2020 Canoeing High Adventure Lite - Covid

Date: July - August 2020

What do you do when you have a global pandemic? Scouting shutting down didn't halt Troop 60, it just changed our tactics. Our scouts wanted to do things other than zoom, so we let them, within the confines of State regulations on Covid. We hiked, we biked and we absolutely canoed, all within the confines of social distancing. Arent' you more than 6 feet away from someone in a canoe? Yes. Can't camp? Well sounds like we can't do High Adventure the way we always do, 5-6 days deep in the wilderness camping. Shame as our scouts love it and it teaches them independence, perseverance and fortitude. For canoeing, we came up with a creative solution, paddling the extensive river system in the PNW. Painstaking planning and recon work went into it, but we made it happen. Over the course of a month we paddled 6 different rivers and the Puget Sound to give the scouts that wanted to go a challenge they wouldn't forget. We ended with an overnight that had been intended to be a troop overnight before covid hit, but ended up being a High Adventure Lite for a handful of scouts. 

Five Rivers was a 25+ mile journey all over the Puget Sound through connecting river systems, probably used for commercial transport back in the day. That day it led to exhausted, but elated scouts.

Jetti Island is a small island in Puget Sound that shelters a commercial inlet.  We had a blast until turning the corner was more than exhausting and we took a break where we shouldn't have, on a military base. Thankfully the MP led us to an Eagle Scout that helped us avoid the heavy traffic.

It couldn't be a river High Adventure without river specific training that augmented our typical canoe workshop where we teach the basics of canoeing to the whole troop. Our river specific training occurred on the Sammamish River in Bothell. Silly scouts wanted to beat us old folks and dug too deep and sunk the Freeboard under the water. Great impromptu moving water rescue training.