Scoutmaster Musings

I hiked 4 miles to Gander Mountain to pick up three 1-liter platypus water bags. They weigh about 5 ounces all together and take up very little space when rolled up. I'll have them as extra storage in case water is more scarce than I imagine and for a couple of looooong dry stretches.

I hiked over this frozen river and dropped a big snowball on it just for fun.

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Attended Eagle ceremony on Sunday.
Attended troop meeting on Monday.
Gave out ScoutStuff.org gift card and ClassB.com coupon on Wednesday.
Helped out at district roundtable on Thursday.
Completed a First Aid merit badge with a scout on Friday.
Saturday and Sunday, I'll be presenting Wilderness First Aid (yet again) to a dozen scouters.

If you're a hungry Scout in Salt Lake City, or just passing through, I hear you can get free Chipotle - see this post. Have one for me.

13 days until I leave for Arizona.
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Click the image for a larger view.

Which one do you think of when you hear someone is hiking 800 miles across Arizona?


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... a plan comes together.
This weekend was a flurry of progress on final plans for my AZ Trail hike. Still a lot more to do, but big progress.

• A Buddy: For the first few days at least, from the Mexico border to Patagonia, I'll be hiking with Colton. I met his dad online, chatted on the phone, and talked with Colton today. Sounds like a great guy and we've got similar goals and plans for our hikes. It's good to have someone else on the trail, especially in that part of the state, so I'm told. My mom can relax now.
• A Flight: I bought my plane tickets from MSP to Tucson, arriving on March 15.
  The travel industry is crazy. I had an alert set up on kayak.com and the prices went up and down daily like a yo-yo for two weeks. I wound up paying $160 for a one-way ticket. I'll get my return flight when I'm nearly done with the hike.
• A Room: a friend from college is letting me bunk overnight in Tucson. I'll have Friday to buy food, ship a package down the trail, and do last minute stuff.
• A Start Date: We're hitting the trail at about 6:00am on St. Patrick's Day - how cool is that? Gives us a long day to make our first miles.

So, the actual plans for the hike are pretty much done. Now, I just have to actually do it. The rest of my To Do list are support things, like enabling my ability to blog from the trail, email subscribers to my updates, map tracking, and other fun stuff.
Oh yeah, we're supposed to get a foot of snow tomorrow so I'll be taking a few rest days from hiking.

I'm visiting a scout meeting tonight to tell them about my hike, show my gear, and promote the ScoutStrong Program.

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It may be too light for my AZ hike, but I expect it to be perfect for summer backpacking on the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin. This sleeping quilt has only almost 1 inch of loft, but takes up a lot less space than my first quilt so it's tempting to try it earlier. I'll test it outside this weekend and see how warm I stay.


It's green rip-stop nylon and a bit shorter and skinnier than my first in an effort to reduce weight. It weighs 1lb. 15oz. I was hoping it would weigh less, but I think the insulation I used is heavier for the amount of loft - in other words, not as good as expected.


The quality of insulation is really key to a warm quilt with less weight. Down has the best loft to weight ratio, but messy to work with, expensive, and loses loft when moist.



This synthetic insulation will maintain loft better when wet which makes me a bit more comfortable on a long trek. Hopefully, I'll never find out just how well it holds up. :-)


It only took me about 2 hours to make this quilt. Since it's mostly just long, straight stitches, there's not much to it. Keeping the many thick layers laying flat and in line is the most difficult part.


Fortunately, my neighbor had some extra brown yarn for the quilting laying around when I found out we had none. It's a good thing I'm leaving on my hike soon or I'd probably wind up making a third quilt somewhere between the first two in thickness.


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Yes, Mom, I made it myself!

With very little seam ripping and only two permanent alterations (mistakes), I've got my pack I plan to use for 2,000 miles this summer. It is a G4 pattern that I purchased online and sewed at home.

I've been hiking with the pack filled to about 24 pounds this past week and it carries just great. I've added cut pieces of 3/8inch foam pad to the shoulder straps and waistbelt instead of using socks and gloves for padding. I figured the extra 1.1oz. is worth the comfort, and it IS much more comfortable. I also just designed and made slip-on waistbelt pad extenders last night. These have a belt-wide strip of foam to cover my front hipbone that often gets bruised.

Here's more info:

• Weighs 12.2oz. plus 2.4oz of removable foam pad
• has about 4000 cubic inches
• top-loading main compartment and three large mesh outside pockets, plus 8 tie-on points
• has no frame - uses foam pad for support
• made of 2.2oz. grey rip-stop silnylon and black oxford
• adjustable shoulderstraps and waistbelt

I made mine grey so it matches my quilt, hat, tent, and beard. ;-)
It seems to have plenty of room for my main gear and I've not used the side pockets yet. I expect to fill those with water during my Arizona hike in a couple weeks. My sleeping quilt gets stuffed in first to fill the bottom and raise the heavy stuff up a bit. I don't squish the quilt down too much, but use the weight of gear above it to compress it down.

