Color Wars II: Attack of the Scouts

On Friday, April 24th, the scouts gathered to load the trusty Troop 281 trailer full of both personal gear and very heavy patrol boxes in final preparation for the next campout, Color Wars: Rematch! The anticipation for this particular campout was especially high, as the previous Color War campout earlier in the scout year had been ended early due to the unending deluge of cold rain the entire weekend. This time, however, the weather was relatively calm and warm, a complete 180 from the miserable conditions of the last Color War.

From the start, everybody knew this was going to be an interesting Color War. Due to the location of the scout campsites in the back of Camp Achewon, the trailer needed to be hauled as far up the drivable path as possible, but Mr. Carlson’s car was struggling to pull the heavy trailer even on paved roads, and without Mr. Ossman’s “Mighty Yukon,” the problem seemed to have no solution. Then Mr. S, the former Troop 281 scoutmaster, showed up and devised a plan to use his uncle’s tractor (Mr. S’ uncle owns the land Achewon sits on) to pull the trailer to the back of the camp. After fixing a small breakdown with the trailer hitch, the tractor was able to haul the trailer…with a small army of scouts pushing it from the back. Another problem arose when both the Hurricane and Viking Patrols claimed the Falcon Ridge campsite as their Color War HQ, but settled the matter by simply combining themselves temporarily into the Black Dragon Patrol. The Falcon and Kodiak Bear Patrols also combined into the Falcon Bear Patrol, leaving only three patrols competing in Color Wars: Black Dragon, Falcon Bear and Flaming Arrow.

The next morning, the Falcon Bear Patrol performed flag raising, and Color Wars truly began with open season being declared for flag stealing. After being dismissed from flag raising, the patrols went through a round robin of challenges that were: tent set up/pack up time trial, a test of first aid know-how in an “emergency” case, Will Carlson’s card challenges, and a lengthy orienteering course set up by Avery Reynolds. After the four challenges were done with, the patrols went back to their campsites for lunch. During that time, I asked some of the Falcon Bear patrol members on their opinions on this Color War, and these are their responses:

Elliot Horstman: “Awesome! I’ve never been on such a fun campout!”
Ross King: “Happy, and fun!”

Alex Stringfellow: “Interesting, better than the last Color War (due to it getting rained out). The Flaming Arrows are easy prey, and we get our own campsite this time.”

The second half of Color Wars started around 2 PM when the famous “fire building contest” took place, where one scout from each patrol builds a fire with only one match, while all the rest of the scouts go gather burning material. The challenge was supposed to last around half an hour, but thanks to Nick Burnley (of the Black Dragons) having both skills at setting fire to things and a pre-harvested supply of easy-burning hay, Nick literally “smoked” the competition in 10 minutes, although some flag stealing was attempted in that time. After the fire burning contest was a second round robin with different challenges: the traditional Spider Web maze, the “tower of power” (with one scout always holding a hula hoop, the patrol must get the hoop down a very tall pole then back up again while being timed), the “bound ankles” challenge, a blindfold obstacle course, and Carlson’s Challenge Cards 2.0. The obstacle course, “tower of power”, and the bound ankles were fun challenges, but “spider web” was the most difficult of all the challenges, being that most scouts were too large to fit through the holes (the Black Dragons built human pyramids to get Nick Burnley over the top), and Will Carlson’s challenge was a little ridiculous (the most ridiculous one forcing one scout to consume an entire package of Oreo cookies. And no, I’m not pulling legs here, I’m dead serious that Will Carlson got scouts to force bunches of Oreo cookies into their mouths.)

After the second round robin was the dinner challenge, where the patrols make their best dishes to impress the brave tasting judges (I think health coverage is provided, not sure), who for this campout were Mr. Wilson and Mr. Carlson. The Black Dragon patrol simply made a giant smorgasbord of what originally were going to be their separate dinners (Hamburgers for Viking and Steak Chunks for Hurricane). However, before dinner could be served, Brandon Bodner got an injury when he got accidentally cut by a pocketknife, and had to leave the campground to go get medical attention. After dinner was flag lowering and campfire, the latter being held at the chapel. At campfire, there were demonstrations of skits, songs (Nick Burnley and Joel Neuhart sang the theme from “Dragon Tales”, and sang it off-key too), and scary stories. When campfire was done, the scouts split up into various activities: the Flaming Arrow patrol went to roast marshmallows, some scouts went to bed, some took Bret Carwile up on the offer to “sleep under the stars” and went to fetch their sleeping bags, and the rest gathered in front of the flag poles to play the famous “hide and seek” camp wide game, where the scouts do their best ninja impersonations and try to hide in the woods while the adults go try and find them in a period of 30 minutes, give or take (this also plays into the Color Wars scoring structure: a patrol gets 1 point for every scout not found by the adults). Only two scouts were found, Nick Burnley and Jack Van Keuren, but only because they thought someone saw them and kept asking “Who is that between (campsite name) and (campsite name)?” and so were caught in the process of switching hiding spots. No other hiding scout was found, however, and so after the game ended the scouts went back to their camps and went to bed.

The next morning started off kind of groggy, as half-asleep scouts began to disassemble their tents in preparation for leaving. At flag raising, flag stealing was ended, pretty much ending Color Wars, but Brett (acting SPL as Will had left the previous night to go to the Turpin High School Prom) would not reveal who won the War until he would dismiss everybody back at church. After flags, the scouts who camped in the woods brought their belongings out to the parade field to be picked up by the trailer…except Mr. S was away, and only he could operate the tractor, so the troop trailer was hauled to the parking lot on top of a hill where it would be loaded without danger of being to heavy to haul up the hill. The patrol boxes were driven to the trailer via the golf cart, which the adults drove around in. For the personal belongings of the scouts, the only option was to carry, haul, or drag their gear to the trailer.

When the trailer was mostly packed, the scouts attended chapel with Mr. Katt giving a speech about the underlying themes of the “David and Goliath” Bible story. After the scouts were done with chapel, the trailer was loaded with the final items the scouts had brought, and then performed a series of “police lines” all the way back to the cars to ensure that there was no trash left where the scouts had been. When the camp was deemed clean, the scouts headed back to the church. Finally, after the trailer was unpacked, tent cleaning duties assigned, and other post-campout necessities were done with, Brett called the scouts to fall in one last time to announce the winner of Color Wars: the Black Dragon Patrol, the Falcon Bears surprisingly not far behind in second, and in third/last place was the Flaming Arrow patrol, not far behind the Falcon Bears.

Ben Hallenbeck, Troop Historian