This year, the Chief Cornplanter Council Scouting BSA event was pushed back from late January to mid-March. And the weather happened to be spectacular … unless one were hoping for snow.

Scouts from all over Warren County gathered to learn and practice skills, get outdoors, and enjoy some camaraderie.

Scouts moved in groups of four to 10 around Camp Olmsted stopping at 10 different stations.

The stations included wood tools, first aid, team building, orienteering, height and distance, knot tying, shooting and aquatics, ecology, demonstration campsite, and fires.

From left, Troop 35 Scouts Will Zdarko, Andrew Kyler, Isaac Hammerbeck, and Michael Smith carry their Klondike Derby sled to their next station.

Scouts made kindling, practiced hitting targets with arrows and life preservers, pointed out camping problems, learned how to estimate distance with their steps and heights, and worked together to safely move radioactive materials (simulated radioactive materials). Given various lengths and types of rope, groups at team building had to figure out how to move two different (gamma-emitting) balls into a containment bucket, without entering the reactor nor touching the materials with anything but the ropes.

The groups of Scouts carried their sleds with them. In the sleds – based on traditional dog sleds — the Scouts carried materials they thought might be useful at the stations.

“They have equipment on the sleds,” District Executive Jim Shaw said. “Everything they’re supposed to need at the stations, they’re supposed to have in their sleds. They pull them around from station to station.”

This year, “pulling” was more like “carrying.” There was little snow on the ground and conditions were muddy.

Most groups ganged up to carry the 50-pound sleds. Using poles, they put one Scout on each corner. Two groups had wheels on their sleds — it didn’t look much easier on the uphill sections.

There were about 70 Scouts, boys and girls, at the event — most of them older, but some younger Scouts looking to move up — and another 50 adults.

Four of the groups stayed overnight on Friday and some were planning to do the same on Saturday.

At the end of the day, Scouts dug into the pot of traditional Mulligan soup. Each Scout brought a can of soup. The only requirement was that it not be cream-based. Every can — chicken noodle, bean and bacon, whatever — was dumped in the pot and stirred over an open fire with the help of a decades-old exercise-bike-driven set of arms. Pedaling the bike — up to adults while the Scouts were at their stations — stirred the soup.