Klondike Derby January 2026 
On January 31st we went to Pouch Camp for the Klondike derby. We had to put all of our personal & troop equipment onto a sled that we brought with us. This trip was very cold (in the teens °F). There were also only 4 scouts on the trip; however this didn’t affect our plan or executing our plan. We showed scout spirit & perseverance during the entire event. We started off the derby by going to the snow run. We had to run through the snow to a certain area, set up a tent, take down the tent, & get back to where we started. We executed & got a pretty fast time on it. The next event we went to was snow rescue, where we had to go through the steps for rescuing a person stranded in the middle of a lake when it is freezing. We demonstrated how we would try & help the person. We stated that we would only help the person if the conditions weren’t too dangerous for ourselves. The next thing we did was going to Berlin Lodge to eat lunch. They provided us with soup, fruit snacks, & After this lunch, we went to knot tying. In knot tying, we tied every knot correctly except for the sheepshank, which we had to be shown how to tie the knot properly. After those events, we went and did sled balance. In this event we had to balance the sled on a flat log for 5 seconds with 2 scouts on the sled, with no one holding the sled for support. We adjusted our strategy to try and accomplish the task, however in the end we did not finish in time. Even though we didn’t finish this event, we learned a lot from the event. We went to shelter building next, where we built a functional shelter with three scouts in it. This is the event in which, we executed the best in. We got the shelter set up very quickly & used our surroundings of trees & snow as support & stability for our shelter & finished with a lot of time to spare. The next event we did was snow blind. This event is where one person has a box over their head & another person has to guide them to the correct location. It is based on actual snow blindness & what you have to do when someone gets it. Then we went to the final event, which was fire building. For this event we were given a choice between matches and flint and steel, fire starters, and a bundle of sticks. The goal was to burn down a rope at the top of the fire pit within the 10 minute time limit. There were bonus points for using flint and steel over matches. We opted for the matches, so that we could use our time efficiently rather than wasting time with the flint and steel. We also used both the fire starter given to us and the fire starter that some of the scouts brought. We got the fire lit and it was going pretty well for most of the time until something bad happened. Nathan was trying to get a stick to catch on fire but when he did that, the sticks collapsed. We got the sticks back up; however we didn’t have enough time to get back And burn the rope. Although we had our mishaps at the Klondike derby, it was still a very fun trip. It taught us the importance of persevering when things don’t go exactly according to plan. It also taught all of us that we have to work hard for the best results. I think the most important thing that I learned from this trip is that we have to make the best of the situation and have to play with the cards we are dealt. Overall, we performed pretty well considering the amount of scouts we had available compared to what other troops had that we were competing against. Everyone was also doing their best and did the job that they were assigned pretty well. We had a sense of camaraderie, and we persevered together throughout the whole trip. By: Peter Fiduccia