Area Scouts Like To Camp In The Damp Snowstorm Continues Tradition Of Challenging Weather At Popular Annual Camp-Out

Freezing rain, hail and snow. The thump, thump, thump of gunfire somewhere in the background.

Perfect conditions for a camp-out. Especially a gathering of 3,500 Boy Scouts on the last Camporee of the 20th century in the Inland Northwest.

“Camporees are traditional, especially in spring when snow is predicted,” joked Brad Kitchen, police chief of Pinehurst in everyday life, Boy Scout leader for this threeday weekend. “We got our snow last night.”

The Friday night weather left a chilly residue on Saturday morning. It didn’t seem to bother any of the Scouts, who raced through the woods on mountain bikes, gave mesmerized attention to a log scaler, worked their arms and wrists on fly-fishing poles or watched the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region mule team, trucked in from Huson, Mont.

“How much does a mule weigh?,” one Scout asked, leaning through the rails of a portable corral.

“About 200 pounds,” replied a packer with a wide-brimmed straw hat, hauling on a rope as he lashed down gear on the pack string’s last animal.

Camporees traditionally are held every four years.

“We try to instill values of good citizenship, making ethical decisions, physical fitness, mental fitness,” said Clifford Crismore, program director for the Inland Northwest Boy Scout Council.

“If I go to a boy and tell him I’m going to make him physically fit and morally straight, he would laugh,” Crismore said. But advertise it as a camp-out and that’s a different story, he said.

Scouts, Explorers - the young adult arm of Scouting - leaders and staff flocked to the gathering from Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Gunfire in the background came from a nearby gathering of a different group of Scouts, holding an annual Mountain Man Rendezvous, said Sam Crawford, a mortgage man who volunteered to herd the media around the gathering.

Two campsites each stretched a mile, without the traditional Army surplus pup tents once found at Scout outings. Instead, the Scouts sported dome tents running the color spectrum from camouflage to orange and blue.

Several had tarps stretched across the tops, a testament to the ritual wet weather of this camping weekend.

“We had puddles in our tent, pretty close to our head,” said Scout Dan Draine of Spokane. But “we slept all night.”

Only the adults seemed bothered by the weather. Youths biked, played Frisbee and tracked compass courses, some of them in shirt sleeves.

People running exhibitions traveled from as far away as Salt Lake City. There was blacksmithing, land surveying, a helicopter, ham radios, and an engine demonstration that included several small steam pistons spit, spit, spitting away. Some Scouts were ferried to the Coeur d’Alene Airport for airplane rides.

Overall, 114 merit badge topics were represented, Crismore said. Scouts weren’t actually earning merit badges. Instead they were sampling future possibilities.

“We tried to find things they wouldn’t normally experience in summer camp,” Crawford said. “A lot of these kids live in a city and are never around horses,” he said, gesturing toward the mule team.

Up the trail, a troika of mountain bikers raced past, one of the lads with a water bottle in a purple sling rattling around on his chest.

“There’s lots of nice trails to bike on” said Aaron Krieg, a Coeur d’Alene Scout dressed in biking shorts and long underwear who traveled with a slower-paced group of bikers. He wheeled off for the pines.

It’s not all about physical fitness. Norm Shephard and Dean Opsal were packing in two cast-iron dutch ovens, suspended campfire-style from a long, thin log that the Spokanites carried between them.

What’s cooking?

“Five-hour stew and cherry cobbler,” Shephard said. “We’re going to teach these guys that there’s more to life than McDonald’s.”

The Camporee ends today.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo