Old spirit of gold rush evoked Boy Scout Klondike camp

“We trudged up and down the road in a futile search for our troop.  Visibility was hampered by the falling snow.  Trucks all looked alike.  Bundled scouts were indistinguishable from one another.  We stopped to listen, because hearing was the only reliable sense.”

Stuck trucks line the road to Big Hollow during the BSA Deseret Peak District's 2010 Klondike Derby camp (photo by TJ Wallace)

The following originally appeared in the February 4, 2010 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

They came from all over the world.  Over 100,000 strong, they braved the wild Chilkoot Trail and the Yukon River in 1897 to reach Canada’s subarctic hinterlands—all because a man named Skookum Jim Mason found gold flakes in a tributary of the Klondike River.

Word of the discovery had spread like wildfire through the states, sparking what would come to be known as the Klondike Gold Rush.  Interestingly, many of these would-be prospectors weren’t career miners.  They were doctors, politicians, and teachers—regular people.   Few of them ever struck it rich, but there’s little doubt it was the excursion of all of their lifetimes.

The Klondike rush went down in history less for its goal than for its concept—the untamed wilderness, the sleds, the rivalry, the epic procession.  It’s no mystery why the Boy Scouts of America adopted the Klondike model for its district-wide winter camps.  The organization celebrates its hundredth birthday on February 8.  According to the BSA press office, districts have run “Klondike Derbies” annually since at least the 1940’s.

The Stansbury foothills are no Yukon, to be sure.  But Deseret Peak District’s recent Klondike Derby camp there gave 250 scouts and their leaders a taste of that storied stampede.  While snow had been scant on the valley floors that evening, nearly two feet of powder greeted Boy Scout troops at Big Hollow just west of Clover.

I knew the camp might get interesting when the snow began to fall.  I’ve been to a few Klondike camps in my day and most of them, ironically, have been snow-free.  Foggy?  Yes.  Cold?  Always.  But snowy?  Not since I was 14.  This would be an adventure.

An adventure for the scouts and scoutmasters, that is.  Our troop was attending, but I was there for more opportunistic reasons; I had been asked to help judge the Dutch oven cooking contest.

“I probably won’t be much help to you,” I boasted to Jason “Brownie” Brown, our scoutmaster, earlier in the week.  “I won’t be there for long, and I’ll probably be up with the district guys eating Dutch oven most of the time.”

I cooked a can of Spaghettios for my pre-scout age sons Bridger, Weston, and Coulter, before we left that evening.  I abstained– no need to spoil a good Dutch oven dinner with city food.  There would be 36 scout units in camp, which meant I’d soon get my fill of cast-iron cooked goodness.  I grabbed a couple packets of fruit snacks just in case.  It’s a good thing I did.

When we arrived at the turnoff to Big Hollow, it was obvious something was wrong.  Snow had halted the convoy along the narrow dirt road that led to the hollow, creating a single-file, bumper-to-bumper jam that spanned the road’s entire 1/4 mile length.  Subsequent arrivals had pulled into the clearing just off the highway, and latecomers like me parked on the shoulder of SR-199.

Snow swirled around us as we made our way up the road.  I would find Brownie and leave the boys with him while I looked for my district contacts.  Troops were unloading gear from stuck trucks and making camp on the spot.  Small campfires lined the road as camp shovels dug platforms and tents went up.

The Klondike sleds, which troops build from scratch and use for morning races, were a godsend at this point.  Scouts passed me hauling gear via sled up the hill from trucks parked at the bottom.  The hustle and bustle reminded me of the old northern boom towns in movies– chaotic but curiously organized.   Seasoned leaders and newbies were easiest to spot.  Everybody was making do, and spirits were high.

We trudged up and down the road in a futile search for our troop.  Visibility was hampered by the falling snow.  Trucks all looked alike.  Bundled scouts were indistinguishable from one another.  We stopped to listen, because hearing was the only reliable sense.  Most audible voices were those of hungry scouts who admired their makeshift camps and looked forward to dinner.  There were some gripes about the weather, but not many.

