Winter survival training becomes the real thing. By m_storyman_x. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Some years ago I took over as scoutmaster for a local troop of about fifteen guys. Over a three year period my troop grew from fifteen to over forty-five boys. With this came the need for leaders, and I was fortunate to have twelve active assistants, including two moms, one of them was Amy, the mother of my son’s best friend. Amy and my wife Nancy were best friends. Our sons were born within a few months of each other and both had a healthy desire to breastfeed. Nancy & Amy met at a mothers group and became friends. Our two sons were practically inseparable once they reached walking and talking age. As a result our two families spent much time and many activities together. Amy’s husband was, unfortunately, a deadbeat drunk, which resulted in me frequently being a “dad” figure to Chris. We even joked on occasions that Amy was my second wife, although not in “that” way. Not that I hadn’t had a few accidental peeks over the many years, but we respected the boundaries and that was that.Being a scout leader means that you frequently go on outings with boys, and this requires at least two leaders at all times. Amy was an active participant, believing that if her son wanted to go, she was willing to try it as well. This resulted in her attending many campouts and “high adventure” treks such as repelling, backpacking and canoeing. The boys had attended a number of winter campouts, and I had passed on a lot of my knowledge of winter camping and survival that I learned from my many winters as a kid in the northern part of the country, and my almost annual ice fishing trips into the northern wilderness of upper Minnesota and Wisconsin. Some of the boys wanted a more advanced taste, and we planned a winter trip to the Canadian high adventure camp. This trip would be complete with advanced classes on winter survival, such as how to trap food and deal with blizzard conditions. Getting leader training in the boy scouts is usually just a matter of finding or waiting for the right training class, and then going and getting certified. This kind of thing was regularly done for water training and such, but there were no training classes for winter survival or camping. After a number of calls to council headquarters, they agreed that my own personal certifications and experiences would allow me to create and teach a winter camping and survival class for leaders. The only problem now was how to conduct such a class in Missouri. The answer was to head up to Wisconsin during the early winter for training. A number of leaders enthusiastically agreed with the plan… that was until a few weeks before it was time to go and they realized they were going to have to slog through a foot or more of snow. In the end I had six male leaders and one female leader, Amy, besides myself that could go on the five day training trip. The trip started out normal enough. We left early in the morning for the nine hour drive, hitting the trail head just before dark. We had only planned on hiking in a mile or so the first day to make camp. It took a little while to get all our heavy clothing on and the trailer unpacked and everyone geared up, finally hiking out for our campsite just as the sun was hitting the tops of the trees. I wasn’t worried about light, the bright December moon was nearly full and already high in the sky as the sun slipped away. The guys, most of them in their late twenties to early thirties, tossed snow like a bunch of kids and had a great time for that first mile, slogging through foot deep powder in the crisp twenty degree air. It was an easy trek to find the site we selected, following the GPS right to the clearing in the heavy woods. This particular state park had a twisting twenty-eight mile loop trail that was off limits to snow-mobiles. In the summer it was a spectacular hike, with stream crossings and beautiful trees. We didn’t need to cook, having had dinner on the road, so we set about putting up camp and starting a fire. The first task was to find dry wood, and I showed the guys how to locate dry wood to start a fire with, by picking dead branches of the underside of pines and whittling the wet outer surface off. Before long we had plenty of dry kindling and I taught them how to build a fire pit that wouldn’t melt and put their fire out. With a fire now blazing away in the middle of our campsite, we all set to work putting up our tents. Being a large troop we have been pretty successful with equipment. This trip we were using brand new backpack tents, the trainees paired up in two’s, with one tent for myself and a separate tent for Amy. It would be a bit colder sleeping in the two man tent alone, but I was prepared for it and I hoped that Amy was as well. These new tents were nice units with two high tech carbon fiber poles that crossed in the middle, making a tube seven feet long ...
