Staff reports
HANCOCK COUNTY — It takes teamwork to pull a Klondike sled over the snow.
Watch the dogs that pull sleds in the Arctic.
Or ask the 65 Boy Scouts who took the place of huskies recently during a campout at the Heartland Campground near Greenfield.
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They hitched up in teams of five to Klondike-style sleds and had to work together to pull a rider over a marked course of about 100 feet.
The purpose for the event is to bring local Boy Scouts together as a group and work on teamwork and communication, said event chairwoman Shelly Bates. She and local Troop 242, of which she is a leader, organized the event.
“The other thing is being prepared,” she said. “We will be having an emergency drill, and the senior patrol leaders asked what kind of emergency it would be, and I said just to be prepared.”
Along with the sled races, Scouts also had to work together to walk across “the raging Yukon” on two-by-four boards. Teams of three had to lay the boards end to end and then walk over them without falling off, said Crossroads of America Council, Boy Scouts of America volunteer Bob Hansen.
In a game called Husky Tails, teams of five boys lined up, held onto each other and then tried to catch other teams by tagging the last boy in that line. The team that stayed independent the longest — by running together — won.
Then Venture Crew 233 put on an emergency drill. In mid-afternoon, Scouts learned that a major disaster had occurred nearby. When they reached the mock disaster scene, volunteers in realistic make-up feigned serious injuries, such as wood and glass shards protruding from their foreheads, broken bones and lacerations. The Scouts practiced making cloth bandages and splints as well as carrying injured people.
Emily LaBore used make-up, fake blood and putty to create the wounds on the mock victims, and her father, John LaBore, supervised the eight stations. A 16-year-old sophomore at Greenfield-Central High School, Emily participates in Boy Scouting’s program for high school-age teens. She likes to make the gory wounds because, she said, it’s important for the young Scouts to see what injuries actually look like instead of merely reading about them in a book or practicing on a dummy.
Activities at the weekend campout also included an Iron Chef cooking competition. Troops entered their own concoctions, made in cast iron Dutch ovens. Bates had her own special treat, something her troop insists that she make every campout.
“My other objective for this camp out was for everyone to try deer meat,” Bates said. For the Iron Chef contest, she made deer stew for everyone who wanted to try it.
Along with Troop 242 and Crew 233, other groups participating included troops 243 of Eden, 220 and 223 of Shelbyville, 233 of Greenfield, 166 of Connersville, 472 of Spiceland, 114 of Richmond, 16 of Centerville, and 82 of Hagerstown, along with Cub Scout packs 242 of Greenfield and 100 of Richmond.
