Craig,

Thanks for the story link - we'll talk about this tomorrow night at closing; there are several lessons. We'll see how our scouts do as arm chair QBs on this one. What became of the other adult?

PSK? Since they had packs, tents, and sleeping gear, (and presumably the rest of the essentials) the PSK itself is not all that helpful. No speculation from me on that - as I wrote earlier, I'm not a PSK-in-a-tin zealot. I wasn't there and not enough detail in the story to be sure, but it sounds like they had bad weather by Saturday morning and tried to hike out. That seems to have been a mistake. Staying put at the designated campsite probably would have been better - my guess is they got soaked and tired trying to hike out. That's OK if you make it safely back to your vehicle... and BTW, I would not take a single vehicle on a Scout outing like that.

Once you're wet and your (wet) tent is pinned in by deep wet snow, you really need to know a lot more than BSA 1st class scout skills to properly take care of business. BTDT; no big deal for folks like us, but for the average scout leader... most are there for many good reasons, but usually not because he/she is a skilled and experienced outdoors person.

Regards,

Tom