Category Archives: Hiking and backpacking

White Mountains Camping/Hiking Trip – Columbus Day Weekend 2010

Posted on by

Hi everyone,
I have attached the flyer and permission slip for this year’s White Mountains camping/hiking trip at Moosebrook State Park in Gorham, NH during Columbus Day Weekend from Sat., Oct. 9th to Mon., Oct. 11th.  The permission slip and payment is due no later than the September 16th troop meeting.  Please note that there is no meeting on September 9th.  I will be at the first troop meeting this Wednesday (Sep. 1st) to hand out and collect permission slips and to answer questions.
Adults and scouts, please be sure to indicate on the permission slip which option you are interested in:
Option 1: camping/hiking based at Moose Brook State Park
or
Option 2: a multi-night backpacking trip coordinated by Will Leavitt
Please return your permission slip and payment to me at a troop meeting (Sep. 1st or Sep. 16th) or at my house (address in troop directory)


Thanks,
Margaret Stebbins

Food and electronics for the White Mountains trip

Posted on by

FOOD

Parents of Scouts who are going on the White Mountains hike may wonder exactly how the food is being handled.  The trip coordinator covered most of this in a posting you can review at:

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2009/10/08/white-mountains-campout/

Breakfast on Sunday and Monday will be provided as will a trail lunch on Sunday.  The Scout is responsible for his own lunch on Saturday.  For those returning on Monday in the early afternoon, we may stop for lunch along the way so allow a little pocket money for that.

Saturday and Sunday supper will be cooked by the patrols.  That means that the patrol plans the meals for their group, a grubmaster is appointed, and the grubmaster buys the food.  The food allowance for supper is $4 per Scout per supper.  If a grubmaster has any questions about how many are in his patrol, contact me.

In one case, a last-minute cancellation means we ended up with a very small patrol and to get quantities right they may have to overspend a bit.

ALL PATROL FOOD COSTS WILL BE REIMBURSED so next week the grubmaster should come to the meeting prepared to present his bills.  This reconciliation is part of the learning process so I don’t want anybody to skip this step.  We do NOT expect the grubmaster’s parents to donate the food.

ELECTRONICS

As with all troop events, Scouts should leave the electronics at home.  That includes cell phones.  If a Scout needs to make a call for some reason, there will be adults with cell phones for emergencies although they, too, will be buried in packs or deep in pockets.  There will be enough to do that electronic games, MP3 players, and the like will not be needed for entertainment.

-Hank Manz

White Mountains Camping Trip 2009, Columbus Day Weekend

Posted on by

Troop 160 Scouts and Adults,

Our annual White Mountains camping trip over Columbus Day Weekend is only two weeks away!  This is a reminder that the response deadline for this trip is tonight.  Please bring your forms and payment to tonight’s troop meeting if you haven’t already done so.  It’s important that we know who is planning on participating, both scouts and adults, in order to properly plan for the trip.  After tonight, the registration fee increases.  Attached is the registration form.

Yours in scouting,
Charlie Marge

More on water bottles plus a note about e-mail changes

Posted on by

Awhile back, before the big push really started, I wrote some notes about possible contamination when using those very popular hard plastic bottles that Scouts love.  Rather than repeat everything I said, those notes are available on our Web site in the archives although other material may be contained in the notes as well.  One of those other notes concerns summer camp which might be of interest to the parents of New Scouts.

Some of the links embedded in the notes may be stale at this point.  But the one thing which has definitely changed is that Harvard has just completed a study which indicates that a considerable amount of the main culprit, bisphenol-A or BPA, passes into the human body even when only water is in the bottle and even when that water has been in the bottle for only a very short time.

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2007/10/31/a-scoutmaster-minute-on-plastic-water-bottles/

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2008/04/26/a-scoutmaster-minute-april-22-2008/

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2008/07/10/scoutmaster-minute-extra-july-2-2008/

So do two things.  If you buy a water bottle of any type, make sure it is BPA-free and then encourage your son to carry water in it instead of exotic beverages.  There are other things in plastic besides BPA which are probably not good for people and carrying around acidic beverages in plastic containers can’t be good in the long run.

Here are the links to the news story and to the press release from Harvard.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/19536287/detail.html

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2009-releases/bpa-chemical-plastics-leach-polycarbonate-drinking-bottles-humans.html

There is one note–while a #7 is an indication of polycarbonate material, it is not an indication that the bottle contains BPA.  Most BPA-free bottles contain a note of some sort to that effect, however.

E-mail Changes
====================

If you wish to make any e-mail changes, send a note to charles -at- hatvany -dot- com. Note that I have written the address so as to confuse those who would send us SPAM.  If you send a note, use the standard form of xxxx@yyy.com.

-Hank Manz