I listened for Brownie.  No luck.  It was only after wandering around for another half hour that I met him on the road.  He and the troop had left their trucks at the bottom and hiked in.  I also met my district contact, who informed me that they had diverted 15 units (about 100 people) back north the Mormon Trail and up to Grantsville Reservoir.  There was now a “Klondike North” and a “Klondike South.”  And as far as he knew, Klondike South’s Dutch oven cook-off wasn’t happening.

I reached for my fruit snacks.  Brownie offered me a hot dog and a roasting stick.  We helped pitch another tent while the scouts showed Bridger, Weston, and Coulter the art of falling backward into the snow.  When it was time to pull out, I made one more walk up the road.  The little camps were quiet now.  Most scouts still sat around fire rings or were settling into bed.  A few stalwart troops were nursing Dutch ovens.

District Chairman John Poulson briefed me later on the activities up at Klondike North, which was able to set up quickly and hold a downscaled Dutch oven cook-off.  In the morning they held a formal flag ceremony, sled races, knot tying and first aid relays, and a fire building contest.

Klondike South eventually held their Dutch oven cook-off.  The snow situation there limited morning activities to the sled race, in which scouts pushed their sleds on a set course.  Leaders then worked to pull their trucks from snow banks.

“The scouts will remember this camp for the rest of their lives,” Poulson said.  “They’ll remember having to thaw out their eggs before cooking them for breakfast or thawing out socks and pants.  What a great way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting!”

The Stansbury foothills aren’t the Yukon.  But for those scouts that weekend, they might as well have been.

 

Happy 100th Anniversary, Boy Scouts!

IT WAS SUNSET IN SKULL VALLEY. The campfire roared with scrap wood and dried-out tumbleweed, and for me and my fellow Boy Scouts, it couldn’t have been more welcome.  It was February.  We’d spent the day exploring castle-like rock formations in the western Oquirrhs and I could barely feel my feet beneath me as we staggered back into camp for the evening.  Richard and I donned our mountain man capotes and grabbed our camp stools, then extended our frozen feet close to the flames.

“Your boots will melt before your feet even get warm,” a calm voice carried over the crackle from a camp chair across the way.  It was Stan Ogden, our scoutmaster.  And it wasn’t the first time he’d offered us that that particular caution.

Stan never scolded.  If fact, how he kept his cool with half a dozen rowdy scouts week after week becomes increasingly amazing to me the older I get.  Stan was full of wisdom, and he imparted it to us subtly—a joke here, an old scout quote there.  He may not have realized that we respected him, but we did.

Somebody’s boots melted that night—I don’t remember whose.  They weren’t mine.  Mine had melted at the Klondike camp the month prior.  Richard’s, I think, had melted in Moab.  Stan didn’t get two words of his boot melting warning out before we quickly pulled our feet from the fire.

I remembered this and many of the things Stan said, explained, and demonstrated.  He was a scoutmaster in the truest sense.  I became an Eagle Scout thanks, in good part, to Stan’s tutelage.  My scouting years are part of why I crave the outdoors, why I love to write about them, why I take my boys adventuring as often as I can.

The Boy Scouts of America is 100 years old today, and I’m proud.  I’m glad Stan and his faithful assistant, Ron-O, showed us the ropes every week and took us camping every month.  I’m glad to be part of the organization today.

Scouting is about more than tying knots, swamping canoes, and Dutch oven cooking.  It’s about instilling values, building character, and fostering a deep appreciation for American History.  It’s about self-sufficiency and level-headedness.  Frankly, it’s survival prep for an increasingly screwed-up world.

I still see ol’ Stan now and again, and we talk about the old days.  It’s very possible, if current positions in our unit hold for a few years, that Stan’s son will be one of my son’s scout leaders.  Pretty cool.

