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As I am sure most of you who had son's attending this weekend's snow trip know by now, we evacuated in the middle of the night. Everyone arrived safely at Chris Savage's house around 4:00 AM Sunday morning.
On Saturday, the rain and snow held off for most of the day while the scouts built snow shelters, played in the snow and set up camp. By sunset everyone had eaten and stowed themselves in their tents or snow shelters. Shortly afterward, the wind kicked up and it began to snow, heavy, wet snow. We had camped in a low area that we hoped would be sheltered from the the wind, and for the most part it was, but by 8:00 PM the snow and wind were really pounding the tents. I had to wake up every 20 minutes and shake the snow from my tent to keep it from collapsing.
By 11:00, I realized that if I was having this much trouble, what must the boys be going through? I suited up and headed up the hill to where they had camped and found three piles of tent material and poles. Beneath each pile was two scouts. Everyone was mostly fine and staying warm despite their collapsed tents. I readjusted the tents as best I could and went back down to the leader camp to talk over the situation with the other leaders. At first I thought we might just put the boys in the cars for the night, but when I got back to the leaders I saw that our situation wasn't much better. Alan Perry's tent had already nearly collapsed once and Chris Savage and Eugene Moore's snow shelter was sagging so badly it was becoming a tomb, so we all eagerly agreed we should evacuate. The boys packed up as best they could in the dark storm and headed for the cars. We dragged some tents back to the cars full of gear and clothing and just tossed them into the back of Eugene's truck to be sorted out later. We cleared about 6 inches of snow off of our cars and headed down the mountain, slowly and safely. Half-way down the driving snow turned to driving rain. Luckily, by the time we got to Chris' house the rain had stopped. We unloaded all the wet gear into his garage, the boys crashed on his floor and, I am sure, slept very well.
The boys did great. They were all surviving just fine. The troop tents let us down. Nevertheless, everyone remained in good cheer and evacuated in an orderly way. On Sunday morning we sorted out all the wet gear and clothes and had a debrief meeting. The general consensus was that it was a memorable trip and a good learning experience. The boys got a good reality on the ill effects of wet and cold, they learned to take care of themselves in some truly severe, adverse conditions, and they came home well and happy with a good story to tell.
Craig Houchin
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