We spent the day with the Boy Scouts of America, Daniel Webster Council, at their twice-annual Powder Horn event’s October weekend. This is a weekend training camp for Scouts and Venturers, plus Boy Scouting, Venturing, and Varsity leaders. The full scope is as follows:
Powder Horn is a high adventure skills resource course for Venturing, Boy Scouting, Varsity, and Venture Scouting leaders and youth (age 14 and up) of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Powder Horn is also described as a “hands-on resource management course” designed to give Scouting leaders “the contacts and tools necessary to conduct an awesome high-adventure program” in their Scouting unit. The goals of Powder Horn are to help Scout leaders safely conduct outdoor activities of a fun and challenging nature, provide an introduction to the resources necessary to successfully lead youth through a program of high adventure, and familiarize participants with the skills involved in different high adventure disciplines. The Powder Horn course will also introduce Venturing leaders to the Ranger youth award program, so adults may better help Venturers in meeting the Ranger award requirements. Powder Horn presents a wide variety of hands-on high adventure skills experiences and thus is not designed to provide specific skills certifications. The course is meant to be held over a one-week period or two three-day weekends. Youth attendees will get first-hand experience and information as well as resources so they can better act as Event Chairs for their units. —Daniel Webster Council
We were honored to be part of this. Not only are Scouts learning myriad skills, but more importantly, so are the leaders. The information we taught — Camp Craft skills, specifically — can be passed along. It’s an awesome program, as is Scouting in general. Helping shape the lives of our young people in meaningful ways that will stay with them for life. On the job today was Redline Guide Mike Cherim, and the topics covered were site selection with an emphasis on safety, comfort, and Leave No Trace (LNT), fire building (without matches or a lighter), camp layout (triangle or rectangle in our classes), and dealing with bears… learning skills like hanging a bear bag. This is good stuff! Here are some photos of our day.
A pretty impressive Scouting camp. The activities and education offered here are extensive and quite varied.
We were there to train and work, but it didn’t stop us from pausing to capture this scene.
We got a kick out of the creative signs.
Every sign was unique.
Very busy turtle crossing.
We got some swag. Love it! Thank you!
This is the section where we did our thing. This is normally where topics on ecology are covered for that merit badge.
Here one Boy Scout Leader is trying his hand at fire starting.
This is one Scout’s successful sequence. Notice the knife is in focus? It’s because it’s stationary. The proper item to put into motion is the “metal match” which is pulled back toward the user. Otherwise, the tinder pile will be knocked over.
Our bear bag hanging team. Pretty much everyone nailed it.
Some of our friends on the scene. Thank you so much for choosing Redline Guiding!