Past Outings

By Praneeth
The Wente Scout Reservation is a 2200 acre plot of land with an 80 acre lake filled with bluegill and largemouth bass. The lake is a great place to go swimming, snorkeling, fishing, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, and rowing. You can have some of the best sailing experiences at the lake. My buddy and I were able to get the sailboat to an almost 90 degree angle without capsizing for close to 30 seconds. However, I ended up letting go of the tiller and falling out of the boat. My buddy soon capsized. At Wente
you don’t even have to worry about not being able to get a boat since there is plenty of each kind. Wente also has many open programs and activities. You could go rock climbing, rappelling, mountain biking, or even horse riding. Or you could shoot arrows, rifles, shotguns, and even black powder muskets. There is also special orienteering courses called the Kali Amas that you can do. The merit badge program at Wente is really good. You have to choose what merit badges you want to do before camp starts so that they can get as many counselors as needed. That way you can take whatever merit badges you want to take and are guaranteed a spot in the merit badges that you chose. We should come back next year so that we can get more merit badges and so that the people who have never been to Wente can experience the great fun you can have there.

By Parth
This was my first summer camp experience, and it was awesome. The merit badges were fun and the counselor's were nice. Many scouts were saying that Troop 905 was hard to beat, but this year we managed to beat them. Joey saved himself from being disqualified. John came up to our campsite and only revealed to us that the two top teams were in 3 seconds of each other, but wouldn't tell us who won. At the closing campfire it was declared that we won the Wentathalon and our whole troop was cheering. Everyone was happy. Many people in our troop made it to their next rank and some got close. As everyone made it to Finney Valley every patrol earned Honor Patrol and because of that our Troop earned Honor Troop.
I think we should go to Wente again next year. Wente, like everyone says, has the warmest water ever. We also get to hike the Kali-Ama and the King Kali-Ama. I don't think many other camps have orienteering courses. Wente also offers a variety of merit badges for scouts to choose from. I believe we should go to Wente again.

Nineteen scouts spent a week at our council's summer camp, Camp Hi-Sierra. Just like every year, we camped at the Sioux campsite. The scouts earned about 60 merit badges along with 26 partials. In addition to working on badges, the new scouts worked on the Trail-To-First-Class skills. We all had fun swimming, climbing, shooting, and playing Quiddich. We enjoyed daily campfires and delivered a funny skit at the Friday night, campwide campfire. Adithya Rao and Vipul Nataraj earned Chief in the Tribe of Hi-Sierra, while most other boys earned Brave, Warrior or Medicine Man,
keeping Mr. Kadiyala busy handing out beads all week. There was Vespers service on a couple of nights. Mr. Snyder accompanied three scouts on the early morning Polar Bear swim in the snow runoff! There were numerous service projects around the camp that the scouts participated in. On Friday there were the camp wide games which culminated in Mr. Snyder, once again, winning the scoutmaster's canoe race!

The snow-caving trip had high expectations for me. I had gone on almost the exact same trip two years ago, and it was a great time. I knew that this time would be just the same. After turning off the main highway, we all stopped to put on our snow-chains. It was a real bumpy ride going into camp. Luckily, everyone was able to make it through the snow so that we didn’t have to shuttle people.
The first step in building our cave was to select a site. My group and I tried to take our time on this because choosing the right site could drastically change the amount work there was to do. We decided to stake a claim close to the mess hall for convenience. We drew out a large square foundation that could have fit four people comfortably. We piled snow inside of the square and it gradually rose until it was adequate in height. After a little bit of tinkering with the overall shape, we added in our center pole and went to lunch, satisfied with our work.
It began to snow during lunch, but I decided that we should start working again. Unlike the previous time I had gone snow caving, we started to tunnel and hollow out our cave after a little over an hour instead of two hours. The snow had become hard to work with last time because it had settle and stuck together. We chose a corner of our square-like mound as a doorway and began to tunnel. It was slow going at first because there was little space to loosen up the snow and haul it out. But as we progressed, the quantities of snow we hauled out at a time grew. Eventually we were able to fit a sled into the doorway to load snow. While I chiseled off large chunks of the cave’s interior and loaded it onto the sled, Prithvi would haul it out and dump it elsewhere. One time the snow I carved out got stuck to the bottom of the hallway, making it impossible for me to get out. I needed a little assistance and would like
to thank the scouts who helped me out.
In the afternoon, our cave was big enough for two people so I made a drainage system and vent and we both made our beds. I later lit a candle in the cave to warm it up. By then it was almost dinnertime and I spent some time helping out on some other caves. I would especially like to thank Mr. Haas for helping build at least three caves. His support made the experience a lot more enjoyable for some of the scouts. We hauled in firewood from the cars on a sled and had a nice warm fire to go with
our meal of soup, salad, pasta, and garlic bread. After a nice campfire, we were all ready for bed. My cave had inherited a third person, so it was really cozy.
I woke up to find the walls of the cave a light whitish blue in the morning. Daylight was seeping through to the inside. There was a thin blanket of powder everywhere outside. After breakfast and dish cleanup, we had to dismantle our caves. I was a little sad to do so, but in the process we realized how thick our walls were. From the outside, our cave looked big, but was much smaller on the side. Maybe
that’s why it was so warm! I proposed that we could use the snow caves as bases for our snowball fight.
Since there were two good-sized caves down near the river, we used those. After carving off the tops, we had our forts and it was the older scouts versus the younger scouts and the adults. It was really fun. After cleaning up the mess hall, we loaded up and headed home. We all had a great time.