Troop 147 competed once again in the Lucky Baldwin Camporee, held at Firestone Scout Reservation in Brea. Patrols trained for this annual skills event for several weeks at troop meetings and a skills practice day. Boys were tested on first aid, firebuilding, orienteering, knots & lashings, hiking, cooking, citizenship, camping, rifle-shooting, and other outdoor skills. Scouts competed by patrol against other troops from Monrovia and surrounding cities. This year, our adult leaders ran the firebuilding event. Special thanks to the six troop dads who worked so hard to make this a success for everyone. Because 47 patrols completed, this kept us all very busy on a hot and sunny day.

Both the Eagle and combined Mystery/Spicy Taco patrols of Troop 147 earned First Place honors this year (>800 of 1,000 points), only one level below the coveted “Presidential Award”. This was an impressive result for patrols consisting largely of our younger scouts. So, congratulations to all our scouts for a job well done, and to the two Patrol Leaders and their Senior Patrol Leader for his leadership of the troop.

The troop hiked up to Henninger Flats at sunset on a recent Friday, and set up their tents at a great campsite overlooking the city lights of the San Gabriel Valley. Saturday was devoted to earning the Forestry merit badge, thanks to Ranger Susanna of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Everyone had a great time learning about our local environment, and discussing career opportunities in forestry. Saturday night featured a great campfire program thanks to a scout who organized it as part of his Communications merit badge. We even had another troop join us in the campfire fun! After the tough 2.5 mile climb up to the camp via the Mt. Wilson Toll Road, the hike down was easy.

Enjoy photos of the Court of Honor held on March 6, 2013, including our dinner, awards, and announcement of three new Eagle Scouts!

The troop headed up the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to San Jacinto State Park to practice their snow survival skills. The ride up on the tram was a lot of fun. At the top the weather was perfect – cold with plenty of snow in the wilderness around Round Valley. As you can see from the photos, San Jacinto was a winter wonderland shared by only a few other scout troops (plus, reassuringly, a search & rescue team from San Diego that was training near our camp). The scouts had a great time trekking about 2.5 miles wearing snowshoes, setting up camp in deep snow, practicing self-arrests with an ice axe, and having snowball fights. We camped at over 9,100 feet elevation, which made some of the adults light-headed (but the scouts didn’t seem to mind). When the sun went down, the wind howled and it got very cold (into the teens). So after a hot dinner, hot chocolate, and a jiffypop snack huddled around the stoves, everyone hit their sleeping bags by 6:30pm! Even our youngest scouts came well-prepared, worked hard, and had a great time on this high-adventure outing.

The best laid plans of mice and scouts oft go awry. We were planning for an intensive hike to the Bridge to Nowhere, but heavy rains made this too risky. So then we tried a favorite long hike starting from Chantry Flats, but that was closed due to an escaped criminal forcing the police to blockade the road up. Some quick thinking sent us to Eaton Canyon for a nice easy hike and scramble to the falls. The falls were roaring after the rains. In fact, we got rained on (even poured on) off and on, which made it more fun since everyone had their rain gear. The dry river bed we walked across on the way to the falls was a raging stream on the way back. Scouts forded right through it (no more dry feet), and then we topped the adventure off with a visit to the great Eaton Canyon Nature Center. This was a good warmup hike for when we make it back to the Bridge to Nowhere on the San Gabriel River, hopefully soon.

What can we say, the Boy Scouts of Troop 147 and Webelos of Pack 136 always have a great time at the beach! San Elijo State Beach is a gem – lots of room to roam, a great little snack shop, and clifftop campsites with awesome views of the ocean. A little rain on Friday night didn’t stop the scouts, it just made it more fun! The water was cold but the scouts still went swimming, surfing and boogie boarding. A few dads even joined in the boogie boarding and surfing! Plus, we had an added bonus of a very low tide late on Saturday, which made for some outstanding tide pool observations. The boys found everything from sea anemones to starfish to crabs and an octopus. Somehow scouts made time for some skills training (knots, knives, and firestarting) and even for some games, including a great beach bocce competition. Top it off with a great sunset, camaraderie (bad jokes and skits) by the campfire, and then homemade doughnuts for breakfast – what more could a scout ask for in a campout? We look forward to these young Webelos joining the troop and having many more adventures with us!

When the summer heat is finally gone in late autumn, Troop 147 loves to camp out in the open desert. In November, the troop headed out to the Mojave Desert on old Route 66, past the ghost town of Chambless, California. The Troop camped on BLM land at the foot of the Marble Mountains. Scouts spent most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning hunting for trilobites from the Cambrian Period, in an exposed rock bed called the Latham Shale. These fossils are over 500 million years old, from creatures swimming around this area when it was under a shallow sea. Our budding geologists and paleontologists had a great time finding interesting minerals and fossils, including some trilobites.

Of course, we also had a great campfire under the desert sky, seeing the Milky Way and spotting a bright Venus, plus shooting stars and satellites. Though it was too windy to sit around long, scouts still managed to toast marshmallows and make some smores before heading to the tents. It was a long drive, but it was worth it.

Special thanks go to BLM Ranger Merl Shaver, who directed the troop to a good camping spot and pointed out how to find the fossil beds.

We had another great trip on the bike trail next to the west fork of the San Gabriel River. It’s close and easy, yet feels hundreds of miles away from LA. Glenn Camp is a great base to ride up to Cogswell Reservoir, and hike to the Glenn Canyon Falls, so we did both. Even though it rained on Sunday morning, the reservoir and the falls were trickles of their normal selves. Boys had a great time building the campfire and riding their bikes all over the camp. They also learned to watch out for all the beautiful but nasty poison oak! We had a good ride back down the trail, and even passed a county rescue team practicing their rope techniques for canyon rescues in the same spot we scrambled up the day before.

Troop 147 intended to do a bikepacking trip in September, but the Williams Fire closed the entire San Gabriel Canyon. So, in the midst of a long heat wave in the valley, the troop headed up to the cool pine forests high up in the San Gabriel Mountains. Scouts hiked from Buckhorn Camp through the newly created Paradise Ridge View Wilderness, along the Burkhart Trail to Cooper Canyon Falls. From there, they hiked west on the Pacific Crest Trail to Cooper Canyon Trail Camp. The entire route was along shady streams with great mountain and desert views. We shared the trail camp with a troop from San Pedro but there was plenty of room for all. The hike out was tougher, being largely uphill at high altitude, but scouts finished strong. They ended the trip with lunch at the biker hangout, Newcomb’s Ranch, before heading back down the mountain.

Camp Cherry Valley is a real treat for the boys. We last traveled to CCV in 2009 so we were overdue and itching for some quality beach and water time. This camp focuses on the beautiful Pacific Ocean – kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding, sailing (on both Lidos and Hobie Cats), swimming, and snorkeling were all enjoyed by the boys. And of course scouts took advantage of the usual camp activities of rifle shooting, archery, first aid, and other key merit badges. Our scouts earned an average of 3 merit badges each, including challenging ones like small-boat sailing. Older scouts tackled the “Advanced Camper Experience” (ACE) program which consisted of open ocean kayaking, snorkeling through sea caves and deep in spectacular kelp forests surrounded by sea lions, and some challenging hikes on the high ridges of the Trans-Catalina Trail. Plus, the camp camaraderie of skits, games, songs, moonlight hikes, and campfires at CCV cannot be beat – by the end of the week, the entire camp was joining our 21 scouts in the catchy Troop 147 yell! Check out the great photos below to see how much fun the boys had.