Klondike Derby 2022

On January 15th of 2022, Troop 66 participated in the 2022 Klondike Derby at the Quail Hill Scout reservation. The Klondike Derby is a fun experience where Boy Scouts get to compete to show their skills in various events as well as bond with their patrol.  When we arrived at 7:30 about 2 groups of 5 scouts started by setting up the sleighs and weighing them on the scales. We received our schedule of randomly ordered events that included first aid, pioneering, cooking, team building, water rescue, soup kitchen, fire building, communication, and orienteering. We got the score cards and headed to our first station. The patrol I was in was assigned cooking first. Each person in the patrol was assigned to cook a brownie in an orange peel with coals. My patrol went through this task fairly easily by scooping out the oranges and using the peels as bowls that we wrapped in tin foil. We got a 23/25 in this. 

The next station was water rescue where my patrol was asked to use several methods to rescue our patrol leader from a certain distance away. We used a ladder, a human chain, and other methods we had learned in the past. After that we went to fire building. We had to burn through a string tied 2 feet above the firepit and answer questions on various historical events and people. My patrol got the questions right but didn’t burn through the string. Next was first aid, where we were assigned to treat a person who fell off a cliff and had a broken arm and leg and a gash on forehead with the medical equipment we had brought. 

At around 12:30 we went to the middle of the camp for lunch and to deliver soup for a 30 minute break and then went over to team building. In this activity, we had to tie ropes around an A-frame so we could rescue a scout from an island. For this challenge, we tied two ropes at the bottom legs of the A-frame and one rope on the top. The bottom ropes were used like stilts and the top rope stabilized the structure. The next station was orienteering. A field was set up with letters scattered around. We had to find a password by finding the letters at the coordinates with a compass. The second to last place we had to go to was pioneering. We had to tie lashing on a stick so we could grab a trap from a hole. This task was the hardest for our group. Lastly, we had our last camp, communications. For this activity, we had to get a golf ball from one side of the field to the other by holding up pipes for it to run through. The trick was you couldn’t move when the ball was rolling in your pipe and you couldn’t talk.

To conclude, the Klondike Derby is an eventful and interactive experience where scouts can enjoy a competitive environment and have fun.