My explorer

On Friday night, Tim headed off on an adventure.

His scout troop had a winter weekend camp planned.

I must admit I was nervous when the first email arrived with the information regarding the weekend. 

The trip involved a 2 hour train journey Friday night. Arriving in the dark and putting up the tent.

Saturday, packing up and skiing for a couple of kilometers to a new camp.

Digging a snow hole.

Saturday night sleeping in a snow hole.

Sunday, pack up and ski back to catch train home.

Sounds simple, until you add in 'have a jacket that you can keep your water bottle in, so it does not freeze'!!  

We are talking doing all this in freezing cold conditions! I know it sounds obvious, but he is still my baby, 11 years old and I found it really hard to sound 'excited' and not my true feeling of 'nervous'.

We packed him up and sent him off.

Love how he gave his brother a high five before heading off.

So today we have just collected him from the train station.

 

He had a fabulous time. The first night in the tent was cosy, but noisy with the wind whistling outside.

He found the skiing uphill with a 10 kilo backpack on quite challenging - fair enough as he has not done too much cross country skiing either!

His favourite part was digging and creating the toilet!! Apparently it had sides and was nearly 2 meters deep!

He did get very cold during the day while digging the snow hole and felt like his fingers and toes would fall off. Tears may have been shed:( He carried on with the help of mentos. The temperature was a lot colder than they had expected for March, it was -17c. This does not even take into account the wind chill factor.

After settling into the snow hole for the night, all the boys in his group were very cold, their snow hole was not sealed enough and the wind was blowing icily in. They spoke to the leader and it was decided to walk down the mountain in the dark and sleep the rest of the night in the train station.

Apparently the most scary part of the whole weekend was waking up Sunday morning with a tiny mouse on his chest looking him straight in the face:)

He certainly had an adventure.

He had lots of fun, learnt a great deal and survived!!

 

I am very proud of him for doing all of  this - I certainly could not have.