BSA Troop 688

1997 Outdoor Adventures

Joint car camp with Cub Pack 680. Spent the day exploring the pseudo-carst caves. Held a mini class and competition on survival skills. Great weather and good turnout.

Car camping near Agua Caliente.  Motorhomes got stuck in the sand -- twice!  Constructed a sand sled and surfed it down Blow Sand until it self-destructed. Adult leaders, decked out in black tie and dinner jackets, won the most extravagant patrol competition.  Menue inlcluded steak and potatoes and icecream fresh from the churn.

Snow was poor at best, but since none of us qualilfied better than novice, we still managed to have a great outting. Whoa to "Big Air" Jason and "Black Diamond" Tobin. Cumorah Crest is perhaps one of the finest Scout facilities the Troop has ever attended -- curtins on the windows, insulation in the walls, a game room, beautiful meeting room with a deck and view, and messhall and kitchen with more chrome and glass than a 57 Buick.

Some might think that since the owners went Chapter 7, this place would be rundown and boring... not so.  The few Scouts in attendance played miniture golf, watched TV (this is camping?), and held a energetic game of soccer.  Brett and his sister put on a great cooking exhibition with dutch oven pinaple upsidedown cake and chocolate chip cookies baked in a box.

Fifty miles from Peter McIntyre County Park to Picacho State Recreation area.

1997, May 17-18 Sat-Sun

Cedar Creek Falls Backpack

A very steep 2 mile hike into the San Diego River Valley to one of the most interesting regions in the County.  The waterfall was far less than the spectacular cascade we visited last year, but still very impressive -- 90 feet high over solid granite dropping into a pool just perfect for cooling off in.  Small matter that the trail was trecherous and covered with poison oak. The dessert cooking competition included cheries jubliee, cake baked in a box, and an interesting creation made from marshmellows, Pringles and Power Bar.

Enjoyed the finest weather So. Cal. has to offer, plus a hint of a south swell from off the Marshall Islands; shoulder high at 10 second interval made for fun boogie boarding. Cooked a pig in a pit for the luau on Saturday and surprise! It worked great.  Perhaps the greatest beach toy ever is the garden shovel.  With three shovels, and seven boys digging furriously, we had Zachary and Ryan burried to the neck in the sand and fox holes big enough to hide the whole Troop in.

Spent Saturday mountain biking to the top of Toro Peak -- 8700 feet overlooking the Salton Sea, Palm Springs and the San Bernardino Peaks... Fantastic view!  Nick, one of our younger scouts, was an absolute aerobic animal making the 1,500 foot climb look like a sprint across the block.  The down hill back to camp was fast and fun, and tiring enough that the boys decided to postpone the major down hill in lue of some mud play below Santa Rosa Spring.  Brett's dutch oven pizza and cheese cake was great eats.  Now that's the way to fix camp meals!  After Sunday clean up and vespers, the Extreme Scouts jumped on the bikes and started down the 3,500 foot desent to the highway.  Zane and Kirk had to bunny hop a rattler on the way down, which ment everyone had to stop and look while it made its way off into the forest.

Whitsett is not a "merit badge mill". The boys worked and earned many badges.  There was particular interest in archery. In fact the councilor seemed to spend most evenings with the Troop for "after-hours" training.  One of our adult leaders thought that COPE was a program to aleviate the stresses of Scouting -- he now is experienced on the high ropes and zip line. Chris spent the whole week on BSA Life Guard including staff positions at the waterfront and councilor for Life Saving and Swimming.  Most of the boys made the mid-week white water rafting trip for an added bonus.

All in all, the Troop had a great time and we can strongly recommend Camp Whitsett to other units.

First order of business was to shoo away the peacocks who considered our campsite home. Next was to collect the feathers they left behind.  Saturday we got a tour of the ranch.  We saw the machine shop and how they repair the equipment, we learned about wooly white fly, ring guages, and root stock.  After growing tired of chasing lizards across the rock piles,  the boys had a great time with the life-sized Lincoln Log set; turning the two gigantic wood piles into massive construction projects.  Saturday evening was a real pig out with mass quantities of carne and pollo asada, rice and beans, salad, and avallero peppers (spelled: insanely hot!).

The Troop got a chance to improve our climbing skills on a first class 40 foot granite face. Kirk and Zane showed their prowess on the "Y" crack, a shear vertical slab with ten feet of fingehold crack leading to a taller leg and arm jam crack, followed by a head high inversion. Patrol work was absolutely top notch on this outing. Breakfast, lunch, diner, and breakfast were well planned and executed meals, and the clean-up included a full patrol box make-over.

We were all wondering how we would get the two Mikes out of the bottomless pit they fell into when luckily they both managed to climb out on their own.  A little scraped up and a lot dusty but still anxious to continue the spelunking adventure. This trip lead to the discovery of an interesting cave system the Troop had never seen before.  A quarter of the way up the south canyon wall was a very small crack with a ten foot drop to a ledge. Below the ledge is the aforementioned bottomless pit. Following the ledge took us into a narrow winding cave. We followed it about 400 feet into the hillside -- crawlling on our hands and knees for some sections. The final section opened into a room where a rope dangled from a dark abyss in the ceiling... Something to look forward to on the next trip!

Peter's 24" window into the night sky showed us spectacular visions of the moons of Jupiter, the rings of saturn, the Orion Nebula, binary stars and the billions of lights making up the Milky Way. Very cool! Wes managed to steal away first place in the catapult competion from Jeff, David and their Dad who brought a quarter-scale replica of a midevil weapon (Did King Arthur have surgical tubing?) Sunday morning awoke to a major rain storm unloading at the base of the Laguna Mountains not more than three miles away. The weather held off until we were packed and driving out of the valley.

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