Dallin's Birthday

Today is Dallin's birthday. He's 13 years old now! So, Happy Birthday, Dallin! Let's hope Rick doesn't bite you today!

Scout Camp: Day 6

Well, day 6 wasn't really a full day. All we did was we got packed up, ate the rest of the Cap'n Crunch, and then, we left. Fun, huh?

Scout Camp: Day 5

I think our Wilderness Survival went well! My air mat had a hole in it, so it deflated in 5 minutes. In the morning, I thought I was left by myself, but I saw Rick's blue sleeping bag, and Dallin's head peeking out from behind a log a couple yards away.

We got back to camp and ate Cap'n Crunch. Then we worked on our merit badges some more. We got our Wilderness Survival and Citizenship in the Nation merit badge done!

We then took a small hike over to Ski Lake. We got to a fork in the road. We tried going up one way, but it led to a patch of snow. Im glad we didn't go across it. Jeremy and I threw rocks into the snow, and they fell right through into a deep trench. So, the snow only 3 inches thick!

We went down the other way, which led to a small stream.

We hiked just a ways to the lake. Brother Jackson took a swim in the lake. Turns out, the water was really cold!

We ate chicken and tuna on crackers for lunch.

We had a rock skipping competition for a while. The best score was either 10 or 12. You can watch us skip rocks in the video on the right side of the screen (notice Dallin's sweatshirt was on backwards!)

Dallin and Jeremy went fishing. They didn't have any fishing poles, so the used a hiking pole, and the fishing line and hooks from their Wilderness Survival kits.

Rick and I hunted for grasshoppers for Dallin and Jeremy's bait in the meadow near the lake (look closely in this picture, and you'll Brother Jackson sleeping out in the meadow).

I caught some pretty big grasshoppers.

Rick said that they're high in protein, and that got me curious. So, yeah, I ate one. I influenced Rick to do it too.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the lake, Brother Spencer, Randall, and my dad built a raft out of logs and rope. Jaren and Brother Spencer tried it out. It got a little waterlogged, but it held together nicely!

Dallin and Jeremy tried out their fishing poles and they caught a "fish"! It turned out to be just some bait thing you put on the end of your fishing line.

They did find some neat bones though.

When we got back to Leavitt Lake, we had freeze-dried lasagna and freeze-dried blueberry cheesecake. I had one more requirement for my Wilderness Survival merit badge, and that was to purify water by boiling it. I tried lighting a match (which I did) and I burnt myself a little bit. Then Brother Kukuk started laughing at me.

Scout Camp: Day 4

On day 4, we got to sleep in for a while since we weren't hiking to a new location anymore! It felt great, and my mosquito bite healed a whole lot over night! We had our breakfast of oatmeal. Then, we worked on some merit badge work. Brother Spencer helped with our Wilderness Survival merit badge, Brother Jackson helped with our First Aid merit badge, and Randall helped us with our Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.

Then we had burritos for lunch We used leftover tortillas, Velveeta fake cheese, and dehydrated refried beans. what's funny is that it tasted so good, but at home, we would've thought it tasted gross! That's what we get for being out in the wilderness for 3 days! But some people camping near us gave us their extra variety pack of chips, peaches n' cream oatmeal, and hot chocolate!

Then, we played Capture the Flag. That was fun. Then we saw Brother Kukuk come to came with Brother Jackson's truck! We finally had contact to the outside world! But best of all, Brother Kukuk brought a bucket of KFC, fruit punch, orange soda, root beer, milk, and Cap'n Crunch! I couldn't remember the last time I had fried chicken that tasted so good!

Anyway, we then went to a small area not too far from our camp. That night, we were going to do a requirement for our Wilderness Survival merit badge by sleeping separately out by ourselves with only our sleeping bags. We all looked for good makeshift shelters. Tree branches on a tree work well because they can shelter you from rain and boulders can work because they can block you from the wind. I found a great shelter! It had a tree branches and a giant boulder! Also, Rick was going to sleep by another giant boulder 3 feet away from me!