I just have one section of a blue foam pad for the back. Most people use a foam pad for sleeping and fold it up to provide the pack structure here. I'm using an inflatable pad instead, but it's 72 inches and I need 78 or my feet are on the ground. So, I lay the pack under my feet and have plenty of insulation and comfort there.

There is quite a bit of stress on the pack where the shoulder straps and waistbelt connect to the pack since this is where all the weight hits. I've double bartacked those points and the material seems to be plenty strong to handle the stress. I guess we'll see as I make my way from Mexico to Utah next month.


The top has a drawstring and two velcro strips to hold it shut. This top collar can also be extended up if you have a big load. But, be careful about overloading the pack - it's lightweight and should not have more than 25-30 pound load in it.
You can see how the pack top loads here. By packing sleeping gear first, you don't need to dig deep until it's time to set up camp. Keeping the daily needs, such as food, water, maps, hat, filter on top or in mesh pockets makes rest breaks easier to manage.

Oh, the two alterations I made?

1. I attached the pack back and sides incorrectly which subtracted about 400 cubic inches of the bottom area.
2. One seam on the collar faces out rather than in - I blame that one on the instructions, though.

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2 Busy 2 Blog
This entire past week, I've been running back and forth, round and round, over and under. But, today I got to take a big breath and relax!
In a nutshell,

• Got a loaner sewing machine
• Finished sewing my backpack
• Sewed a 2nd sleeping quilt
• Hiked about 40 miles
• Presented CPR/AED training
• Presented Wilderness First Aid training
• Got a couple new supporters of my long hikes
• Met some great AZ Scouters online
• Gave neckerchief slide blanks and pocketknives to the troop
• Got new shoes for my AZ hike

I emailed some scoutmasters in Arizona, letting them know about my hike plans for the Arizona Trail and how they and their scouts can join my ScoutStrong Challenge - you can too. A couple troops are hoping to hike with me somewhere along the trail. A scouter might let me stay at his cabin. And, another might help me reach the trailhead and hike the first few days with me.

Whenever I interact with folks in the Scouting community, I'm always amazed at how supportive and helpful they are. When presenting my Red Cross training, it usually takes 10 minutes to clean everything up and pack my car when I'm with Scouters versus the 30 minutes or more when it's just the general public. It's a high bar you all set for the rest of us to reach - keep it up!

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Between all your meetings, exercising to stay in shape, starting on taxes, deleting spam emails, checking out youtube videos, and the millions of other things that take up your time today - don't forget.

Even if you hate chocolate - don't forget.

Even if you feel it's just a Hallmark Holiday - don't forget.

Even if you think killing flowers goes against Leave No Trace ethics - don't forget.

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(and don't forget)

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One step closer to being ready for the Arizona Trail.
I received a brand-new map set on CD of the entire 800+ miles of trail on Friday. The maps are 1:28,000 scale and each image prints on an 8.5x11 sheet.

These maps are very detailed and should be perfect for navigating. The AZT Association at aztrail.org has overview maps which are great for getting familiar with the trail, but not detailed enough for navigating.
Now that I have these maps and my compass, my navigation needs are met.

I spent yesterday printing and refilling my ink cartridge :-)
Printing front and back gives me 65 sheets to carry - that's almost a pound of paper! I plan to carry about a week's worth of maps at a time and ship the rest ahead in a bounce box. Every day, I hope to cover 3 pages of maps which is around 20 miles.
I'll mark spots where I take pictures or other interesting bits and then dump the used pages back in the bouncebox at the next resupply point.

These maps were created by, and being sold by ($25), Brett Tucker at simblissity.net but the profits go right to the AZ Trail Assocation for sustaining the trail. Brett has done an excellent job on an extremely useful project to benefit the hiking community.

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Please send me an email if you have problems using the new Comments on the site. You should be able to comment on any page, not just blog posts.

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Hippo Birdie two Ewes, Boy Scouts of America!


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I got to do my Good Turn yesterday and today.

Shared some cooking secrets with another local troop last night. They've developed a bad habit of not cooking and the scoutmaster asked for some help.
After talking with them and finding out their best, worst, and usual camping meals, it sure looked like they were just not motivated to try anything interesting. I shared that there are some very easy, healthy, tasty, not messy recipes they could try if they want to expand their skills. A few thought some open fire cooking would be fun, especially Egg in an Orange and Pig on a Stick.
Their SPL is considering some cooking competition on their next campout so I hope they go ahead with that and push themselves.

Tonight, I got to spend some quality time with a Webelos den working on their Readyman activity badge. I took my manikins, fake wounds, and first aid supplies and we all had a great time bandaging.
These guys are excited to move on to Boy Scouts in a couple weeks. Next week, they get to carry the flags in at the City Council meeting and then they're crossing over.

It's refreshing to visit with Cub Scouts occasionally. The energy, silliness, and social pressures are so much different than Boy Scouts.

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