Wilson Mountain Hike

Wilson Mountain was named after a hunter, who emptied his rifle into a grizzley bear. That didn't stop the bear from mauling him to death before it died.

This trail was 11 miles, round trip. We ascended to 7000 feet elevation, including a 2400 foot elevation gain. We saw plenty of juniper, manzanita, and cactus. The view was spectacular. We saw all of Sedona, Steamboat Rock, and Secret Mountain Wilderness Area. This was the hardest hike we've accomplished as a troop. The boys had high spirits and hiked very fast. We were very proud of them!

Afterwards, we went for ice cream and took Ike's Jeep on Broken Arrow.

Here are the pics:

AWESOME TIME AT THE CRACK!

All the scouts had a fantastic time on the Wet Beaver Creek hike. They stopped at the crack and went cliff diving. Afterwards, we all went to all-you-can-eat pizza that was really great.

Here are the photos:

August Combined Activity - Thumb Butte Hike

The Deacons Quorum took the rest of the Young Men/Young Women's program up to the top of Thumb Butte. There they gave a presentation about how high places give us a heavenly perspective, require lots of effort and preperation, and resemble the temple mounts. They also cited all of the biblical stories about when prophets went to high places to speak with the Lord.

The week before this hike, they did a preperatory hike to verify things like hike length and physical effort. The boys should be applauded for all of their time, effort, and energy.

Click the below photo for more pictures:

From 08ThumbButteHike

Shotgun and Rifle Merit Badges

The boys spent the better part of July participating in safety and instruction classes for the Riflery and Shotgun Merit Badges. On August 1st, they finally got to shoot to qualify. Every boy qualified on a rifle. Satchel, Tanner, and Alex qualified on the shotgun.

Special recognition goes to Satchel Clifford, who was the best shot of the day. Recognition also goes to Tanner who was the safest scout of the day and never had to be reminded about the safety rules. All the scouts had a great time and learned a lot.

At the end of qualifying, the scouts shot shaving cream cans and watched them explode. Brother Stillson then showed them what the impact of a shotgun has on a watermelon as a special safety demonstration.

Troop 95 heartily thanks Dan Malachowski. He created targets, trained youth, was a calming influence when safety violations occurred, and an all around great scouting volunteer.

We also thank all of the people who donated and contributed shotgun shells, clay pigeons, and .22 ammo for our shoot. It cost the troop a fraction of what it would otherwise cost because of the generosity of so many people.

Please click below for more photos:

Cookstove Hike

On Friday, we hiked up the Harding Springs trail in Sedona. We camped on top of the ridge and then hiked down the Cookstove Trail.

Harding Spring is named for O.P. Harding, a pioneer. He came to Flagstaff in 1884 and worked in construction. In 1889 he moved to Oak Creek, homesteaded, and planted hundreds of fruit trees. He brought his fruit to Flagstaff using this trail. In 1910 the Flagstaff newspaper reported that Harding, age 76, had walked from Oak Creek to Flagstaff. At his death in 1915, it was learned that he had been a distinguished Union General in the Civil War, a face he kept hidden during his life in Arizona.

We saw lots of scat from black bears during our hike, but never saw a bear. After our hike, the boys played in Oak Creek for several hours. Everyone had a fantastic time.

Court of Honor

This is Glen's voice:

The CoH went very well. We started off with Gary Taylor from the VFW talking about what the flag meant to him as a combat veteran and then he gave a little history on what happened to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Then we retired the flags, about 15 of them, and that went off without a htich. I had Cameron come and I gave him a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster badge and Stacy and I told some good stories about him from Scout Camp. We presented the "Big G Gold" award and had Wes come up and point out that his name was on the ribbon since he was the SPL, then I had him tie the ribbon onto our Troop flag. After that we gave out a lot of merit badges and ranks! Dawn Craner gave Annie and Christina (and Jessica, in spirit) a dozen roses for being the wives of Scouting men and putting up with us being gone with our Scouts a lot. All of the boys now have merit badge sashes, which they paid for, and all of the parents are on board with the shooting merit badges and the fact that their boy needs to earn $35 for ammo. Alex is set on ammo and is still going to buy a box of clays; everyone else will probably just pay $35. I'm working on getting some more donations for shotgun ammo and clays but so far we at least have the 2k of .22.

We are gonna go kayaking again for sure!

Scout Camp at Geronimo 2009

We had a fantastic time at scout camp this year. Our boys were widely believed to be the best troop in camp. We had numerous comments from numerous leaders about how the scouts held themselves and behaved. They are confident, hard-working young men who had a terrific time at camp this year. All of our boys earned all of the merit badges they applied for. Scout camp was a fantastic success. The highlight for Brother Ellis was doing the best service project we've ever done at camp. Please read the captions of the photos for more info:

Service Project at the Tisdales

Our scouts went to Sister Tisdales house and removed a bunch of painting supplies and pulled weeds. Sister Tisdale was very grateful and fed the boy's donuts. Click below for the pics:

Stake Basketball Tourny

Our boys advanced to the second round of the Stake Young Men's Basketball Tournement. We only had two boys who were older than Deacon age, so we're quite proud of how they did. Congratz to our boys! Click below for the pics:

Kayaking!

We spent the night on Lake Pleasant. In the morning, we volunteered at a Kayak Symposium. Everyone had a great time. For more details, look at the captions of the pics.

