A soggy day at the annual Klondike event

Every year our district hosts their annual Klondike Derby event at Camp Warren Levis. As usual, our Scouts were there to compete with other units in attendance.

This outdoor event is a competition between the Scouts. Each patrol of up to 9 Scouts pulls their sled to various “cities” around camp. Each has a special challenge for the Scouts to complete. The patrols are awarded points depending on how well they do.

The weather

As expected when camping in January, the weather is always a challenge. Last year’s event was canceled due to snow, but we decided to camp that night anyway. This year, an enormous amount of rain fell the night before. Needless to say, there was mud everywhere we went.

The largest part of the storm was predicted to go through the area on Friday night, so we decided to just come up for the day on Saturday rather than camping through the weekend, which turned out to be a very good decision.

The competition

Klondike is a very unique event. It’s nothing like our normal weekend camping events. To add to the challenge, none of our Scouts who were there had ever participated in the event before. As usual, that didn’t slow them down. They pulled their sled through the mud all day long until the event ended at 3 PM, completing their challenges at the various cities.

By that time, the rain had turned into snow, just in time for us to pack up and head back home and rest after a very busy and soggy day.