Jamboral

We went to the council camp Jamboral last weekend and had a blast!  There were so many troops there!  They gave each boy a set of 15 trading cards that were all the same, and challenged them to go out and trade cards with the other 14 districts to get 15 different cards!  The cards were different Scout Handbook covers through the years, so it was fun to see what they looked like back to 1910!  And it got the boys talking to other scouts from other troops!

Lots of scouts, and this is just one camping area out of 20!

At the Jamboral they had tons of booths with stuff to do, some of the ones that looked the most fun were the slack line, BMX Racing, Bike Riding on the racetrack, and the color run. 

The color run was an obstacle course (probably close to 1/2 mile long) that had places where they threw colored chalk at you as you ran by.  We were covered in chalk by the end of the course, and we had a blast!  We had to climb over walls and hay bales, crawl thru tunnels, climb nets to ring a bell at the top, climb ropes, swing across things, pull a spare tire across a gravel yard and back, etc.  It was really well done, and a lot of fun!

Varsity Biathlon

So this year we didn't have enough snow in the regular place we go for snowcave campouts, but we were lucky to be able to go to the Varsity Biathlon that the council was organizing.  We hadn't tried it in the past because it costs $7 per person, but we wanted to give it a try.

They had a race for the boys and leaders to run on snow shoes, with a stop at one spot for them to shoot black powder rifles.  Then after the race the boys could do archery, and throw tomahawks and knives.  Then there was another station for starting a fire with flint and steel, and another for orienteering and geocaching.

At the Black Powder Rifle Range

We took some advice from another person and had someone go up at 3pm to reserve our camping spot.  We got up there by 4pm and were all set up by the time most of the troops were getting there.  Unfortunately we followed the instructions on the website and so we didn't bring firewood.  The site, and the camp flyer said that campfires weren't allowed.  But when we got there everyone had fires but us, and we found out that they do allow fires, as long as they are in the fire pits.

The activities started on Saturday at 9am.  We were luckily scheduled to do the race first thing, because they only had about 20 snowshoes, to go for 400 people!  After we finished our race we saw a line of over 100 people waiting for their chance to get snowshoes!  Unluckily since we were the first to go, the trail wasn't marked well, so some of us took a wrong turn and added another 1/4 mile to the loop!

We did have 3 or so boys that didn't have snow boots, so we had to scramble to get something for them before we left.  But I guess I can't complain too much, because I forgot to bring a coat this time!  I had a hooded sweatshirt, and long sleeved shirt, and snow pants, but no coat.  I was pretty good till about 9pm, then I was getting a little cold, so Bishop lent me another sweatshirt.

It was a good trip!  It was the first time any of our boys had shot a black powder rifle.

Most of us would still rather do a snow cave campout, but it's a good option for when there isn't as much snow!