I wrote a piece about this year’s Klondike Derby camp for the newspaper last week.  I’ll post it here tomorrow.

 

Friday Funnies: Fun with flies

Well, I guess the term “fun” is relative.  Who takes the time to create funny little scenes with dead flies?  And come to think of it, how does one assemble such a large cadre of dead flies for the purpose of creating these funny scenes?  It’s too bad I can’t track down the disturbed/uber-creative artist to give him or her credit for the following masterpieces:

On, Wildfire, on!

Circus flies

Hey, flies have to go too

I think I’ll save the rest for another Friday.  Have a great weekend!

 

More photos from Camp Floyd

Here are some more pics from our recent trip to Camp Floyd and the Stagecoach Inn.  If you missed the write-up on that trip, check it out here.

A view of the commissary from the creaky balcony of the Stagecoach Inn (Clint Thomsen)

CSI: Camp Floyd - This is a shot of two aligning bullet holes in the guest room area of the Stagecoach Inn. A guest in the back room was cleaning his shotgun when it accidentally discharged, sending shot through his wall, across the hall, and through the wall of the front room-- much to the surprise of its guest, who had just laid down to sleep. (Clint Thomsen)

The old Fairfield District School, built in 1898 (Clint Thomsen)

The bell tower (Clint Thomsen)

Boo, West, and Coulter stand in front of the Commissary in this 1860's newsprint photo-- pay no attention to the Hot Wheels hoody or the vehicle headlight at the left edge of the photo. (Clint Thomsen)

 

Animal Planet’s well intended ‘Wild Recon’ rings hollow

Wild Recon host Donald Schultz kicks it with a big cat (courtesy Discovery Communications)

Strapping, fearless adventurer: Check
British accent: Check
Dangerous wild animals: Check
Gratuitous skydiving : Check
Beat-the-clock deadlines: Check

Animal Planet’s got an instant hit on their hands, right?

“This is not a stunt,” boasts the channel’s newest dandy before leaping from a plane 4,000 feet above some exotic locale.  “This is my job.”

The non-stunt strikes a familiar chord to regular Discovery network viewers.  No, this skydiving adventurer isn’t Bear Grylls, though the resemblance to the Man vs. Wild concept couldn’t seem more deliberate.

Our hero this time is herpetologist and self-described adrenaline junky Donald Schultz.  The show: Wild Recon, the latest in the network’s overkill lineup of danger-laced edu-tainment series.  The mission: to save the animals—and by extension, the humans who might benefit from the study of venom.  A noble goal.

From Discovery Communications’ press release:

Tearing his way through thick jungle undergrowth or clinging to rock ledges, Donald stops at nothing to complete his mission — getting viable bio-samples out of remote locations to research institutions or zoos – and it’s a race against the clock because the samples are so fragile. But before his precious cargo can be delivered, Donald will have to make it out alive.

Exciting, eh?  Maybe if  it been done, say, a decade ago.  Or if it had the slightest trace of originality.

Ultimately, Wild Recon comes off as a superficial rip-off of the Crocodile Hunter, Man vs. Wild, and Nickelodeon’s Go, Diego, Go.  It’s as if the producers couldn’t decide which format to adopt, so they tried to tackle them all.  Schultz seems like a truly cool guy, but he’s being shoved into niches that have already been filled by more genuine personalities.  (Except for Diego.  I hate Diego.)

Apparently, the only way for Schultz to get to his destinations is by jumping out of a plane.  Because how else can adventuring herpetologists get to these remote places?  Never mind that Schultz’s crew is waiting for him in the drop zone, having driven there in trucks full of equipment over pretty navigable roads.

Now that he’s made his grand entrance, Schultz can then drive solo to wherever the snakes are.  From there, it’s your typical Corwin-esque Animal Planet fare.   As the New York Times aptly puts it,

We learn assorted factoids that only a few of us are ever likely to use, like, “The best place to grab a kangaroo is by the tail.” We learn that many of Australia’s native species are in jeopardy because in the 1930s the cane toad, which secretes a toxin fatal to predators, was introduced from Hawaii as an ill-advised pest-control method.

