Greetings to All.

Did you know that Troop 111 has a very long "history" with Philmont Scout Ranch? It's true! Philmont started the same year as Troop 111: 1939 - a rather interesting coincidence in itself. East Coast interest in the Ranch picked up considerably in the 1950's, when local Councils (including our National Capital Area Council) began sending bus contingents across the country. One of the earliest such NCAC groups, in 1955, reportedly had over 25 Scouts from Troop and Explorer Post 111 - nearly half the contingent! I have a photocopy of the contingent photo for that year in our archives; of note, Curt Cramer and Robert Renaud, our first 2 Eagle Scouts (1958), were in that group. [1955 was also the year I was born, so another interesting coincidence! - but sadly, I didn't make it to the Ranch that year....] (Unconfirmed) rumors also claim other major 111 groups attended in the late 50's and again in the late 60's. Smaller groups (1 - 4 Scouts) also occasionally joined "provisional" Council Crews in the 70's and 80's.

Prior to my arrival in May of 1988, 4 Troop 111 Scouts (Star Scout Mark Dieter and Eagle Scouts Jeff Lucier, Shane McLaughlin, and Nate McMullen) signed up provisionally for one of the 1989 Council bus trips, and I immediately joined them when I became Scoutmaster and found out they were going. I ended up as the de facto Assistant Busmaster on that trip, since I was the only other Adult (besides the Busmaster) with Philmont experience. We went again in 1992 (John Brady, Geoff Evans, Greg Landrigan, and Chris Yarbrough), when I was the first ever Council Planemaster. There were 53 Scouts and Leaders on that contingent. That experience gave the Troop the experience and knowledge needed to go independently, which we did in 95, 96, 97, 98, and 2000. In 1997, the Ranch instituted the "every 2 years rule," which took effect in 1998 - so that's why no Philmont for us in 1999 or 2001. We hope to go again in 2002, but we're just on the edge of a viable waiting list slot, so it may not happen. But even if it doesn't, I'm sure our long association with Philmont will continue "down the trail."

It is interesting to note that about 90% of the Troop 111 Scouts who have attended Philmont with me have also gone on to make Eagle.

On Sunday, February 25th, we accepted our first three new 2001 Webelos into the Troop, from Pack 149 at Cherrydale Methodist. Joining the Troop were Zachary B., Peter C., and Pete F. Welcome! Thanks to Luke B., Sam F., and Carl S. for assisting with the Bridge Crossing Ceremony (at the Knights of Columbus Hall, nicely done). We're also expecting about a half dozen Webelos from Pack 111 in late March, plus several "free agents" (including Will B.) from the "at large" Taylor contingent. Stay tuned....

On a sadder note, however, we also bid farewell to Matt McE., who is departing to pursue his many other interests. Matt may return to Philmont this coming summer with his old Troop in Chicago. He leaves us as a First Class Scout. Good Luck to both he and father Hank (who was my co-Advisor on this past summer's Philmont trek (and also a co-freshman with me at Georgetown, 3rd New North dorm, in 1973 - small world!))

The February Board of Review ended up graduating a healthy crop of Junior Scouts. Moving up the ladder were: Patrick D., Brad G., Ryan K., and Anthony M. (all Tenderfoot), and Dale R. and Mark T. (Second Class). Our next Board of Review, by the way, is currently scheduled for March 18th.

On the Merit Badge Front, things kept rolling along: David G. earned Personal Fitness, Brad J. earned both Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation, John P. earned Backpacking and Hiking, Carl S. earned Journalism, and Dan and Nick T. both earned Personal Management. Another decent month! Thanks to all the Troop Merit Badge Counselors who ran these efforts.

...and Congratulations to All of the above Scouts!

The 50/20 Hike will be held Saturday, March 10th; this year, we will be starting off with about 25 miles on the C&O Canal, with the hard-chargers doing the "Arlington Loop" for the final 25 miles. In addition, the Patrol campouts will be held on the last weekend in March, March 30th - April 1st.

On the President's Day Holiday weekend, we headed northwest into Pennsylvania in search of some snow. This was our 5th straight year visiting Seven Springs Resort (west of Somerset), and our 4th straight year staying at Kooser State Park. Because our last few trips up I-270 had been hours-long bumper-to-bumper nightmares, we tried a new route out of town - out the Greenway, then Rt 7 to Winchester, then Rt 522 through Berkeley Springs, intersecting with I-70 just as it turns north into Pennsylvania. An amazingly fast trip out, especially since it was raining (which usually means a brutal mess on I-66 and I-270). Less than 90 minutes to Winchester! Heading west on Rt 31 out of Somerset, the rain turned to sleet and snow - not so fun for our fellow travellers, but an encouraging sign when you're going skiing! We arrived at Kooser State Park just before 9pm, probably our fastest Friday night trip ever getting here. Kooser offers 10 "rustic" cabins for lodging - extremely well built cabins, heated by wood stoves, with running hot/cold water, modern ovens, electrical lighting, and refrigerators. Each cabin is a different model, and can take from 4 to 7 people. We had 5 cabins this trip, and it seemed we were the "crowd" for the weekend, as only two of the other cabins showed signs of life the whole weekend long. After set-up and conferencing re Saturday morning, everyone racked out around 11.

