy. 2) The biggest mistake we ever made was to go backpacking about 2 weeks after everything thawed out. Talk about mosquitoes. A few of the scouts also did the boundary waters before our trip and they said the mosquitoes in Southern Wyoming were much worse. Two weeks later and they would have mostly been gone. 3) Altitude sickness is real and random. Scouts that are carrying extra body weight can really suffer going up those hills when they have half the oxygen they're used to. Dehydration and lightning. 4) All that bad stuff said, the views are incredible. The scouts may not respond like the adults but they will remember. Years later I've talked to a few and they now have an appreciation of nature. Something stuck with them, even if part of it was playing cards in their tents while waiting out rain or bugs.

Well, when salary has to be made every 2 weeks and camp can sit for 9 months, it's easy to see why this happens. I'm sure it's easy to get addicted to donations. From '45 to the late 60's I'm sure they got all they asked for. But that gravy train is long gone. And yet the culture of rewards is still based on donations. In the meantime, there are fewer volunteers with less outdoor knowledge that need more help in order to deliver a better program. That's a lot of change needed. As implied above, the real challenge is getting leadership to see that the leadership isn't working. Who wants to admit that their leadership is dragging the organization down? ... that their way of doing things hasn't changed much for the better in a very long time? While I've been fine with the membership changes I've never really thought they were going to make a big change in numbers. The BSA leadership was absolutely convinced the changes would solve all their problems. I was hopeful when Mosby was made head honcho but it's been crickets since then. I'm not sure there is anyone that understands all the issues and has the authority to change things. At least not yet. My guess is that there are a few on the national board that know all about these issues but until the rest of the leadership is willing to listen it's just wishful thinking.

Or call it an official church youth group activity? Leave the uniforms and handbooks at home, have fun, play in the outdoors. If the church is up for accepting the responsibility then it's all good. If not, it's an opportunity to fix something that has been broken for quite some time.