It's Not Your Father's Summer Camp
By Suzanne Wilson
Photographs by Olivia Ogren-Hrejsa
Innovative facilities and dynamic summer programs like those offered at the Northern Star Council's Many Point Scout Camp keep Scouts coming back for more.
 Innovative facilities and dynamic summer programs like those offered at the Northern Star Council's Many Point Scout Camp keep Scouts coming back for more. |
Some jump backward off the raft while attempting to shoot a basketball through a hoop. Others climb into canoes and paddle out for a water version of Capture the Flag.
"It's a blast!" says Scout Alex Eckberg. "Awesome!" adds fellow camper Josh Colbert. "The most fun I've had at camp."
The two 13-year-olds from Troop 446, Bloomington, Minn., are attending summer camp at Northern Star Council's Many Point Scout Camp in northwest Minnesota. They're among the 11 Scouts on each of the 30-by-40-foot rafts who have come from various troops in camp for the overnight experience. On each raft, two staff members from the camp's Flintlock Adventure Base lead activities. The Scouts also cook their evening meal and later doze off in sleeping bags in special mosquito-net protected areas.
The Huck Finn rafts are examples of how, in recent years, councils across the country have shown a spirit of innovation in developing new summer camp experiences for older Scouts.
 Scout Joshua Murrey, Troop 44, Brainerd, Minn., leaps off the water trampoline at the Many Point Scout Camp waterfront. |
"By eighth grade, Scouts have been to summer camp two times," explains Bob Gagner, former council director of camping and activities and camping director at Many Point. "They need something different."
And they find plenty of choices at this camp, which extends along eight miles of Round Lake and Many Point Lake shoreline. Besides the rafts, some other options include windsurfing, two Project COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) courses, sailing and kayaking overnights, a fishing outpost where Scouts stay in round Mongolian-style tents called yurts, and the camp's new tree houses.
Such exciting new adventures bring Scouts back to camp and keep them in Scouting, says Gagner, Scoutmaster of Troop 513, Coon Rapids, Minn. He has seen numerous examples of this at Many Point and in his troop, in which six Scouts have returned for a sixth summer camp.
More testimonials are offered on the Huck Finn rafts, where the fun and enthusiasm continues into the evening. "You can't beat this!" sums up Paul Hobus, 13, from Troop 283, Wayzata, Minn.
 The multi-unit tree houses offer campers the sense of being in a private hideaway. |
At home in the trees
However, the campers who have signed up for a night in Many Point's tree houses are not ready to concede to the rafters' claims of program superiority.
As the Scouts cross the lake in pontoon boats, they catch their first intriguing glimpse of the structures in the forest above the shore. Supported by white oaks, the two tree house settings are only 12 feet above the ground, but their positions on a bluff create an illusion of greater height.
About 50 yards apart, the sites are named Village I and Village II. Each consists of a platform on which houses—actually a collection of single-purpose rooms—have been built, creating the sense of a small "village" in the trees. Each site includes a unit where campers can put down their sleeping bags at day's end and a separate kitchen unit where Scouts cook supper on a gas stove, with an open deck between the two.
Village I has an additional house where the two staff members sleep; at Village II staffers sleep on the kitchen floor.
 (Clockwise from above) Campers carry personal gear up to their overnight home; Scouts Edward Beck (left) and Tom Elliott prepare dinner in the tree house kitchen; bluff location makes tree houses appear high above ground; Many Point counselor Jason Peterson (right) teaches the treehouse gang a new card game; studying the location, Kurt Altenburg (left), Joey Korbel, and Peter Mathison consult their tree identification guide; campers share campfire ghost stories; Joey Korbel takes aim in the controlled slingshot target range area. |
While his group is still on the ground, staffer Pat Kinney talks to the Scouts about the construction of Village I. He shows them the special hardware that lets the trees support the platform while remaining free to move in the wind.
"These trees live for a long time," Kinney says, "so if we take care of them, Scouts will be able to enjoy the tree houses for a long time. What are some of the things we can do to take care of them while we're up there?"
"Don't snap the twigs off," one of the Scouts answers.
"Right. Keep the leaves and twigs where they are. The tree, if it needs to get rid of them, [will] do that on its own. What else?"
A Scout says they should also leave the bark alone. "Exactly," Kinney says.
These are important reminders, because up on the deck, they'll be next to tree trunks and ducking under branches.
Scouts are impressed by solar panels at the edge of the clearing; the panels are used to charge a battery, which provides power for their tree house's electric lights.
