Boyscout Troop 135 Goes Rock Wall Climbing

I am at Prince of Peace church at 4:45 p.m. ready to leave for our campout at High Bank in Kent to go rock climbing. With 18 scouts and 9 leaders we are ready to leave at 5:15 p.m. and I am in a car with Ryan and Derek Gallo with Mr.Gallo as the driver.

We get to the camp around 6:10 and start setting up the patrol gear. Everything is set up by 7 p.m. and we have a no match fire going in no time. (There were hot coals in the fire pit.) Around 8 p.m. everyone is around the fire and talking. That is when Chris Lauri comes around and pies Tim Peterson in the face. The next thing I know I am fake betting on if I will get pied in the face. The next thing I know it’s 9:00 p.m. and I am playing cards when Chris Lauri comes around saying that he has to talk to me so I step back and I am pied in the face.

I finally go to bed and fall asleep around 11:30 p.m. after playing cards in my tent. Ryan Gallo and I wake up round 5:15 a.m. and immediately start getting ready. We cook the eggs and clean up. By the time everyone except the leaders are done it is 7:00 a.m. We wait around and play frisbee. The leaders finish cooking and cleaning up around 7:30 a.m. and then we wait around for another hour and a half before we start hiking to the rock climbing area.  

We have started rock climbing by 10:00 a.m. and I figured out it’s a bit scary when you fall a foot and look down and are hanging a hundred feet above the ground. Anyway it was a blast. I was one of the only ones that scaled all five walls. It was awesome.

At one time the clip was 3 or so feet above me and there were no more footholds so I jump for the clip, touch it and fall back down the three feet. The whole time was a blast.

The guides we have who are organizing the event call for anybody that wants to go repelling. So I go up and repel down. That was fun but not as fun as climbing. Anyways you had to repel down when you were climbing.  So I stay more with the group that didn’t go repelling after that and do some more climbing on the easiest wall because that was the only rope that they had left up.

The guides call again for people who want to go repelling twice. Some of my friends go up but I stay down and do some more climbing.  Around 3:30 p.m. we head back down and by the time we have gotten all of our gear off and returned it, it was around 3:40 p.m. We head back to camp and get there around 4:00 p.m. My patrol started cooking our homemade pizza right away.

The pizza turns out great and we start cooking some cookies. What we did is we used the dutch ovens that we used for the pizza, kept them over the coals and spiIt the dough in half so it went into two different pie plates. When we were done we had two pie plates of cookies and Ryan Gallo and I share one while Nick Palazzo and Jacob Shilling share the other one. It was great.

The boys that need to start a fire for a requirement start it while Tim Peterson, Peter Ball and I construct a rope swing. My troop performs skits around the Bonfire and then around 9:30 p.m. pull off and go to bed. Ryan Gallo and I once again play some cards and fall asleep around 11:00 p.m. The next morning we wake up at 5:35 a.m. and immediately start cooking our breakfast. We didn’t want to be cleaning up late like last night. I get two or three pancakes and take down my tent because I had to leave early. Mr. Collins also had to leave early with his son so I got a ride home from them and thanked them. I got home and took a shower to leave again for church service.

The Guides that organized the rock climbing and repelling were Ragged Mountain Guides and can be found at www.raggedmountainguides.com. 

For more info. about scouting in Brookfield please contact the following people:  Cubscouts - Rob Libbey Pack 5 at 203-7445-2412, Rob Janofsky Pack 135 @203-775-9578, Boyscouts Kirk Lauri Troop 135 @ 203-470-9050, Jonathan Gibney Troop 8, Tom Tyrell, Troop 5 @ 203-775-4448.