Saturday, April 9, 2011
That's right. April 9. And again, because unrelated youths are involved, only one photo.
Nine scouts started at beautiful Roaring Brook Pond in the southern section of Arcadia. This time five brand new boy scouts were along for their first big hike. That is huge for me because they were graduates of my Webelos den. I knew the boys well and expected this eight miler to be a challenge they would rise to.
We didn't start off too well as we began at the smaller pond near Browning Mill and ended up hiking on the road for the first mile or so. My fault. From there we followed more roads in rural neighborhoods until we crossed Ten Rod Road (Route 165), touching woods only occasionally. We continued until our halfway point, Old Barber Farm. Here we finally entered the forest proper.
Soon we approached the highlight of the Ben Utter trail: Stepstone Falls. Here we passed more hikers, one a cub scout parent I knew. We took a break on the rocks and had a light snack, before continuing our journey. We had a little over a mile left to go.
The last mile is frequently the most dangerous. You are the most exhausted and one tends to become careless. On a wide forest road, one of my new recruits failed to see a basketball sized rock. He kicked it within sight of the car. We enlisted our older scouts to practice the buddy carry to bring him in. The end result was no serious damage to the foot, and we need more practice with the buddy carry.
Despite this, my former cubbies did me proud. They learned a lot (one carried way too much in his pack) and will be better prepared for the next one.
The single biggest issue of the hike was logistics. After dropping off several scouts at the beginning, I trusted Google Maps to navigate me to the end to drop off a car. The path we followed added almost an hour to both the start and the end of the day. After the hike I realized we could have simply followed Hazard Road south to Ten Rod Road and cut the delay in half. Google Maps doesn't usually fail me, but when it does, watch out. Next time, I'll do a little but more preparation.
Next time will be another eight miler between Hazard Road and Place Farm on Plainfield Pike. As this leg is almost all road, I suppose the rout to and fro should be rather obvious. Still, I will do more to be prepared.