 (Clockwise from top left) Jake Brennan, Troop 446, Bloomington, Minn., sends out a coded message; water games are part of the raft program; learning to sail is one of many camp aquatic opportunities; Scout canoeists gather for a water version of Capture the Flag; Alex Cameron takes a stylish jump off the raft; an eerie face reminds campers that trees are living things. |
There's no obvious way to get up to the tree houses until Kinney pulls down an attic ladder leading to the deck. "Ah, clever" and "Wow!" are the Scouts' responses.
They use their Scouting skills to figure out some things. There's a hoist, and there's a cargo net. They connect them and decide who will be on the ground loading gear and who will be on the deck unloading it. At supper time, some will cook, and the others will clean up.
Tom Elliott, 16, a Scout in Minnetonka Troop 346, admits he enjoys taking a break from his troop leadership responsibilities. "It's nice to be able to sit around and talk and not have to worry about anything," he says. "It's easygoing; you go at your own pace."
The two staff members at each house start Scouts on a timed challenge using ropes to lift pails of water up on one side of the deck and then to tip them into a tub on the other side. Later, Scouts make paper airplanes to fly from the deck in competitions for distance and time aloft.
What else to do up here? Play cards. Or create coded messages to send back and forth through the trees between the two houses on a rope with pulleys. Or shoot with a slingshot at hanging objects in a controlled target range area. And after dinner there's a ring on the ground in front of one tree house for a traditional evening campfire.
Like the overnight on the rafts, a night in a tree house is a kid's dream of a magical summertime, and the Scouts fall asleep to the rustle of leaves and the calls of loons.
What's next?
Whenever a new activity is proposed for the camp, planners discuss whether it will accomplish the objectives in what they call their "mission test"—Many Point's "Goals of the Outdoor Program." These include Scouts learning teamwork and cooperation, learning respect for the environment, developing resourcefulness, and developing physical, mental, and emotional fitness.
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Unit leaders appreciate the value of programs for older Scouts like those offered by the camp's Flintlock Adventure Base.
Scoutmaster Ben Hodgkins of Troop 106, Hermantown, Minn., brought a group of Scouts to Flintlock for their departure on a kayaking overnight. This was the first summer they were old enough for such advanced programs.
"They've been looking forward to it and talking about it since last year," Hodgkins said. "[Programs like this] are great for older Scouts, something more challenging and exciting that makes them want to come back to camp."
Scouts quickly recognize what's fun, challenging, and worth talking about.
And camp staff can only hope that any new adventure will get the kind of endorsement that Joe Burns, 13, from Troop 446 in Bloomington, voiced following his stay on a raft:
"It's something you want to do again, and recommend to younger Scouts."
Contributing editor Suzanne Wilson lives in Joplin, Mo.
From Idea to RealityBob Gagner, who was Many Point camping director for 25 years, explains how new camp adventures develop: "You get a spark of an idea, and then you do the research to see if it will work, if the kids will like it, [and] if you can do it safely."
The idea for Huck Finn's Raft goes back to the summer of 1985. The staff of Flintlock Adventure Base was looking for a new program that would build Scouting skills, relate to the natural environment, and be "a kind of a hook" to bring older Scouts to camp, says Mike McCollor, Flintlock director at the time. They came up with a raft named after Mark Twain's fictional character Huckleberry Finn. "The setting offers endless program ideas," McCollor says. "Even though you're a hundred yards from Flintlock Lodge, it seems like you're out in the wilderness." The second raft was added in 2002. Gagner's tree house idea led to a yearlong search for a site with the right kind of trees. The impact on each tree had to meet Gagner's "tree house ethic"—"minimum impact to a tree, cut off as few branches as possible, and allow the tree to move and grow." After a site was located, a forester checked the trees' health; Gagner sketched plans; and then came a year of working with an engineering firm and a tree house design company. Scott Hollerman, then a staff member with experience in the building trades and now assistant camp ranger, built Village I, with the help of one assistant. Hollerman added exterior details in keeping with existing architecture at Many Point. "It's not fancy, but I wanted it to have some style of its own," he says. Village I opened in 2005. Village II, built by a construction company, opened in 2006. Venturing crews can use the rafts and tree houses on summer weekends. —S.W. |
Some Super Summer CampsSummer camps like those in the Northern Star Council have created new and challenging facilities, activities, and adventures to keep Scouts of all ages coming back year after year—and stay excited about Scouting. Here are examples from four other Scout councils. Greater Pittsburgh CouncilHeritage Reservation, in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, surrounds Lake Courage, where Scouts enjoy motorboating, waterskiing, sailing, and catching "beautiful bass," says Kevin Dowling, council camping director. Scouts 13 and older have the Discovery Program, two days and one night in a special area for tomahawk throwing, black-powder rifle shooting, canoeing, mountain boarding (think snowboarding on wheels), and scaling a climbing wall.
