Troop 520 in Montana
When the scouts of St. John’s boy scout troop 520 were asked if they wanted to do a 50 mile hike out in Montana along with other scouts from the St. John’s area, they realized it would be an opportunity of a life time. The scout’s training started last spring for the July hike!
Their trip started with a 3 day car trip to the Montana High Adventure Base Camp (Mohab). Once at the base camp, all the scouts and parent leaders were required to take some basic wilderness training and get accumulated to the change in altitude. The first day on the trail we hiked 16 miles and climbed Bennie Hill our second highest elevation on the hike.
That night with rain and coldness, on top of a general overall feeling of “what did we get ourselves into”, we all went to bed early.
On day 2 we hiked 12 miles to the continental divide, along which we camped that night. The next couple of days were probably the most scenic with waterfalls, scaling an 8,000 foot mountain, walking across snow, sledding on snow, seeing a massive lake held by a single 100 foot log dam, and seeing a grizzly bear that wondered into camp one evening as we were setting up camp.
Our last night on the trail was probably our worst with 80 mile an hour winds and low temperatures we were forced to build a shelter. Shortly after we settled in for the night our shelter blew off and we were forced to sleep outside.
During the night one of the parent leaders, Ron Welch, commented to me about all of the stars in the sky. It wasn’t 5 minutes later and it started to rain!
We all decided to pull up camp in the early hours of the morning and head back into base case for our final day of the hike. We were all pretty sore after 5 days and 50 plus miles of hiking and climbing, but excited that we completed what we set out to do!
Troop 520 would like to give a special thanks to Mr. Bill Demmer for sponsoring our trip and Mr. Ben Smith from Georgia for guiding us through the beautiful Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Congratulations to the guys from troop 520, Ron Welch of Saint Johns, Jonathon Welch of Saint Johns, Joey Welch of Saint Johns, Neil Fedewa of Saint Johns, Owen Fedewa of Saint Johns, Jack Orozco of Fowler, and Bryan Stolz of Elise that completed the hike and to the other scouts from the St. John’s area that also completed their 50 miler.
