Troop 29 at the Klondike Derby, 2007

This past weekend was the Mark Twain district Klondike Derby. It was bitter cold and windy, but a lot of fun. Of course, I took photos.

The Scouts need to use a map and compass to navigate their way to an activity station (a "town" at the Klondike). They receive a bearing and distance and are left to find their way. We camped at a town, so we got to see several Troops come through.

Mid-afternoon we met up with our patrols who did the day course and directed them to our camp for the night. We also found one of the patrols doing the overnight course and helped them through the prickers to our camp. The thermometer didn't get above about 25 degrees Farenheit, and as the sun dropped it quickly got colder.

Sunday morning around 7:00 the mercury read 3 degrees. We're sure it was below zero when the sun was down and the loud, howling wind surely made it feel much colder. All Scouts and appendages were accounted for, however, so it must not have been too bad. The Scouts made oatmeal and ate granola bars for breakfast... after thawing them.

"3 degrees fahrenheit" isn't much of a context, though. How cold was it? Well, the adults were going to have omelettes-in-a-bag for breakfast. Unfortunately, the eggs were frozen. We decided to hard boil them, but couldn't get water to boil. Fast forward: we left the eggs in the hot water for quite a while, and eventually, they became hard boiled.

But that was going to be a long wait until the eggs were ready, and we were hungry now. It occurred to me that we could use the ham for our omelettes along with the italian bread from the previous night's dinner to make a yummy sandwich.

I found the ham and Shane dug out the bread. The ham had to be thawed in the hot water with the eggs. The bread was frozen solid. So solid, in fact, that he had to use a small wood saw to cut it! We each put together a sandwich and added a thin slab of frozen butter, then wrapped it in foil and tossed it in the fire for a few minutes. I'll take a hot breakfast sandwich over an omelette-in-a-bag any day!