We were up and at 'em at 6:30am Saturday, with a temperature of 19 degrees, a strong breeze, and a steady lake-effect snow falling. We hit the road at 7:30 for the 25 minute drive to Seven Springs, hitting a few snow squalls on the way. Seven Springs is a huge place, with about 20 genuine trails, many of them over 50 yards wide. Surprisingly, despite the very cold temperatures (17 when we arrived), they only had snow guns going on about half a dozen slopes. After doing the rental and lift tickets thing, we all buddied up and headed out. Most of the Junior Scouts stayed on the "Front Face" slopes - a little better shielded from the wind, and easier slopes - while the Senior Scouts headed over the the "North Face" slopes - much less crowded, but also directly exposed to the brutal northwest wind which was howling along between 20 and 40 mph all day (with an occasional white-out snow shower just to keep things "interesting"). But with minimal "packed powder" over ice, the slopes were blazing fast, and we enjoyed speed-runs as fast as we dared. There were no lift lines, so we got in over 30 runs - a great day! Of note, we assisted one skier who had broken his collarbone falling just in front of us (he was OK). At 4:15, we headed back to the cabins, changed into Scout uniforms, and headed off to dinner at the Italian Oven in Somerset - spaghetti and meatballs, plus the usual frills. Since Mass wasn't until 7:30, we set off in search of the arcade/pool hall in Somerset - but it was closed! - on a Saturday night! (I dumped all my shares of "Down Under" Pool Hall as soon as I got home.) So we parked it in the lot at St. Peter's Church, and listened to CD's for a half-hour. The maroon van was treated to a CD by Mike Cross, one of my favorite bluegrass artists, and (surprisingly) the guys really enjoyed it. After Mass, we headed back to Kooser under clearing skies, and watched about half of our first movie of the weekend: "Dawn of the Dead," in the Senior Scout Cabin. Such a ridiculously bad movie, it qualifies as a comedy. We bagged that around 10, and everyone dispersed to their cabins; everyone slept well Saturday night.

On Sunday, we got going around 7:15, again with a light snow falling. Even colder than Saturday (14 degrees), but not as windy. Back on the slopes by around 8:45, for an instant repeat of Saturday. We were sobered by reports of 2 serious injuries the previous night, both requiring helicopter evacuations (no easy feat at night in such a stiff wind, so you know they had to have been bad). The slopes were both better and worse than the previous day - lots of powder from all night snow-blowing, but still with lots of bare spots (glare ice) where the wind had blown off the cover. Tricky skiing. The Senior Scout group started off on the Front face for an hour or so, then moved over to the North Face again, once the lift lines started building up. The day cleared nicely, and we were soon skiing under perfectly clear blue skies - a heck of a lot more pleasant than Saturday's snow squalls. Not surprisingly, the crowds picked up considerably through the day, and we ended up selecting slopes based on their minimal lift-lines (after Saturday, we were spoiled!) Around 3:30, we headed back over the the Front Face, and hit some short but steep "Blue" slopes which (not surprisingly) were being eschewed by most of the beginners and intermediates. That took us to 5:00, and we ended for the day (and the season).

In the lot, we helped "rescue" a car which had a failed emergency brake and was rolling into the cars parked in front of it; in the best interests of "Be Prepared," we fashioned a chock out of a Planters Peanuts can (it worked). Out of the lot by 5:30, and back to Kooser for a Pizza dinner, courtesy of delivery by the Italian Oven, while finishing up "Dawn of the Dead." Eating pizza while watching this movie is probably not what the director envisioned.... Once that was over, we elevated our standards to a "merely" bad second movie: "Army of Darkness." Yuchh. That ended around 10:30, and everyone returned to their cabins under incredibly beautiful skies - the secondary benefit of the howling cold front of Saturday and the resulting clear skies that afternoon. Another night quiet/quick! On Monday, we did reveille around 5:30, and hit the road around 6:40. Even with a breakfast stop in Breezewood, we were in the St. Agnes lot by 10:45. A great weekend!

Participants included: Luke B., Charles B., Drew DeL., Ross D., Todd G., Matt G., Dan H., Will K., Matt McE., Dan McF., Jack O., Patrick P., Dale R., Thomas S., Neil S., and Eric W., plus Adults Roy DeL., Tim H., Hovey K., Rick W., and yours truly.

Proving once again that too much fun isn't enough, we were back on the road just 5 days after returning from Kooser, for our annual Winter Cabin Campout. Due to a reservations screwup by the York-Adams Area Council, we lost out on our traditional stay at Camp Tuckahoe. So, we went with their suggested Plan B - Camp Conewago, a smallish camp off U.S. Rt 30 new New Oxford, Pennsylvania (about halfway between Gettysburg and Hanover). Oddly, despite the fact that I did over 2 years of Scouting less than 30 miles away from here, this was the first I had ever even heard of this camp, so you know it had to be a bit "obscure."

