Wilderness Survival

On November 12th I ventured into the wilds of the Poconos for a weekend wilderness survival trip with the Boy Scouts. We arrived late Friday night, setup our tents in the dark and went to sleep. we woke up at around 6am, tore down the tents and set the boys about building their own shelters to spend the night in that night.

It was quite an experience to watch the boys team up and build their shelters and to see the incredible job they did. the shelters were all different shapes and sizes but all of them were built for a great night. It was a long day but we managed to get a hike in and to have Scoutmaster Heinz give a demonstration on utensil-less cooking in the campfire...and i mean IN the campfire. The potate and onion were buried in the hot coals while the steak was laid on top of a coal. Everything cooked in less that 20 minutes and we were all able to taste the food. it was fantastic.

in the evening we had a great campfire where we sat around and told jokes and teased each other. It was a great time. Trevor, one of the younger scouts, did get a little sick and we had to take him to a house to sleep in that night...one of the downsides of having no body fat. The scouts though went to the shelters they had built and turned in for the evening. the temperatures were well below freezing and I was very cold in my tent but most of the scouts reported being very comfortable. the ones that built the very large shelter were the exception though. when it comes to wilderness shelters bigger is not necessarily better.

Below are some pictures from the weekend.