My 11-year-old son and I slept in a tent on the snow last night. On purpose. It was all part of the Klondike Derby, an event that was started by the Boy Scouts of America in 1949 because they hated to be warm and dry back then.
The picture above shows my son’s troop slogging towards the lunch station, where they practiced opening cans of chili using nothing more than their frozen fingers and waning will to survive. Note the collection of large balls of snow. For some reason, the boys decapitated all of the snowmen we found along the route and then brandished their heads on their sled like war trophies.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t in any of the official scouting manuals, but I’m still hoping they’ll get some sort of badge for their effort. It will look nice next to the one they’ll get for correctly peeing their names into the snow.
Originally posted on Medium.
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