Then, we went to a huge snow patch next to the mountains.

Brother Kukuk had Dallin and I race each other up to the snow patch up to the top of the mountains. So we're running up the mountain, but Dallin is beating me. We both race up the dried riverbed on the right side of the mountain, but once Dallin gets up to the snow patch on the right, Brother Kukuk shouts to him and says he meant the snow patch on the left! So Dallin has to cut across the mountain over to the left! I try to do the same thing, but I kept slipping around on the snow, so there was no way I could get up over there! So I just head on down.

Dallin was trying to get down, but he was in the middle of the snow patch, so he was moving really, really, slowly down.

Meanwhile, down at the bottom, all the guys tried to move a boulder.

I finally found a good place to cut across the mountain, so I went over and helped Dallin...

... while the other guys kept on pushing their boulder.

Finally, we both got down safely.

And the other guys finally moved the boulder a good couple of feet.

On the way back, Dallin and I said that we discovered a new mountain pass and named it Dalvis Pass.

When we got back to camp, we started dinner. We first had a cheesy rice soup. It was good, but I think it would've been better if the rice was cooked all the way. We then had Minestrone soup. That one was pretty good too.

Our camp got really windy, so we moved to a new camp up the hill. Then, we went and got our sleeping mats and sleeping bags to go and sleep alone in the wilderness. Will we survive? Will we get eaten by bears? Will one of us have to go to bathroom in the night? Tune in to find out what happened on DAY 5!!

Scout Camp: Day 3

Are you ready to hear one of the most hardest hikes we've ever done!? Okay, here it goes:

The 9 of us (including my dad) got all packed up, and then we had a small breakfast of Nutrigrain bars and Pop Tarts. Then we started hiking. We got down to Walker River, but just like the river the previous day, the trail continued on the other side.

This time we were smarter, and decided to build a rock bridge across. Dallin and Brother Spencer ran across the river, while the rest of us stayed put. We started placing big rocks close together into the river, while Dallin and Brother Spencer did the same thing on the opposite side. We started forming a system where Rick would get the rocks (which he did a great job on because he got all the huge rocks) and he'd pass them to me. Then I would pass the rocks to Jeremy. Then he would pass the rocks to Jaren, who'd pass the rocks onto Alec, who'd pass them on to Dallin who would place them in the river. Finally, we had our bridge made, and we used hiking poles to steady ourselves while crossing the bridge.

Actually, I take that back. We had to go across the river, and hike across a barren landscape to get to the trail.

Remember what I said about the Pacific Crest Trail? Well, turns out most our hiking on the 3rd day was on the Pacific Crest Trail! This hike was the hardest because we were going from about 7,000 or 8,000 feet in elevation to 10,600 feet in elevation!

We rest stopped at a creek where we ate some Clif bars and got some more water with the water purifier. After I rested a while, I hiked on ahead of everybody. I hiked until I stopped to wait for the other guys. When Rick caught up with me, I heard him point and yell, "BROTHER JACKSON!!"

I saw Brother Jackson walk out of the clearing, and my dad and I were happy as ever. You see, we were supposed to have peanut butter and jelly on tortillas, but Brother Jackson had the tortillas, and he wasn't with us for most of the hike. Also, my dad was carrying 4 pounds of peanut butter and jelly and I was carrying 2 pounds of strawberry jam, so we could finally lighten the load a bit! We talked to him, and I told him about my mosquito bite. Then we all kept on hiking.

Brother Jackson found us by driving to the campsite we were hiking to. He hiked from there up to the top, then down to us.

The higher an higher we hiked, the less plants we saw. We finally got to the point where there were only small patches of trees.

Randall wanted to eat lunch at the top, but my dad said that there wouldn't be much trees and shade left. So we ate lunch at a patch of trees.

My dad was smart, because right after lunch, I had to go to the bathroom, really bad!