What we don’t learn is why Mr. Schultz and those like him on other dangerous-animal shows have such an aversion to taking obvious precautions. If you were trying to grab a venomous lace monitor, a type of lizard, wouldn’t you put on gloves, or at least roll your shirt sleeves down? Someone cleaning a McDonald’s restroom wears more protective gear than this guy.

I’m not mocking Schultzy.  Dude’s obviously tough and well intended.  It’s just that in attempting to channel these other shows, Wild Recon becomes a parody of them.  These days, Discovery turns chaps like this out as quickly as Disney spawns its teen-aged tarts.

If Schultz wants to be remembered as anything but a Bear Grylls/Steve Irwin wannabe, we need to see what sets him apart from them, not how well he can imitate them.

 

Ghosts of the Utah War still roam charming Camp Floyd

The “Utah War” never saw an organized battle.  In fact, Johnston’s Army became an economic salvation for the very people it had intended to suppress.  400 buildings were constructed near the small community of Fairfield, igniting what was perhaps the biggest single boom in Utah history.  Fairfield transformed from quaint farm town to bustling Wild West hub almost overnight.

The old Stagecoach Inn at Camp Floyd (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The following originally appeared in the January 21, 2009 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

Five Mile Pass was unusually quiet last weekend.  The cold afternoon saw only two ATV trailers at staging points along highway.  Snow deposited by recent storms still coated the north faces of hills, setting the natural and man-made contours in sharp relief.   At the southernmost tip of the Oquirrhs, ATV-cut paths looped up and down steep slopes.  Other roads hugged knolls before winding away into canyons.

I spent many a winter’s night camping in these hills as a youth.  Care free and often bored, my friends and I would wander the arbitrary network of dirt roads, just to see what adventure might be waiting for us around the next bend.  We’d stash trinket caches in the nooks and crannies of the higher ridges, then gaze down at Rush Valley below, never realizing the likelihood that at least a few of these trails were  blazed some 150 years before by the exploratory—and often bored—soldiers based at nearby Camp Floyd.

Though the storied base made significant contributions to Tooele County’s mining history and economy, I had never visited before.  Heavy fog had doomed a west desert camping trip last Friday, and Saturday morning presented the perfect opportunity to finally check the place out.

Camp Floyd’s story is filled with irony.  Today, its visible remains are scant.  Only a small cemetery and one original structure, the camp commissary, are left to represent what once was the largest military installation in the United States.

The garrison was established in 1858 by General Albert Sydney Johnston, who had been dispatched to Utah by President James Buchanan to “subdue the rebellious Mormons.”  Johnston’s detachment consisted of 3,500 troops and civilian support staff—nearly one third of the entire U.S. Army.  They spent several months of what would be later called “The Utah War” camped on the shores of Rush Lake before moving near Fairfield to build the post.

Recently unearthed artifacts at Camp Floyd (photo by Clint Thomsen)

Historians suggest that while the U.S. government was genuinely concerned about rumors of an imminent Mormon rebellion, the reasons for sending such a large contingency to Utah were primarily political.  With tensions rising between northern and southern states over the issues of states’ rights and slavery, the newly inaugurated Buchanan hoped that a united effort to restore order to far west Utah would help defuse the conflict back home.  Polygamy, after all, was a practice scorned on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Secretary of War John B. Floyd, the post’s namesake and a known Southern sympathizer, may have had his own agenda.   The costs of establishing and maintaining such a remote base were significant, and rumor had it that the operation was an attempt by Floyd to drain the Federal treasury.

The “war” itself never saw an organized battle and was resolved through negotiation.  But whatever the motives behind the conflict, Johnston’s Army became an economic salvation for the very people it had intended to suppress.  400 buildings were constructed near the small community of Fairfield.  The new and substantial demand for goods and services ignited what was perhaps the biggest single boom in Utah history.  Fairfield transformed from quaint farm town to bustling Wild West hub almost overnight.  Its population skyrocketed from dozens to 7,000—nearly half the population of Salt Lake City at the time.

