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Klondike Derbies are a Scout event that reward scale and planning.  These outdoor skills competitions require boys to work together at the basic unit of the sled (3-8 youth) and each sled contributes an adult to run an event or station for the day.  The program is self-scaling so if 30 sleds register you have 30 stations as long as the planners have enough activities planned and with appropriate equipment.  This year, a troop asked me to run a station as most of their adults were busy and I dusted off the atlatls for the first time in three years.  I arrived early, set up a range, and met the leader that would take over for me around lunch when I had to leave.  I enjoyed getting back into running actual Scout program as each sled would have one or two boys old enough to remember me from my halcyon days as Grandmaster of Program for Playwicki District and the forest rang with someone shouting “TERRY!” every ten minutes or so.

Even though I now weight lift, I no longer have the sheer momentum I used to and my atlatl darts didn’t travel quite as far.  In one or two cases, a kid would out distance me and be hailed as champion by his peers.  I smiled.

On the way out, someone mentioned that another leader had said the guy running the atlatl station was a bad influence on kids because he was wearing shorts on such a cold day and that the guy who used to run the Klondike Derby did that but wasn’t around anymore.  I smiled again.

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Dad: So you’re rescheduling it for next Saturday?  Who’s running it?
Me: …me?
Dad: But it’s your brother’s wedding.
Me: But it’s the Klondike Derby.
Dad: He’s only going to get married once.
Me: One, that’s presumptuous, two, my obligation to the 300 participants outdoes watching my brother get married.
Dad: *grabs wooden spoon*
Me: What are you doing?
Dad: Scratching my back.
Me: That’s my wooden spoon, please don’t do that.
Dad: It’s my backscratcher, don’t worry, I wash it.
Me: Before or after you scratch your back?
Dad: Before, why would I do it after?

Note to Self: Buy second wooden spoon.

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It’s 5 AM on Saturday and I’m done preparing for the Klondike, meaning depending on how you define it, this is the earliest or latest I’ve finished.  Latest as I’ve never planned on getting less than 4 hours of sleep and earliest because I never really finished preparing for the previous 2.  Sure I’d have my car packed with stuff but did I have the unit sign-in checklist?  No.  Did I have the detailed station instruction sheet for all 20 stations?  No.  This year I do, so I suppose I’m 24 months late for completing my first Klondike.

A Klondike more so than most events is a thousand tiny things as my checklist for the event is two pages in its short form and six pages in its expanded form but this degree of microtracking is largely an effort to find the ephemera that has made these events so enjoyable to me as a teenager.  I use the term teenager specifically as I couldn’t remember ever enjoying them when I was 12 or younger and since I turned about 22 they’ve been a grind.  The Klondike Derby is a showcase each year of a dozen novel program snippets that units can take back as stations are rotated through by both sleds and time and this was a mechanic that was new to such things that I’m proud to say I have added.  The total corpus of stations is about 60 of which 45 are usable (some have never and should never see the light of day).  I wonder if it’ll last past me.

I can fit the entire Klondike in my Matrix this year where last year I had my dad’s GMC Sierra bed nearly full.  Better packing or different program?  I don’t know but this year I get to bring back sled raising, and for this I am excited.

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First: A pretty and oversaturated view south of the bridge at Tyler State Park

February 20, 2010-2-KlondikePanos

I think chromatic aberration is nicely magnified by Lightroom’s vibrancy function.

The Boy Scout event had nine sleds with 49 Scouts using 15 stations.  The two most innovative were Ravine Crossing and Hatchet Throwing.

Ravine Crossing involved Scouts moving their sled across a fake gully using ropes and such but the station operator was not impressed.  “The name of the station is Ravine Crossing.  There will be a ravine, and kids will cross it.”  I laughed but later saw the swath of destruction he had wrought.

February 20, 2010-151-KlondikeDerby

The actual event is at least 100 feet from the actual trail and more than one tree was… adjusted.

The sled race was simply spectacular.  Normally, the winning team lifts their sled and simply guns the entire course which is a soccer field.  10 inches of wet snow with the adhesive power of gorilla glue turned the course into a forced march through quicksand.  Instead of celebrating after victory the winning team literally collapsed and made snow people-grabbing-their-calves-gripping-the-Charlie-Horse.

February 20, 2010-250-KlondikeDerby

Rest of Photos

[flickr album=72157623489453810 num=30 size=Thumbnail]

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My Klondike Derby had dropped well below 100 compared to the initial 390 that I was anticipating before two delayed starts.  So, I went to Wal-Mart to pick up mediocre ropes at low low prices and I got to fulfill the child-abductor archetype by tooling around the children’s toys area with a cart full of rope.  Victory!  12″ tennis balls were on sale for a mere $4 and I bought everyone in the store, all one of them.

The look of the attendant while checking out with a few bags of candy, a giant tennis ball, black sheets, and 400 feet of rope is its own reward.  I should have gotten a home pregnancy test and a box of shotgun shells too.

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I understand the utter irony of canceling a Klondike Derby due to inclement weather.  This arctic-themed event seems like it would be greatly enhanced by the 17 inches of snow received but as I was placing emails and calls about the event, I found that unit leaders were under one or more of the following impressions:

  • Kids arrive via teleportation, without having to traverse unplowed roads.
  • All parents will deliver their children as signed-up for the good of the sled and ignore the motherly instinct to protect.
  • Every sled is delivered by a 4×4 Land Rover.
  • All activities that depend on access to the ground can occur on top of a foot of snow and will require no clearing.
  • The facilities at Tyler State Park are all heated meaning that the pavilion, bathrooms, and parking areas would require no snow removal to make usable.
  • An emergency rescue team lives in the campfire area, available to pluck from the river children who didn’t realize the bridge was 10 feet behind them.

Now I have another week to kill before I begin my last minute preparations.  I love Scouting.

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I’m running the Playwicki District Klondike Derby and learning from my previous errors planned and advertised the program months in advance.  It’s now three weeks from the event date and I’ve 12 stations of 30 covered.  I started placing calls to leaders and was simply stunned by the responses I received.  One was curious as to why we wanted his kids and adults, apparently not realizing that someone need put on the program their kids will enjoy as if the district had a legion of elves that pop out to perform programs.  Another stated he needed his parents to go around with their sled, really?  You need that many kids to escort Boy Scouts with a fake sled to stations where kids do practically infant-safe activities, in a park where almost the entire event can be viewed at once?  More amazing is that they were bringing more parent escorts than the unit of special needs kids.  And these are genuine special needs kids, retard-strength and all.  They manage to do fine, maybe because they’re a special kind of special that makes them a different kind of special compared to this lazy group’s special.