Then, we kept on hiking. As there became lesser trees, we saw more and more snow.

Somehow, Dallin and Randall got ahead of us (again). We got to a shortcut up to the top. The shortcut was really steep. We thought we saw them going up the shortcut, but it was actually two other hikers.

We kept on zigzagging up the trail until here was no trees at all. All there was were rocks and gravel.

Do you wonder where all the trees went? I asked the same thing until I saw the valley down below!

Finally, my dad and I caught up with Dallin and Randall! While everyone else were far behind, Dallin, Randall and I cooked up a scheme. Dallin and I went over to a nearby snowpatch and made some snowballs.

We hid our snowballs behind Randall.

When everybody caught up with us, I said, "Isn't it hot up here?"

Then Dallin said, "I'm just glad this SNOW hasn't melted yet!"

Then we all yelled, "ATTACK!!!" and then we pelted everybody with snowballs!

And what's cool is that we were only 8 miles from Sonora Pass!

From there, we could either hike another 3 miles or so up to the top, or just take a steep shortcut to the top. We thought long and hard about this. Then we just said, "Oh, what the heck, let's take the shortcut!"

Which I'm glad we did because it only took us two minutes! Before we knew it, we were at the top! And all there is at the top is a sign saying: NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT!

We started hiking down the other side of the mountain. That's when we saw our destination: Leavitt Lake.

We hiked all the way down to the lake. And first things first, we fell into a heap.

It was really windy at the lake! But still, it was awesome! It looked like Scotland!

There was these cool mountains nearby too!

Then, we had freeze dried Rice and Chicken for dinner. We added some water to it, and wow, it was pretty good!

The day was a victorious day because Leavitt Lake was our last camp, which means all our major hiking on this trip was done!

Scout Camp: Day 2

The next day, we ate our granola with powdered milk for breakfast, and then we all got packed up and ready the day.

I got a mosquito bite on my eyelid over the night so my eyelid was all puffed up. Then, my dad put a pound of calamine lotion on it, which made it look worse.

We continued on the trail until we got to a river where we ate some trail mix.

While we were hiking, we tried to find Hidden Lake. I don't think we even found it (maybe that's why it's called Hidden Lake)! Anyway, we continued our hike over some rocky terrain.

We hiked and hiked until we got to a river. The trail continued on the other side, and there wasn't really a way to cross it. We found a fairly safe way across on some rocks. The only problem was: We had our heavy packs on. I stepped on a slippery rock, and the weight of my pack pulled back and I fell into the river.

I got to the other side, but I was soaking wet, so I had to change my clothes. Then, we just decided to eat lunch there. We ate Ritz and Triscuits crackers with salami, mustard, and Easy Cheese. You know, the cheese stuff in the can? Anyway, we ate lunch, filled up our water bottles with the water purifier in the river, and continued on our way.

We hiked until we got to Fremont Lake.

We took in the view for a while , and then we hiked some more. Some where on the trail, Dallin and Randall got too far ahead, and Brother Spencer lost his map somewhere. We hiked until we came to a rest stop. We ate some more trail mix, talked for a while, and then we got our bearings.

We hiked up an abandoned trail that nobody has hiked on for a long time (you could tell because the trail was flooded with pine cones). Eventually, we got to Walker River, where we planned to camp for the night.

Rick, Jaren, Alec, Jeremy, and I made up a game where someone would say a line from a Disney movie, and you would have to guess which movie the line came from. We played our while we waited for Dallin and Randall. Brother Spencer went to go look for them.

It night grew darker and darker. We added some water to our potato flakes, and we had mashed potatoes for dinner. Finally we saw Brother Spencer trudging back with Dallin and Randall (and he found his map)!

It turns out, Dallin and Randall tried to look for us, so they went back to Fremont Lake, but we weren't there, so they hiked back, but instead of taking the abandoned trail, they took a different one that goes to Walker River a longer way! So all-in-all, they hiked an extra 6 miles!