Camp Floyd’s troops led a mostly idyllic life.  Soldiers were relegated to transport protection, mapping, and surveying.  Some later took up prospecting in the nearby mountains, establishing the Camp Floyd Mining District and creating the mining camp of Ophir.

In 1861, the army sent in part to divert attention from North-South hostilities was recalled to participate in them.  The camp was abandoned, its buildings dismantled.  Fairfield became a de facto ghost town.  Nearly $4 million worth of supplies were sold to locals for $100,000, and the entire detachment moved east to fight on both sides of the Civil War.  In another ironic, though tangential twist, the first two generals to fight each other at Gettysburg had been comrades at Camp Floyd.

Today, the site is maintained as a State Park by the Utah Department of Natural Resources with the commissary building housing the small museum and an administrative office.  Also protected are the charming Stagecoach Inn and the one-room Fairfield District School.  Both are preserved in excellent condition and merit their own separate articles.

My sons and I arrived at the commissary building early in the afternoon and met park manager Mark Trotter, who was dressed in a Camp Floyd-era uniform for an event at the schoolhouse.  A meager fee gave us unlimited access to all three buildings.  We started with the museum, which features an exhibit of artifacts unearthed by a recent Brigham Young University archaeological dig.  Relics showcased include dishes, silverware, pipes, bottles, and other small items.

The two-story Stagecoach Inn sits across the street from the museum.  Built by the Carson family the same year as Camp Floyd, it was the first Overland Stage service stop south of Salt Lake City.  It was also a Pony Express stop beginning in 1860.  The restored inn is especially impressive considering the decreasing number of intact structures at ghost towns and other historic sites, and the fact that the likes of General Johnston and Porter Rockwell were frequent guests.

See that chair? Look close-- it's also a toilet. (photo by Clint Thomsen)

We stopped to tour the schoolhouse where costumed park staff members were teaching young girls about 19^th century life.  “Are those people real?” 6 year old Weston asked, keeping a safe distance from the crowd.  “Cause shouldn’t they be dead by now?  I mean, 150 years…”

The question brought a smile to one staff member’s face, though she didn’t answer it.  She showed the boys to the belfry and allowed them each to ring the bell.  Then it was time to head back toward Five Mile Pass—we had some old dirt roads to wander.

TRIP TIPS

Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park is an excellent and accessible winter outing.  It’s located 33 miles southeast of Tooele along SR-73.  A small fee is required for access to the museum and other buildings.  For more information, call 801-768-8932.

 

Dang winter. Dang it to heck.

Okay, so I’ve come to terms with winter in recent years– to a degree.  I’ve got a lighter column schedule, I don’t need to mow the lawn, not a lot going on to stress out about.   Kinda nice.

But I’ll only fully embrace this season when it stops sending my children to the hospital.

My decrease in postings here lately is partly due to the lighter column schedule, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that since about Christmas, we’ve spent a good deal of time at medical facilities.  If you have small children, you know what I’m talking about.  When the kids get sick, the earth stops spinning.

The big one was Deedle’s 3 day hospital stay the week before last.  Now, Deedle’s a big boy, but he was no match for human metapneumovirus (HMPV), a cousin of RSV, which I’m sure he contracted from toys in a pediatric waiting room somewhere.

I say ’somewhere’ because we’ve been in a lot of pediatric waiting rooms lately.  Here’s the run-down for our kids since about Christmas (diseases and number of family members affected):

Croop: 1
HMPV: 1
Strep Throat: 1
Bronchial infections: 1
Acute asthma: 1
Ear infections: 2
Unidentified, puke-your-guts-out stomach virus: 5

Mind you, each of these cases (save 4 instances of the the puke-your-guts-out stomach virus) necessitated its own doctor visit, co-pay, and prescription.