Click below for more photos:

March Temple Trip

The youth arrived at the Prescott Valley building at 9am. The young women had a 12:30pm session, while the young men's session was at 1:30pm. Afterwards, we all went to CiCi's pizza. Everyone had a great time.

Click the link below for more photos:

Older Guys Go Camping

Glen and Ike took the older guys hiking and camping this weekend. Well, it wasn't much of a hike. Only about 1 mile from our cars. I know, I know, you boy scouts would give us no end of grief for that short hike. It doesn't count if it's not five miles. It was a lot of fun, anyway. One group of us saw a yearling black bear on the way into the campsite.

Click below for more photos:

Klondike 2009

The boys had a fantastic time. They had one exciting activity after another.

They:

-built a snow fort.
-participated in a fire building competition with flint and steel.
-raced to save a life at the first aid station.
-built a wilderness survival shelter.
-raced their Klondike sled.
-threw axes.
-saw HET trucks after the Klondike at the Navajo Army Depot.

Hit the link to see more pictures of Klondike 2009. There are also some photos of Glen and Ike fourwheeling. Well, not really of Ike. Someone has to take the photos.

Building the Klondike Sled

The boys came over to the Ellis' house to build the Klondike sled and review packing for a cold weather camp. Here are the photos of our sled.

Notes for Tuesday

Last Night, Brother Stilson invited Josh Cobabe, an Army Combat Medic, to come speak to the boys about cold weather injury prevention. Ask your boys what the C.O.L.D. acronym mean. They were all perfectly behaved for our guest speaker. Brother Stilson and I were very proud of them.

They have a couple of pieces of homework this week. They are supposed to practice their knots and lashings. We'll be quizzing them next Tuesday. Also, they are supposed to continue working on their journals. If they complete their journal entries, they will earn three Eagle merit badges by the end of April. Most of them will advance in rank due to those three merit badges. The three they are working on are Personal Fitness, Personal Management, and Family Life.

Here are the requirements for those three merit badges:

http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Personal_Fitness
http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Personal_Management
http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Family_Life

These pages have been printed for them and included in their journals.

The fund raiser is moving right along. Our lead boy has sold 17 shirts so far, with most of the boys selling about 5 - 10. And that's after only one week! At this rate, most of the boys will have no problem paying for their own scout camp, which is a great milestone for them as young men. We appreciate their work and dedication.

Remember to check http://redriders.blogspot.com for photos of the last campout. Brother Stilson also made his last post one http://yetis95.blogspot.com. If one of your boys was a yeti last year, you might want to check that out.

Backpacking Gear

Yesterday, Brother Stilson mentioned that if you needed any gear for your boys, you might go to the REI Outlet. He also mentioned that there is a 20% discount coupon available right now. Here it is:

http://www.rei.com/outlet/coupons/20pctcoupon.html#exclusions

Combine this coupon with the sales, and you can get a $200 backpack for about $70. Remember, in order to have a good time backpacking with the troop, your boy only needs five things:

-Food
-Water
-Appropriate hiking shoes
-Sleeping bag
-Backpack

All the other gear that your boy will mention are just "wants", not "needs." Birthdays and Christmases are a good time to get pocket knives, light-weight stoves, fire-starters, headlamps, bivy sacks, etc. Also, we strongly encourage that the boy earns the money for his own gear. We've found they tend to appreciate it more, and treat the gear better, when they've worked for it.

As a troop, you can count on us bringing a water-heating stove. It's called a JetBoil, and it can heat water really quickly. That means dehydrated backpacker meals, cup of soup, ramen, and oatmeal are all excellent choices for food for your boy. On a typical outing, here's what I do.

I eat an early dinner at home and then meet at the church at 5pm. I bring a light snack and hot chocolate for the evening. I eat oatmeal for breakfast (using the JetBoil.) I have trail mix for a hiking snack. If we're far away, like in Sedona, we usually stop for lunch. It would be a good idea for each boy to have $5 for lunch with him.

Please don't hesitate to ask me or Brother Stilson any questions you may have.

Ike

Future Calendar

Here are dates that you should know about:

February 20th - 21th - Klondike
March 14th - Our scout activity is cancelled. On this day, we'll be taking all the deacons to do baptisms for the dead at the Mesa Temple.
April 11th - Thumb Butte hike
May 8th - 9th - Wilson Mountain (Sedona) hike.
June 13th - 20th - Scout Camp at Camp Geronimo

Also, our next court of honor will be in May. If they work hard, Tanner, Satchel, Alex, Travis, Wesley, Dallin, and Brody all have the opportunity to earn their Star Rank. Enoch and Miles could be a first class. Tobey and Zach could be a second class.

In addition to these dates, there are a few dates that are not official troop activities:

Feb 7th - 8th - Brother Stilson knows about a great family camping activity for Arizona Fish & Game. I've forwarded that email to you.
Feb 14th - A national black powder shooting competition is at the Ben Avery BSA Shooting Range. It's about an hour away.

http://www.azgfd.gov/outdoor_recreation/ben_avery.shtml

-Ike

Snow Camp 2009

On January 9th and 10th, we took the boys to the top of Minghus Mountain. We camped in about 18 inches of snow, and it was cold! As always, the boys never complained about minor discomforts and were always in good spirits. Click below for more photos.