Since the previous week's alternate road-routes to Kooser had been such a success time-wise, we once again used the Dulles Toll Road and Greenway, and once again enjoyed a very fast trip to Leesburg. This time, however, we headed north from Leesburg, on US 15, making it to Frederick in an hour. I think we have a new way for trips north or west, folks! After a 20 minute detour while yours truly got his bearings straight, we rediscovered US 15 north on the other side of Frederick, and cruised up to Thurmont for dinner. Unfortunately, Thurmont was an absolute zoo with hundreds of people heading to a Catholic retreat at Mt. St. Mary's College just up the road in Emmittsburg. So, an hour for dinner. Fortunately, we weren't travelling much further afterwards, maybe 45 minutes further to the camp. Just as we approached the camp, however, the maroon van suffered a catastrophic failure, shearing both the upper and lower ball joints on the front left hand side as we (gently!) took a sharp downgrade on the entrance road. Lucky for us, we were less than a quarter mile from the camp at that point, so we just "slid" the van over to the side (the left front tire was locked up), and walked it the rest of the way in, crunching through about 1 - 2 inches of snow.

Camp Conewago is a rather small camp - probably less than 10 acres - but it has a large open parade field with six open glorified Adirondack shelters spread in a row between the old dining hall and administration buildings on a small rise to the south of the field. It allegedly dates from 1915, so certainly one of the oldest Scout camps still in use in the entire country. The dining hall and admin buildings have both been converted into general use cabins, with 22 bunks in the dining hall and another 8 in the admin building. A bit tight, but all in all considerably nicer than Tuckahoe (our original reservation). Setup went quickly, and we soon had nice fires burning in the dining hall's two woodburning stoves (both of which had fan forced ventilation, which did an excellent job heating the entire hall). The stove in the admin building wasn't as good a design, however, and took some serious coaxing before getting going. Since we had a very clear sky, a good hour was taken up with astronomy observations (we got a great view of Jupiter and 4 of its moons!) Inside for half the movie "Logan's Run" - a fascinating look at the basis for our many hundreds of games of flashlight tag going by the same name. Then once more outside to do a second set of (required) constellation observations. A late bedtime, but not ridiculously so, and the room was quiet surprisingly quickly.

On Saturday morning, we got a later start than usual, under mostly overcast skies. Harold E. (our ASM from Connecticut) started off with wilderness survival training - building an emergency shelter. Meanwhile, Ray DiN. (Sr.) and I got the van towed into New Oxford for emergency repair work. Then it was up to the cabin for Rich S.'s first lecture for the Astronomy Merit Badge, with occasional bursts of sunshine breaking through the clouds. That led directly to lunch, for Troop 111's world famous English muffin mini-pizzas. The afternoon session started off with firebuilding - not as challenging with the snow cover quickly melting off, but still a lot of fun (and 7 Scouts got most of the S2d module completed with successful fires). After an unsuccessful effort at Capture the Flag, we held about a 90 minute long football game, where Larry's Lunatics slaughtered Bob's Bumblers, 28 - 0. Ouch.

Everyone retired to the cabin for some downtime (cards, chess games, and one of Harold's quite interesting Wilderness survival videotapes), which led up to an excellent dinner (a sausage and potato "stew" with 5 kinds of sausage and 2 different types of potatoes). That went surprisingly late, and (somewhat to my surprise) the Scouts selected another movie versus a real game of Logan's Run: Blade Runner. In addition Luke, Carl, Nathan, Jack, and Charlie opted for an extended game of Diplomacy, with Rich and Larry as the adult tyrranical maniacs bent on world domination. Rich, Luke and Charlie dominated the game controlled most of the board by the time the game was called. The movie and game took us all to midnight (with a number of Scouts and adults crashing well before then), and it was lights out by about 12:30 - a long day, and a bunch of tired Scouts and Scouters.

Sunday dawned cloudy and misty, and the threatened rain started up just about the same time as reveille - 8am. Since the local Mass wasn't til 11am, and the weather wasn't conducive to any other outdoor activities, we decided on a quick(er) getaway to Arlington, and 12:00 Mass at home; this saved about 2 hours of everyone's afternoon, and also made sure we'd make the Pack 149 Bridge Crossing, too. After a pretty good effort by all the Scouts, the catastrophe previously known as Camp Conewago was quickly returned to its former organized cleanliness, and we hit the road, arriving at St. Agnes with about 5 minutes to spare for noon Mass. A pretty good weekend, but the lack of snow was definitely a disappointment - well hopefully next year!

Participants included: Luke B., Michael C., Patrick D., Drew DeL., Ray DiN., Jr., Michael D., Todd G., Matt G., Will K., Ryan K., Anthony M., Dan McF., Stefan N., Jack O., Nathan P., Dale R., Charlie S., Carl S., Jimmy S., Neil S., plus adults Ray DiN., Sr., Harold E., Larry H. and Juliana B., Mike K., Glenn McG., Rich S., and yours truly. A special thanks to Ed C., who drove up Sunday morning to provide the seats needed to compensate for the loss of the maroon van, and Harold E., who drove all the way from Connecticut to join us for his third Winter Cabin campout. Also, congratulations to Stefan N., who completed his Life Practical on this trip.

- Dr. Bob, Scoutmaster

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25 February 2001