MattR

Welcome to the forum, @NJScout1980

As for footwear, find an outdoor shop with lots and lots of options. Feet are all different and so are shoes. What fits me might not fit you. If they only have a few options in your size then look elsewhere. The best store in my town is a local shop with knowledgeable people that will just start bringing out piles of boxes.

Also, make sure they have a ramp to stand on to make sure your feet don't slide forward and mash your toes. Long hikes down hills can result in a lot of misery, dead toenails, etc. That's the main reason I went back to boots when hiking steep grades.

Plan on replacing the footbeds. Most shoe/boot companies put in fairly worthless ones. Good ones can provide support for your arches. Oh, and bring in your old footbeds. The guy in the store took one look at mine and told me my boots were too small.

That's amazingly short sighted. I can see how the BSA wants to use fun pictures for advertising but some parents don't want their kids' photos public because they're afraid an ex might find their kid and kidnap them. I didn't make that up, we had to deal with exactly that situation once.

I take photos for my school district and they have the final say on what photos can be published. There are parents that don't want public photos of their kids. It's fortunately very few.

That would be much prettier than Philmont.

There is a scout camp 8 miles from Yellowstone- Camp Buffalo Bill (campbuffalobill.com) that has a program that uses Yellowstone. I'm not sure but maybe you could just use their camp as a campsite for day hikes. It wouldn't be free but it would be nicer than the tent camping in Yellowstone.

While wind river might not have permit requirements they might have a "number of heartbeats" (so people and pack animals) requirements for group size. 

1 hour ago, johnsch322 said:

I guess you are right it just a part of society at large let us look at the good to negate the bad.  I mean 100's of thousands of abused boys, no big deal.

And remember that Dr Joseph Mengele guy his experiments on living humans saved other lives and advanced medical science.  Maybe him and those he was associated with are not so bad if you take a look at the bigger picture.

 

It's time to stop, both of you.

On 2/2/2022 at 9:03 AM, RememberSchiff said:

YES. Whittlin Jim's column.

Here's a scouter who is keeping the faith.

https://www.channelingwhittlinjim.com/

 

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.

1 hour ago, GiraffeCamp said:

Do you think ground insulation or cot insulation is more important if I'm sleeping on a tall cot? I assumed the latter, treating it kinda like a hammock. 

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.

31 minutes ago, rayezell_2000 said:

What is the date of the introduction of the neckerchief as a part of the uniform?

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

16 hours ago, vol_scouter said:

You are so correct.  Not to mention that camps do not have office buildings so you are going to make a cash strapped council build office buildings and take on another million or more dollar debt. 

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.

3 hours ago, fred8033 said:

I'm always confused why scout offices are not located at the camps

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.

13 hours ago, FireStone said:

Any ideas or suggestions for this? I've got a bunch of scouts that need to complete this requirement and not a whole lot of ideas to give them.

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.

10 hours ago, 5thGenTexan said:

One of our parents in a police officer and is involved in their Explorer program.  Some new Council guy came in and expressed his interest in auditing them.  It was explained several times they were part of the city govt and no one is going to get access to the account info for the Explorer Unit.  Our parent went to the Police Chief and explained what happened.  Police Chief's directive was to continue the program for this year, but they need to figure out something else next year because they will NOT be returning to the Explorer program.

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?

19 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Our SM looked for the scout who claimed he was going to punch the bear and saw him running full speed back to his bed. 

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