Hike

I was a scout in a small troop in Utah. 525 we are the best alive. 525 we are the only ones to survive. 525 is the troop that flies. We had lots of other yells that we used when we would go to scout camps and jamborees. You mess with one bean you mess with the whole burrito. We went to several different scout camps including Steiner in the High Uintahs and Thunder Ridge down in the lower part of the Wasatch mountains towards Fish Lake. At Thunder Ridge all of the camping was done in tents. My scout leader would come with his Tee Pee that we would help set up and then we would set up a line of two man tents usually it would take six or seven tents for all of us. To set up a Tee Pee one had to set three main poles first once those three were leaning against each other and not moving one direction or another we would add poles until all sixteen or so poles were up in a circle. There was a rope that was attached to one of the first three poles and that would be weaved a certain way to keep all of the poles together. The way it looked without the canvas covering was similar to a hourglass with one side very big and the other side very small or a funnel that was upside down. With all the poles in place the canvas was put in place. This had a small hook rope attached to the top corner of the canvas that went over one of the poles and then we wrapped all of the poles with the canvas. We had to make sure that the canvas was snug against the area where all of the poles met. Where the canvas came together there was a gap at the top and that was where the smoke would leave with a fire in the middle of the Tee Pee. The entrance was held open by foot long sticks that were straight they held the canvas similar to the look of the lace on a shoe going straight across. We set up an entrance to our camp and had a flag that we would run up a pole every morning and take down every night. We had to set up our cooking area and rope off our chopping area. Scout camp did not have a cafeteria so we had to bring up all of our own cooking gear and food and we had to gather all of the firewood that we would use for the entire week. Because we put the fire in the same place every day by the third day the fire pit was so hot that just putting new sticks on the area and blowing a little and the fire would start again. There were bathrooms and maybe there were showers but we never used those. Thunder Ridge is set in a high mountain valley surrounded by aspen and pine trees and scrub oak. There were trails everywhere leading from one point to another. Some led to the scout craft area, others to the main lodge, still others led down to the lake which was about three quarters of a mile away. I took lifesaving, canoeing, and rowing in the lake. The lake was cold being snow fed it never seemed to get above freezing but I am probably exaggerating a bit as I never really knew how cold it was. It was also not as cold as the lake at camp Steiner. I had to hike to the lake and back again twice a day and It always took a while to walk the trail and get to the lake. Sometimes I would run so I would not be late. The scouts that ran the lake front did a good job of keeping us active even if the lake was pretty small. My favorite thing to do was swamp the canoes. All this meant was capsizing the little vessel filling it with water and then with your boat buddy picking it up out of the water and draining the canoe then getting back in, all while treading water in the middle of the lake. Well one day after our water sports activities for the day a few other scouts and I decided to take a different trail back to camp. It took us up the side of the mountain to the east rather than the trail which went mainly south. We wanted to see what we could see and since we were at eight thousand feet we thought we could even hike up to the ridge which did not look that far away. Not that we could see much of the ridge with all of the trees in the way. We went up the trail and kept on going higher and higher we went and then as it got closer to dinner time we should start heading south towards the camp but with all of the trees we were not sure which way was south. we walked on for another fifteen minutes and felt totally lost. We could not go back because we did not know which way that was. we knew that we had to go down the mountain but we didn't know if we had gone to far past the camp and we would just end up going down for a long ways. We saw a clearing a little higher up the mountain and decided to go to that and then look out and see if we could gather our bearings. We went up and then looked out over the entire mountain valley. It was pretty amazing to see all that we could see. We saw the main camp area and did our best to figure out how to get to it. We made it late to dinner. Probably the only time a scout has ever been late to a meal.