Moab High Adventure - Men Of Abiding Brotherhood

This year for High Adventure we went to Moab and did some hikes and attempted to raft the Colorado River!
Our theme for the trip used the word "Moab"

Men
Of
Abiding
Brotherhood

So we tried to do things that we could work together on, and that would strengthen our brotherhood.

We started out with the Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park.  You have to get a permit from the visitors center to go into fiery furnace, and watch a short video.  Fiery Furnace is basically a playground of canyons that converge together.  There isn't a trail down there, so they want you to walk in the washes and on the rocks so you don't disturb the organic crust.  Here's us hiking down to the area:

 We hiked through one of the canyons and up to the top.  Here's a view of the fiery furnace from above:

It was a lot of fun, and it forces the boys (and leaders) to work together to get over obstacles and stuff!  It was a great way to start our trip and get us all working together!

Here's a view of the surrounding area:

After we finished the Fiery Furnace, we hiked to Delicate Arch, then waited our turn with the dozens of other people that wanted their picture beneath the arch:

It is so much bigger than what I had assumed it would be!  It's huge!  It's amazing that it's standing!  Here's another shot of the arch from the side:

Our next adventure was rafting down the Colorado River!  The forecast didn't look too good, but it didn't the day before and turned out good, so we decided to give it a try.  Unfortunately the storms came in quickly as you can see below:

And we were forced to pull out on the side to wait out the storm.  But the storm didn't quit!  It was pouring on us for a long time, so we set up our rafts upside down on a log for some shelter:

Then one of the leaders challenged another leader to build a fire to warm us up.  Even offered $10 if he could do it (since it was pouring and everything was soaked)!  Well, we scout leaders are always up to a good challenge, so he proceeded to pull bark off of an old cottonwood tree, and started a fire, which we then huddled around to warm up to.  He had a lighter and hand sanitizer and was able to get it started with that!

Unfortunately the storm kept going, so we eventually sent a leader back to the cars to get the truck and we bailed on the river idea and took the rafts back to the rental place.

We did a few more hikes, then the last day we stopped off at a waterfall to wash off and cool off:

It felt so good to walk in to the water fall area and wash away all the sweat and freeze in the cold water!

Some stats:
5 boys, 6 leaders (yeah, we got our 2-deep leadership covered)
5 days, 4 nights
$400 for food
830 miles driven total
about 20 miles hiked total
Someone stole 2 of our kayaks, and a cooler full of milk, eggs, and butter!
We strengthened our brotherhood in our troop and had a fun time!

Hunting Knife

A coworker told me that her husband makes his own hunting knives and said I could make one with him!  He told me where to go to order the knife blank and once it came in we got together to make it!
I was able to make it out of an Elk antler, and a sheath out of leather.  It turned out really great, and I was able to use it last weekend to slaughter our 7 chickens to make room for the new chicks (our chickens have been eating all their eggs for a year now, so we are starting over with new chicks and our hens are now in our freezer).

Varsity Biathlon

We decided to do the Varsity Biathlon Camporee this year for our winter campout at Fort Buenaventura Park in Ogden Utah.  Unfortunately we only had two boys that were able to come, so, since it was in town, we decided to give the other boys something to be jealous of.  We went to the camp and set up our site, then drove to The Pie Pizzaria to have pizza.

Map of the Fort

We stopped off and saw the newly remodeled Ogden LDS Temple on our way to dinner.

The next morning we did the biathlon and had fun doing the race and shooting black powder rifles!

Oh, and for breakfast we had "Tongan Pancakes".  They were really good!

The weird thing about this time, was that it was 60 degrees for our WINTER CAMPOUT!