Spring Break Mini Adventure--Day Six--Thursday

When we went to bed, it was relatively warm.  I usually sleep with top and bottom polypro long johns, yet on this night I slept in a T-shirt and placed the long john top on the pack beside me.  I got cold in the night, however, and reached over to find heavy frost on my long john top.  I put in on nonetheless, and quickly warmed up and went back to sleep.

The front must have come in that night.  We woke up to our coldest morning so far.

The white stuff you can see on the photos above is frost.  The water in our bottles had a skim of ice on it, and it was difficult to roust out the crew.  One Scout had a more challenging morning.  It had been his job after dinner the night before to clean out two of the cooking pots.  He had not done so, and his crew chief had not checked on him, so before our crew could eat he had to clean out two pots, one of which had food from the previous meal frozen inside it.

The adults said nothing, but the crew let the pot-shirker know in no uncertain terms how unhappy they were that he had not done his job.  No one got abusive, but the message got through that he had let down his buddies.  This lesson is an essential part of Scouting--responsibility to your crew, not necessarily to an adult leader.  After a few minutes, one of the adults offered to help him clean the pots.  The lesson was absorbed, we hope, by everyone.

Today we had a backpacking goal:  to secure the sheltered campsite.  I had volunteered to go ahead and snag it, but when I saw how fast the crew was getting ready to walk, I told the boys I was confident that they could get there in time.  That built a fire under them, and with the lightest backpacks they had carried so far, up the canyon we went.

We rested, but not as long as on days past, then moved on. 

On the left we saw an Anasazi granary that had somehow escaped our view on the way down the canyon. 

Finally, we sighted the elevated camping spot under the stone, but we were not sure than no one else was there. The boys quickened their pace and, upon rounding the corner, saw that no one was there. Rain or snow or whatever, we would be dry that night!  They turned to tell the news to the rest of the column.

They secured the place by laying out bedrolls.

The day was young, so some of us decided to climb out of the canyon up the side to see what we could see.

Up on the top there was sand, stone, some very tough vegetation, and a chance for heroic poses,  but not much else.

You can see our camp in the photo below--look down the right side of the big rock in the middle to see the dark spot under the stone overhang.

Although the clouds rolled in, the adults gambled that it wouldn't precipitate, so we slept down on the beach.  I told the boys a long story that night, then went off to bed.