But I’m looking at the bright side– I’m happy to report that so far our family is completely swine flu free!  We’ll see what next week brings.

 

Funny Tees: I’m With Coco

Never been a Conan fan, but it’s a funny tee!
I’m with Coco

 

Excited for the new season of Man vs. Wild

Bear Grylls took a lot of grief from survivalists after the first season of Discovery Channel’s Man vs. Wild.  Not so much because network bigwigs staged certain situations or forced the adventuresome Brit to use safety ropes, flotation devices, and other helps to mitigate the perils of his stunts.  But because the producers did their best to hide these helps from the audience.

The ire was unfortunately directed at Grylls himself.  He was called a fake, a liar, and even worse: a wuss.  The formerly gun-shy Grylls got the point and took a stand, demanding the net do things his way from that point on.  Second season episodes debuted with disclaimers about assistance and staged situations, and new cover-your-butt narration was dubbed back into first season episodes for reruns.

The fact that it’s taken Grylls so long to shake this “wussy” image is both unfortunate and ironic.  Unfortunate because the show’s entire purpose was to demonstrate survival in certain situations (it makes sense then, that they’d either seek out or create these situations).  It’s ironic because they don’t come much tougher than Bear Grylls.

Criticize his ridiculous pronunciations of “glacier” and “vitamins” or his disturbing propensity to shed his clothes at least once every episode, but Bear ain’t a wuss.  There may be a crew standing by in case he gets hypothermia, but that’s Bear leaping into that icy water.  There may be a cameraman filming him, but that’s Bear leaping over those gaping chasms, or eating a cow’s eye, or biting into a raw zebra carcass, or sleeping inside a dead camel.

Good stuff.  Which is why I was delighted last night when I caught a teaser for the new season of Man vs. Wild, which begins next Wednesday at 9pm on Discovery.  Apparently the show’s focus has expanded beyond survival basics to extreme adventure.  Sounds awesome.

Just one request—let’s keep the clothes on this year, eh Bear?

 

Attention link leeches: Thanks but no thanks

For the last year or so I’ve noticed an amusing phenomenon with this website.  Somehow I’ve shown up on the radars of lots of businesses that range from legitimate upstarts to snake oil salesman to pyramid schemes.  They all want one thing: a link.

Most try to come through the back door with comments.  Akismet usually catches the most blatant, but Some bot comments pair their spam link with a chuckle-worthy effort to sound legit.  You know the routine:

“Thanks for this great posting.  I read every day!”

Then there are the emailers.  I post my email address in a couple places here, but it’s pretty spiderproof.  So most of these are real people that have actually visited the website and typed my address into their email to me.  I get at least one of these every week asking for some sort of link back.  I’ve obliged twice in the past- both vetted companies that were relevant to my subject matter.

But most requests look like generic form letters that read almost the same as the next.  If you’ve got a topical blog, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.  Here’s a redacted example I received just this morning, my comments in red:

This is (insert first name here) from (insert upstart website here).  We stumbled on your blog while searching for Exclusive Furniture related information.

Did you, now?  Furniture?  BonnevilleMariner.com?  You’re talking folding camp chairs and cots, right?

We operate the largest Home Furniture & Office Furniture website

Largest where?  Compared to what?

featuring more than 30,000 blogs. Our site averages 200,000 unique visitors per month.

Sure it does.  And I just caught a 20 lb catfish in South Willow Creek.

As a kind note We have featured your blog on (insert webpage listing a bunch of random blogs here).  We would be grateful if you could add a link and these details on your blog’s main page.

Ah, how kind of you!  But no, thanks.  I’ll pass on being visited tangentially by the 200,000 people buying ottomans from your website.

Don’t get me wrong, I dig entrepreneurship and I believe small business is the key to a successful economy.  I don’t have a problem with affiliate marketing or link exchanges, but I refuse to feed leeches.

I will, however, poke gratuitous fun at them all day long.