Wilderness Survival Camout - November 14-16 2008

Wow! Wilderness Survival Campout was great! We had twelve boys attend November 14th-16th, 2008. I am happy to say all of them survived. Here's a group picture of the boys as we started the mountain hike.

You can view a slideshow of pictures by clicking here.

But let me tell the story. Everything went smoothly up until Friday. Boys brought their gear on Wednesday. Thursday afternoon, some parents blessed us and donated a minivan to our Outpost! That made it certain we would have enough transportation for the campout without having to ask parents to drive. We shopped on Thursday and Friday and were pretty ready to go at about 3PM. But that's when stuff started to go wrong. The pickup truck we planned to use to tow the Outpost trailer was late. At first we thought it was just going to be late. Out planned time to leave was 4PM. At 4:30, everyone was there and ready to go. But still no pickup truck. By 5:00 we had to change plans. Commander Mario went home and got his tow hitch. Mrs Cdr Jeff went to Little Caeser's and got the boys pizza. By the time Cdr Mario got back and we got the trailer hitched up, it was well after 6 and already after sunset (San Diegans hate daylight savings time). An hour later, we arrived at the campsite on Cdr John's property in Barret Junction. And the wind was blowing! Southern California has something called a Santa Anna wind, which hit us with about 35 MPH winds. The campout plan went out the window. But, realistically, the boys were in a true survival situation. The problem was going to be getting to cover the stuff needed for the merits. But first things first, shelter. Usually on this campout boys are supposed to make a primative shelter and sleep in it overnight. I looked around and thought about boys stumbing about in the dark with camp saws and ropes and trying to gather debris in the gusts and decided, rather than have the boys start their shelters, we had them put up tents. We hooked up our emergancy power, got some lights up. While boys put up tents, Commander Bradley made a latrine and some of the rest of us commanders grilled up burgers. Boys gathered around for fellowship, ate, and got to know each other better. By morning, three of the five tents had at least partially blown down, all tents had either rocks or logs pinning them down.

Saturday morning started out with a quick but good breakfast. Everyone learned how to use the latrine, happily we have no pictures as everyone is glad to just forget the experience. Once everyone had eaten, boys gathered on the fallen tree for a chair. Each was given a binder filled with survival instruction. We spent the morning covering how to build a shelter, start a fire, purify water, signal for help, find and cook food, make traps & snares, how to find their way when lost, and what goes in a survival kit. The wind was too strong to attempt fire starting. Boys worked some on their shelters. At about noon, we broke for lunch and boys asked if we could take a hike up the mountain. I looked up, seemed like maybe 300 or so feet to the top, and agreed. We grabbed our survival kits, water, and I passed out MREs for lunch. We crossed the creek and started our way up. Boys took off ahead and us commanders tgrudged along after. In just a little while we reached the crest of the hill only to find another maybe 300 feet. Talk about trickery! We continued up and, believe it or not, at the top we found yet another 200 feet up. As they say, in for a penny in for a pound. We followed. By the time I reached the next top I looked at another 100 feet to go and was nearly ready to have boys try out their CPR skills on me. A steady strong wind of prabably at least 20 MPH was blowing across the top of the hill. My first frantic thought was that boys would run to the last top and get blown off the edge on the other side of the mountain and plummet the 1000 feet and oh, oh, oh, started to hyperventalate and then Commander Bradley pointed out how the boys had stopped. I was amazed! The boys were were standing on top of twelve foot high bolders and leaning way into the wind like ship sails, certainly past any point of recovery had the wind somehow stopped. Some of the commanders jioined them (I stayed on the ground). Looking back down the way we came, our camp was like you see on a diarama or game board, with what must have been Commander Mario who stayed back at camp sitting on a chair soaking in some rays. But before I had a chance to get woozy, the boys started to climb up to the top again. But, with the wind so strong, we stopped them and instead headed back down the mountain, heading down another direction with a more gradual slope. Soon we came to a stop at some rock formations with a rather large cave. Commander Bradley gave a class on how to heat and eat the MRE's (meals ready to eat) which we acquired at GI Joe's Army Surplus in El Cajon. The boys all seemed to enjoy them.

After our return to camp, boys finished making their shelters. The high winds added to our remote location sure helped it seem we were really in a survival situation. Dark came soon after that. We got ready to cook our wilderness meals. But still the wind blew. Boys were able to get straw to catch fire from flint and steel but as soon as we saw strands of burning straw start to blow away, we put an end to that. Boys use the bow & drills to learn how to make them and get a cinder but we stopped before having a fire. Instead we started up the propane grill and Commander David had wilderness food for all in short order. After that we took a night hike and star-gazed. We reflected for about an hour about God's wonder and then returned. Boys found their shelters and settled in for the night. Sometime in the early morning the wind died enough to let us all get to sleep but in the morning, it picked back up again making it still unsafe still to try to start fires. We finished our traps and snares training as well as completed other areas and then began to pick-up. By lunch we had the cmp dismantled and packed up and were headed back home. We stopped for cold drinks in Delzura and were back at the Church parking lot by mid afternoon. Parents arrived and got their kids, the commanders and I all sighed, we survived another campout!