Scouts 13 and older can choose day trips off the reservation: caving at Laurel Caverns, horseback riding, and whitewater rafting on the Youghiogheny River. The camp attracts many 15- to 17-year-old Scouts, and some 18-year-olds. While first-year campers join Braddock's Brigade to learn basic Scouting skills, Scouts who are 12 and 13 have a merit badge program that offers the standard badges, plus Motorboating and a changing variety of other badges, like Sculpture, Animal Science, and Model Design and Building. "We try to shake it up every year, so it's not the same program," Dowling says. Cub Scout packs, in camp five days and four nights at Camp Independence, have two new activities, a miniature golf course and a rock-throwing range. First- and second-year Webelos Scouts use slingshots to propel paintballs, creating abstract art on targets. They also share a bouldering and horizontal climbing area. Second-year Webelos Scouts have a BMX course and, in the lake, an eight-foot-high inflated "iceberg" to climb. "Every year we add new programs," Dowling says. "New and different keeps kids in camp." National Capital Area CouncilThe council's Camp William B. Snyder, opened in 2006, is a multiple-mission camp. Because of the Virginia site's location near Washington, D.C., "it provided us with a wonderful opportunity for short-term camping and for impacting at-risk youth," says Scout Executive Al Lambert.
The camp's primary summer mission is a Cub Scout resident camp, a program the council didn't previously offer. Boys attending four-day, three-night sessions at the camp's Cub World can assemble dinosaur skeletons using bone replicas they unearth at the Big Dig, explore a Mars simulation at Space Port, or enjoy activities at the Akela Village tepees, a fort, and a ship situated in a blue rubber "ocean." On weekends Scout troops and Venturing crews use the Project COPE course, sports fields, a model airplane landing strip, and a constructed wetlands area for nature and ecology instruction. Boy Scouts also attend merit badge weekends there, and Lambert foresees school systems using the camp for outdoor education programs. "We believe that because of this camp's proximity to the community, it needs to be used extensively in a lot of different areas," Lambert says. The council acquired the land for the camp after the Walt Disney Company decided not to proceed with plans for a theme park there. Atlanta Area CouncilRobert W. Woodruff Scout Reservation in the foothills of north Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains offers five-day programs for older Scouts. At each camp session, more than 100 Scouts participate, living away from their troops.
Ultimate Zone includes caving, a ropes course, backpacking, fly fishing, and whitewater rafting on the Nantahala and Ocoee Rivers, where the 1996 Olympic whitewater competition was held. At Venture Base, Scouts have a "head of the line ticket" to Project COPE, waterskiing, and black-powder shooting, which are the high-demand activities. Scouts in Woodmont backpack 40 miles on the Appalachian Trail, then have a day of kayaking or whitewater rafting. At Heritage Trek, Scouts are immersed in an 1820's pioneer experience. "We try to introduce one new older Scout program every year," says Bion Jones, council program/marketing director. That gives older boys more choices, but it also makes room for younger boys. "Every program I can operate in something other than the traditional camp lets me have more young kids come to camp." For all campers 13 and older, there is instruction in archaeology at a simulated dig and in astronomy at the second-largest telescope in Georgia. All Boy Scouts can learn mountain boarding on slalom courses geared to their ages. And everyone who passes the swim test has the thrill of whitewater rafting on the Nantahala or Ocoee River on Friday—great motivation for the nonswimmer to learn his strokes at camp. Utah National Parks CouncilThe council's Entrada High Adventure Base offers an action-packed summer camp experience for older Scouts, three days of extreme sports in the Moab area, including climbing and rappelling on sandstone cliffs, mountain biking on the Slickrock Trail or Gemini Bridges, and whitewater rafting on the Colorado River.
Other tempting choices: five days at Beaver High Adventure Base, "a mini-Philmont" located high in the Tushar Mountains; or Horse Trek, a three-day ride over "some of the most beautiful trails in the world," says Scout Executive Tom Powell. For a weeklong session, does a troop want wilderness? High altitude? Special activities like panning for gold, conquering mountain peaks, or exploring Anasazi ruins? Troops can choose from five camps in different locations in Utah. Brand-new Scouts attend a two-day, one-night session at their own Adventure Park or Big Thunder Adventure Camp. "The time a boy spends in camp, 24 hours a day for a week, could be a major part of his Scouting experience," says Powell. A good experience at camp encourages Scouts "to maintain their association with Scouting and to continue [participating in] those exciting programs." —S.W. |
January - February 2007 Table of Contents
Copyright © 2007 by the Boy Scouts of America. All rights thereunder reserved; anything appearing in Scouting magazine or on its Web site may not be reprinted either wholly or in part without written permission. Because of freedom given authors, opinions may not reflect official concurrence.