What a wonderful Good Friday Rappelling Campout! We had a great time at Sam's Throne, Arkansas. April 7th and 8th, 2023. Temps low of 42 and high of 72 no rain.
17 people showed up for the event some driving 13 hours to be there. Most came in from the Springfield Branson area and 7 vehicles with one trailer filled one campsite with all kinds of wonderful Royal Ranger and Friends of Rangers camping!

We left Ozark AOG at 3pm and arrived at Sams Throne around 5:05 p.m.. Our very favorite site was open and James Evans our Rappelling Lead found the coals in the fire from the previous camper still hot and we had a fire going pretty quick. I brought a month or two of CNC and woodworking hardwood cut off in a Big roll around dumpster and all through the evening kept a nice fire going.

Just before dark Mark went over the Rappelling equipment in a quick over view by having the 5 Rangers teach and tie knots and explain what they had learned while going through the Rappelling Merit this last 2 months. Our young men had all rappelled the Big Bat Cave a month before so the 87 food cliff was twice the Bat cave rappel. They really did a great job teaching the quick overview to the folk that would be rappelling on Saturday.

Lots' of cooking around the fire and fun and fellowship. I always prefer to have everyone come to the ONE fire to cook and fellowship. It's so much better of a event this way.

Just before Rob Batchman delivered the Council Fire devotion, Mark had each of the group tell us of one thing they were blessed with and thankful for today. Rob then shared a new devotion in a new way with 2 sheets of paper and had us read the story and then tell the story from memory. We did pretty good at it.

Camp settled down at about 10:30 p.m.. Reports from the next day stated they got about 3 hours sleep as the hammock hangs were close together and they talked most of the night.

Saturday 7 am the A team of Ozark AOG were saving the firewood for cooking so I said the stilh cordless chain saw is in the back of the truck go drag up a dead tree and you guys can cut some firewood with it. I had already certified them crazy enough to use the saw on the previous FCF style camp so soon enough we had all the firewood we could burn.

Rappelling started at 9:15 as James Evans setup up his 2 ropes Orange was fast and Red was double Belayed. Pretty soon after breaking the ice of the new location the boys and folk and Friends and Family of Rangers were all rappelling the 87 feet of the best cliff face you can ever get. I needed for all my Boys to complete 5 more rappels down this cliff face and have them all inspect and verify all the knots and gear as I was setup on a double top belay line that was hooked to me using a pulley and a figure eight and beaner to my harness with a dog leash so I couldn't fall off the cliff face.

We rappelled until lunch and then after lunch the group went over to Sam's Throne and came back up the bottom way through the catacombs bolding their way back up to the top of the rappel.

We then did another 15 rappels and finished up and then broke camp and made a return trip to Harrison and stopped over at the Golden Arches Lounge for ice-cream burgers and drinks and shakes.

Back to Ozark at 5:10 p.m.. One of the young men told me this was the very best camping trip he had ever been on. I felt the same as it was such a blessing to have new and old friends come in and share this event with us.

Mark Jones, Event coordinator.   Click on a picture for a larger view.  Zip file of all these pictures.