Scouting, Volume 62, Number 1, January-February 1974 Page: 44
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tures — cover equipment, winter
camping skills, methods of travel and
winter hazards in that order. The
weekend field trip to Mt. Rainier is the
test of what has been learned indoors,
a fitting climax to intensive training.
Like many such courses, the Scout
Leader Winter Camping Seminar was
originally established to meet a specif-
ic need. Clyde Lockwood, assistant
chief ranger at Mt. Rainier National
Park, touches on this need at one of
the sessions.
"Let me tell you about a Scoutmas-
ter I don't like," he says. "That's the
guy who arrives in his deluxe camper
while his Scouts come up in some
dad's car. The Scoutmaster and his as-
sistant spend the night in that heated
camper. And the kids? They try to fig-
ure out how the devil to live in the
snow."
With a pained expression on his
face, Lockwood adds, "That's not
Scouting! Those Scouts only learn to
hate snow, rain and the cold. And yet,
if they move into winter camping prop-
erly, they can enjoy themselves, no
matter what the weather is."
Lockwood also reports how he and
his fellow rangers have found young-
sters in the park wet, cold and many
times in advanced stages of hypother-
mia (exposure sickness caused by the
loss of normal body heat faster than it
can be produced). "No kids like this
have died on us yet," he says, "but
they've come awfully close. Informed
Scoutmasters can prevent this kind of
thing happening to their Scouts."
Such occurrences were much more
frequent in 1968 than they are now.
The boys being thrown into a tough
environment without being ready were
suffering, and, of course, so was
Scouting's image.
Finally Gerald Sabel, a Seattle
Scoutm.aster and outdoor expert, com-
bined forces with John Townesly, then
superintendent of Mount Rainier Na-
tional Park, to run the first Scout Lead-
er Winter Camping Seminar in early
1969. Because of its geographical lo-
cation, Seattle is a natural for moun-
taineering and winter sports. Sabel
and Townesly capitalized on this to re-
cruit additional experts outside Scout-
ing and park circles to help with the
training.
For three years — through 1971 —
the winter camping seminar was con-
ducted only as a special project of the
council's Central District. In 1972 it
became a council activity. Now the
course has grown so much that more
than 100 men are enrolled each year.
"We're lucky that there are other
groups conducting such training,"
says Nolan Sanner, the council's di-
rector of camping and seminar advis-
er. "Because of that, we've been able
to restrict our course to registered
Scouters only. This makes things
easier, too, because terminology and
organization is the same for everybody
in the course."
Sanner also points out that, al-
though unit committeemen and district
Scouters take the course, the program
is geared to what a Scoutmaster or Ex-
plorer Advisor does with his unit. "We
want to teach the skills of winter
camping so the leader will do the same
with his boys. The Scoutmaster will
never take his troop out in the snow
unless he knows how to do it himself,"
he says. "Our goal is to get at least
one man from every one of our
council's 300 troops through the
seminar. Leadership turnover makes it
tough, but we think we'll make it
someday."
Speaking of turnover, it's interesting
to note that many of the leaders taking
the winter seminar come from Seat-
tle's inner-city, an area typical of other
cities' depressed areas around the
country where unit leader attrition is
traditionally very high. In such areas,
there is often little money available for
"extras" like camping equipment. Be-
cause of this, there's a course empha-
sis on ways of getting winter clothes
and other gear more economically
than buying everything new from a
store.
"For instance," says Gerald Sabel,
who still directs the seminar, "take
wool clothes — a necessity for com-
fortable winter camping, but often ex-
pensive to buy. We show our leaders
how to take army surplus or thrift store
wool shirts and trousers and shrink
them to fit their Scouts. We show them
tricky ways to fix up packs and to wa-
terproof shoes." Then, with a chuckle,
he adds, "We even alert them to haunt
garage sales for bargains. It really
pays off."
The four night sessions are full of
such helpful tidbits, including cooking
tips, techniques for snowshoe treks
and ski-touring, self-help and rescue
assistance, medical problems and
even the proper care of motor vehicles
under winter conditions. When the
Saturday field trip test to Mt. Rainier
rolls around (split into two 50-man
groups), everybody is prepared.
Well, almost prepared. There's one
thing you can't really learn to do un-
less you do it in person, and that's how
to build an igloo. You can dress warm-
ly and bring along the other essentials
for winter camping — flashlight,
matches, first-aid kit, compass, map,
goggles, knife, extra food and a fire
starter — but igloo making can't be
learned simply by watching movies or
plastic mock-ups.
So, soon after the Scouters arrive at
Narada Falls, not far from Longmire
headquarters in Mt. Rainier National
Park, they get right to work. George
Uchida, co-director of the course and
a member of the council camping
committee, gathers the gang about
him. Then he vigorously stomps down
a snowy circle, clearing an area big
enough for the igloo, plus room to
work around it.
"Ah, the snow's perfect for cutting,"
he says, and begins using an aluminum
snow saw, cutting within the igloo cir-
cle. This procedure hollows out the
platform for the igloo's interior and
also provides snow blocks for the
walls. Uchida also uses a long, broad-
bladed shovel in his work, eventually
cutting blocks about three feet long,
two feet wide and six inches thick.
"If you can lift the blocks, they're
not big enough. If you can't lift them,
they're probably about right," he says
facetiously. "Trim them down so you
can handle them and go to it."
Encouraged by the staff and spurred
on by the immediacy of falling snow,
the Scouters team up in two's and
three's and spread out over the slopes.
An experienced team can build an ig-
loo in an hour and a half, but first-
timers usually require at least three
hours or so. Block by block the shel-
ters grow. Now and then a cheer goes
up as a team caps the final block in
place. Finishing touches are added by
digging lower level entrances and
packing the snow around each block.
Because of snow-drifting conditions,
the entrances are built on the downhill
side of the shelter.
Igloos completed, the teams crawl
their packs inside. Most will use down
sleeping bags for the night, laid out on
plastic foam pads. This foam, with tiny
cells of air, insulates much better than
air mattresses (which allow cold air to
circulate beneath the sleeper) and is
rapidly replacing air mattresses for
modern cold weather camping. (The
air pockets in snow, by the way, are
what makes snow such good insula-
tion and, thus, makes igloos so warm
for Sleeping.) (continued on page 65)
44
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 62, Number 1, January-February 1974, periodical, January 1974; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353642/m1/44/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.