Junior Training Trails 2011

Junior Training Trails 2011. Southern Missouri District.

20 men and boys meet in Springfield, Missouri to put on a JTT. Thursday staff met at the Ranger Annex to setup props and bring in supplies.

District Director Jerry had a team of men working to provide meals for the staff and boys. Many days and hours of preparation were quickly being

put to the task at hand. To train 8 Junior leaders in the basics of backpacking and hiking. In that training it included, safety, first aid, gear, clothing, boots, map and compass and GPS basics. After several sessions of lessons the food and water were added to the packs and all the trail folk were weighed and the packs weighed. We then put the packs on and went for a city block walk to get at taste of what we were going to haul.

Back at the Ranger Annex things were being reevaluated. The question " Do I really need to take this?" was on every one's mind. Thursday evening we had some excitement with one of the white gas stoves. Nick named a couple of boys Light and Sparky. A good lesson was learned by all there.

At 11:30 lights out and the Big adventure was about to begin.

At 6:30 we were up and packing our packs. Making sandwiches for the noon meal and getting the rest of our goods stowed. We left the Ranger Annex at 8:00 am sharp with one vehicle following the church van. After a 2 hour drive we arrived in good shape at the Kyles Landing Trail head.

The trail was 2.61 miles long with 5 river crossings. On the way in we removed boots for the river crossings. We passed by several homesteads, saw snakes, goats, deer, birds, frogs, crawdads, fish, turtles and some saw a huge tree crack and fall over it sounded like a heard of Elk crashing through the forest. We made base camp at the jumping cliffs and then after a hour long swim and a cool and refreshing we hiked up to Hemmend in Hollow to see a 204 foot water fall and the formations all along the way were neat. The trail was relatively flat with the tempatures in the low 90 degree range it was a pretty nice the over night low was 74 so it was warm but not to hot. Backpacking in the summer months one needs to take extra precautions for the heat and the amount of water intake. The Junior Leaders were given a good sampling of good backpacking and hiking basics. Our hope is they will take this back to their outpost and take their groups on hikes and backpacks.

Special thanks to Charles Bowser for organizing this event. I am the guy with the helmet and this year I was blessed to be presented the yellow head band of honor from the patrol of Junior Leaders. Thanks guys! Click on a picture to get a larger view.