The Cellar - View Single Post

glatt · 06-22-2015, 09:44 AM

It was good. Honestly a lot of fun, and I think the boys had fun with the challenging weather.

We taught them survival skills all day Saturday and one of the many things we taught them was heat exhaustion, and we had two adults succumb to heat exhaustion during the day on Saturday because the heat index got up around 100, and it was a chore humping in all the camping gear from the parking lot a half mile away. Also, the water faucet was a few hundred meters away, so getting water wasn't easy and in hindsight they probably didn't drink as much as they should have. So anyway, two of the adults had to go lie down. One got better. One still felt like shit and ended up going home, which was only a 15 minute drive away.

After the instruction and hands on teaching, the boys went off a few hundred feet deeper into the woods and started making shelters. The only useful thing (other than natural materials) they had was one standard draw string trash bag, and one survival "space" blanket.

Then we had dinner, and shortly after dinner, the storms started coming through in waves. They were basically the heaviest rainstorms I've experienced. Not much wind, which was good, but lots of violent lightning and extremely heavy rain. I had brought a blue utility tarp large enough to cover the two picnic tables, and had set it up well over the two tables. But the rain was coming down so hard that we had to continuously (like ever 2-3 seconds) push up on low spots in the tarp to dump a gallon or two of pooling water out of the low spots in it. After the first wave of a downpour, I put a pot out to measure the rainfall. It had straight edges, and we got about an inch and a half of rain in about 2 hours.

There was flash flooding. It was coming down faster than the dirt could absorb it, so the entire campsite became one small pond about an inch deep. Half of the tents were in 1-2 inches of standing water. I had my tent near a tree, where the ground was an inch or two higher than the surrounding area, so mine was not in a puddle. And my tarp mostly repelled the incredible onslaught of water. A little bit weeped inside the tent, but I could easily wipe it up with a microfiber towel. It was basically bone dry inside my tent. Others hadn't fared so well.
The boys were not in the shelters yet.

It was only about 9PM at this point, and the storms had completely flattened one of the shelters. The rest were still up, but the ground inside the shelters was soaked. At around 11PM, the waves of storms had gone by and it was time to send the boys out into their shelters. Out of 14 boys, 9 of them gave up on the idea of sleeping in their shelters and crawled into their wet tents instead. Five of the boys started off in their shelters, and three of them gave up after an hour or so of lying in the mud. Two of the boys made it through the night in their shelters and earned their wilderness survival merit badges during just about the worst possible conditions a person can expect to have.

I didn't get much sleep, because the adults took shifts through the night to check on the boys. I had the 2-4 shift, and from 11-2, I kept waking up and checking my watch because I didn't trust my alarm to wake me. According to my fitbit, I got 2h 11min of sleep before my shift, and 1h 33min of sleep after my shift and before it was time to get up. It was fun taking a shift though, because we were just hanging out by the fire chatting and occasionally going out to check that the two remaining boys were still alive.

All and all, I have to say that I LOVE Boy Scouts and the experiences it offers these boys. We gave them lighters on this trip. There were some 12 year old boys there who have never held a lighter in their life and didn't know how to use one. I encouraged them to keep playing with the lighters until they could get them to light (which is a lot harder than when I was a kid because they have been child proofed.) We told them to bring their knives. So they were playing with knives and lighters all day long, and being encouraged to do so. We sat out in the rain in a violent lightning storm, because there was no where else to go. The lighting is going to hit the tall trees, and probably not the scouts off the ground on a picnic table under a tarp. The boys were chit-chatting excitedly as the storm was pounding on us. After every crack and boom they would be like "Whoa! Did you hear that one!" They were in high spirits until the next morning when it was time to pack up all the wet gear and shlep it back to the cars. That's when they got grumpy, but they are grumpy during nice weather at that time.

I'm glad boys have a place where they can play in the mud, build shelters, play with knives and lighters, and filter scummy water from a canal to drink. All day long, all they hear is "no" and "be careful" and in Scouts we almost never say that stuff unless they are doing something really stupid.

