A lot depends upon the leader and their level of knowledge and comfort with the outdoors <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />. My wife?s troops have gone rappelling, backpacking, rafting, made FSKs and PSKs and learned basic outdoor skills. Granted, compared to several of the postings from BSA leaders, even our troops have not perused with the same vigor, outdoor skills, but then it has to start somewhere.

There would be nothing preventing you from becoming a GSA Troop leader (other then some of the ridiculous rules <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />-which we sometime bend and the GSA bureaucracy) and implementing the ?outdoors? tone for your troop. Just realize there is a considerable amount of ?jumping through hoops?, but the girls in your troop would be the beneficiaries of your interests in the outdoors <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

Pete

Same happened with the cub scouts I was in. My mother was the den mother and none of the other mothers were interested in helping and my mother wasn't the outdoors type so it ended up becoming craft scouts. My first yeat being a WEBELOW in boy scouts we did go camping once and did bring in the state AG agent to do a hunters safety class. I still have all my little badges and even the certificate from the hunters safety class. How do they do things in these times where a young boy/girl even mentioning the word gun or knife gets exepled from school, do you tell your scouts not to mention anything they did while camping so as to not offend anyone beacause you used a knife to make wood for a campfire <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Are you kidding? They made a campfire?? That's DANGEROUS. Sorry. No fire allowed. And KNIVES? The implied violence is just horrible. I'm OFFENDED! <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Yep, that was my point, what do the scouts do now that all the gear they would use is too dangerous <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I was in 6th grade and a high school science teacher brough our class down to the park and let us see his gus for show and tell, I remember an M16 and muzzelloader. He loaded the old muzzelloader without the bullet and shot it in the air so we could hear the bang. 7th grade we shot bolt action 22.s at targets. The cub scout hunters safety class was in the school lunchroom. Now a days none of that is allowed now and if you mention the word gun yin a school you get a free trip to counseling <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
So how do the scouts camp without all that dangerous gear <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
sorry I just keep going on about the same rant, got strange looks at work the other day when I was talking to a female unix admin and she was talking about renewing her CCW we got strange looks from the sheep in the cubes near us for talking about evil guns and knives.