Location

Boulder Creek Scout Reservation, Redwood Campsite (hike-in)

Dates:

1998: Saturday November 21 and Sunday November 22; Aragon Parking Lot, Muster: 8:00 a.m., Leaving: 8:20 a.m.; Returning mid-afternoon, Sunday.

Activities:

Backpacking, Pioneering (monkey bridge and zipline), Camping, Map-Reading & Compass.

Attendance:

9 scouts and 3 overnight dads, 1 daytime dad.

Photo at right: A not so zippy zip line between trees at the Redwoods Camp Site

Summary:

This was a true backpacking trip into a valley above and adjacent to the main camp area. The scouts formed up in two groups, each group hiked in on a different trail, and hiked the alternate trail coming out, non-senior scouts were the lead navigators. Senior scouts and/or dads accompanied the groups as safety officers, and called corrections shortly after wrong turns were made. Scouts built a tree-to-tree monkey bridge, and then a zipline. The latter worked poorly since we had only a carabiner, not a pulley, for the slider. Several scouts showed a good sense of self-preservation and resistance to peer pressure by not crossing the entire monkey bridge. Two new scouts achieved sign-off on a variety of scout skills, including Tote-and-Chip. A campfire was held Saturday evening. Rain Saturday night did not interfere with the campout. One jeep was driven in to bring water, rope, poles and rain-flys. Due to slick conditions 4WD was necessary on the jeep road. Several scouts and dads noted that Redwood Campsite was good and worth using again.

Service Project

We surveyed the non-functional water supply that used to serve the Redwood and Meadows campgrounds. This includes the spring (working), collection pipe, supply piping, and storage tank. Early in 1999 T42 will restore the water service.

Planning Tips:

Get both plain and fancy versions of the trail maps. Using only the plain version caused our jeep-driver to return to the ranger for the better version of the map, which showed all the road junctions. Also, on at least the plain version of the map, the way some trail junctions are drawn is misleading, although their connectivity is correct.

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