06-22-2015, 09:44 AM	#931
glatt ™ Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Arlington, VA Posts: 27,717	It was good. Honestly a lot of fun, and I think the boys had fun with the challenging weather. We taught them survival skills all day Saturday and one of the many things we taught them was heat exhaustion, and we had two adults succumb to heat exhaustion during the day on Saturday because the heat index got up around 100, and it was a chore humping in all the camping gear from the parking lot a half mile away. Also, the water faucet was a few hundred meters away, so getting water wasn't easy and in hindsight they probably didn't drink as much as they should have. So anyway, two of the adults had to go lie down. One got better. One still felt like shit and ended up going home, which was only a 15 minute drive away. After the instruction and hands on teaching, the boys went off a few hundred feet deeper into the woods and started making shelters. The only useful thing (other than natural materials) they had was one standard draw string trash bag, and one survival "space" blanket. Then we had dinner, and shortly after dinner, the storms started coming through in waves. They were basically the heaviest rainstorms I've experienced. Not much wind, which was good, but lots of violent lightning and extremely heavy rain. I had brought a blue utility tarp large enough to cover the two picnic tables, and had set it up well over the two tables. But the rain was coming down so hard that we had to continuously (like ever 2-3 seconds) push up on low spots in the tarp to dump a gallon or two of pooling water out of the low spots in it. After the first wave of a downpour, I put a pot out to measure the rainfall. It had straight edges, and we got about an inch and a half of rain in about 2 hours. There was flash flooding. It was coming down faster than the dirt could absorb it, so the entire campsite became one small pond about an inch deep. Half of the tents were in 1-2 inches of standing water. I had my tent near a tree, where the ground was an inch or two higher than the surrounding area, so mine was not in a puddle. And my tarp mostly repelled the incredible onslaught of water. A little bit weeped inside the tent, but I could easily wipe it up with a microfiber towel. It was basically bone dry inside my tent. Others hadn't fared so well. The boys were not in the shelters yet. It was only about 9PM at this point, and the storms had completely flattened one of the shelters. The rest were still up, but the ground inside the shelters was soaked. At around 11PM, the waves of storms had gone by and it was time to send the boys out into their shelters. Out of 14 boys, 9 of them gave up on the idea of sleeping in their shelters and crawled into their wet tents instead. Five of the boys started off in their shelters, and three of them gave up after an hour or so of lying in the mud. Two of the boys made it through the night in their shelters and earned their wilderness survival merit badges during just about the worst possible conditions a person can expect to have. I didn't get much sleep, because the adults took shifts through the night to check on the boys. I had the 2-4 shift, and from 11-2, I kept waking up and checking my watch because I didn't trust my alarm to wake me. According to my fitbit, I got 2h 11min of sleep before my shift, and 1h 33min of sleep after my shift and before it was time to get up. It was fun taking a shift though, because we were just hanging out by the fire chatting and occasionally going out to check that the two remaining boys were still alive. All and all, I have to say that I LOVE Boy Scouts and the experiences it offers these boys. We gave them lighters on this trip. There were some 12 year old boys there who have never held a lighter in their life and didn't know how to use one. I encouraged them to keep playing with the lighters until they could get them to light (which is a lot harder than when I was a kid because they have been child proofed.) We told them to bring their knives. So they were playing with knives and lighters all day long, and being encouraged to do so. We sat out in the rain in a violent lightning storm, because there was no where else to go. The lighting is going to hit the tall trees, and probably not the scouts off the ground on a picnic table under a tarp. The boys were chit-chatting excitedly as the storm was pounding on us. After every crack and boom they would be like "Whoa! Did you hear that one!" They were in high spirits until the next morning when it was time to pack up all the wet gear and shlep it back to the cars. That's when they got grumpy, but they are grumpy during nice weather at that time. I'm glad boys have a place where they can play in the mud, build shelters, play with knives and lighters, and filter scummy water from a canal to drink. All day long, all they hear is "no" and "be careful" and in Scouts we almost never say that stuff unless they are doing something really stupid.