By Brian M. Boyce
TERRE HAUTE — Temperatures didn’t approach freezing Saturday, but the cold weather didn’t stop boys from packing the grounds of Camp Wildwood.
“We run on hot chocolate around here,” Bill Allen laughed outside the campgrounds’ community center. About 200 Boy Scouts had guzzled their way through 600 packets of hot chocolate mix by noon and more was on the way. Allen, program chair for the Boy Scouts Wabash Valley District, and troops throughout the region camped out in the woods west of Hawthorn Park overnight for Saturday’s Klondike Olympics 2010,
“What we’re trying to do is celebrate the Winter Olympics with a Scouting twist,” he said of the annual Klondike sled race featuring “games with a purpose.”
Scouts participated in a series of station exercises from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. before breaking for lunch and returning in the afternoon for another series, culminating in the “Great Sled Race” at 3:15 p.m.
This year’s station drills were themed on the Winter Olympics, including “Bandy Ball.”
“It’s soccer on ice with hockey sticks,” Allen said, explaining it’s one of the demonstration sports featured in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.
Teams also competed in figure skating contests where one member was blindfolded and had to skate a figure-8 with only the instructions of his teammates to guide him.
“That’s communication and teamwork,” he said.
Winter First Aid is an annual course where teams are assigned a “victim” and have to identify the problem, treat it and explain how to prevent it. Dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite were some of the afflictions assigned in the course.
Inside the community center, Olympic history trivia and brain teaser puzzles were also on deck for competition, he noted. Allen himself was a Boy Scout while his father served in the U.S. Army in Europe. The Boy Scouts of America have operations all over the world and Allen participated from 1963 to 1975.
Standing beside their team’s sled, which was packed with gear, Bryce Weeks and Colin Ford of Terre Haute’s Troop 38 waited for the lunch period to end and games to resume.
“Cold,” 12-year-old Ford said when asked how things were going.
Weeks, 15, joked Ford liked the fires best as they kept him warm. The Terre Haute South Vigo High School student said their troop had already competed in knot-tying, obstacle courses, the figure-8 skating and Winter First Aid.
Meanwhile, back toward the grounds’ south side, Jerry Snyder and other dads of Brazil’s Troop 101 got their teams ready to hit the day’s second round.
Dressed in black Carhart coveralls and a big hat, Snyder and others had straw bales for seats around a burning fire pit full of wood.
“I think everything was well-planned and well-organized,” he said as the scouts readied their sled to haul from station to station. “This is their third year doing it so they pretty much know what they’re doing.”
Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
