Simsbury Troop 175

Peacock Wins Fishing Trophy

Issac Peacock, a First Class Scout, was presented with the Troop 175 Fishing Trophy for is 12" small mouth bass caught on a troop trip in June. Issac's name has been engraved on the trophy which goes to the scout who catches  the largest fish at a scout event. Presenting the trophy is Assistant Scout Master Peter Adamovich.

Troop 175, Welcome back to another awesome year!

We have a pretty good leadership group built up this year and are ready to get things going. For patrol leaders we’ve got Rob Burke, Nick Carabillo, Nick Summa, Eric Barch, Tom Adamowicz, Keegan Rice and Rob Asensio. Our new scribe for this year is Carter Hill, the Quartermaster is Zach Zikovich, Our troop Guides are Steve Banulski, Isaac Peacock, and Jake Van Loon, and finally,  Andrew Fletcher has been appointed troop historian.

We’ll kick things off this Thursday by organizing the new patrols and then creating patrol flags. We also have a great trip program built up for this year that should be really fun. We are of course keeping the Tuckerman’s ravine trip and the Bromley ski trip, but we also plan to go to places like the Algonquin national park in Canada. Once again welcome back and I hope to see you guys on Thursday.

Lee Adamowicz

Senior Patrol Leader

Troop Calendar 2008-2009

Attached is a copy of the most recent Troop 175 Calendar of Events. It lists all troop meetings and trips from September 2008 through June 2009.

Download 09Calendar.pdf

Here is a summery of this year's trips:

© September - Bicycle trip to Cape Cod, clamming and camping on the beach.

© October - Mission Profile Trip at Camp Mattituck in Plymouth, Ct. Scouts will be divided into 4 teams and have to build rafts, get across the lake, find buried food caches using compass, come back across the lake, build secret camps, start fires with flint and steel, cook their food using only utensils that they make, and finally capture the other teams after night fall. Cubs are invited to participate in this campout.

© November - annual Weblos Challenge on our “home” turf, Onion Mountain. This is a great event where Cubs are invited for a full day of Scout activities; and to work with our Scout patrols on making rope bridges, furniture, campfires, orienteering and zip lines. In the evening the patrols will cook a meal with the Cubs and then will have a Troop campfire with songs and skits put on by the Scouts. Cubs are invited to spend the night camping (with a parent)

© December - We will be rock climbing on an indoor rock climbing wall. We also will have a reunion trip of older Scouts from college and our Leaders Group, which will do some backcountry skiing and camping.

© January - Our Annual ski and snowboard trip to Vermont

© February - Operation Deep Freeze will be at the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield where scouts will build survival shelters and learn cold weather camping.

© March - We will travel to Staten  Island where we will camp in a spectacular Scout Camp and spend the weekend touring around New York City. Places we will go include the United Nations, the television set of Law and Order, Times Square and at least one famous Pizza place. This is our first crossover trip after the new Cubs arrive and we look forward to having new fathers join us as well.

© April - Once again we will go to Tuckerman’s Ravine, this is one of our most popular trips and we had 65 scouts and parents join us last year.

© May - We will be canoeing on the Housatonic, rock-climbing and camping in the Cornwall area of CT.

© June - We will sponsor the Third Annual Boy Scout Adventure Race. This race was developed by Troop 175 and involves biking, running, canoeing, rappelling, orienteering and climbing in Simsbury in a 16 mile - 4-hour race. Last year we invited the other two Simsbury Troops to join us and we ran the race as a fund Raiser for Michael Bubnash, an Eagle Scout from Troop 174 who had been paralyzed in a car accident. We raised over $25,000 for his medical care. Troop 175 took 8 of the 9 medal categories and set new course records.

Our Final Trip of the year will be to the Algonquin National Park in Ontario Canada. This will be a four-day canoe trip to one of the most spectacular wilderness areas in the world.

Scouts Dig Clams

Simsbury Boy Scout Troop 175 would like to thank the Wellfleet Shellfishing Department and in particular Assistant Shellfish Constable John Mankevetch, for a wonderful opportunity for scouts to learn more about shellfishing and it's importance to the community.  During a September trip to Wellfleet, The scouts and several parents were able to see how clams are raised and even had the opportunity to dig a few clams of their own.   

For more photos of the September Cape trip, check out the Troop Online Photo Library.

Scout Troop 175 Explores Deep into the Amazon Jungle

On July 18 , twelve members of Simsbury Troop 175 left for Peru as part of an expedition to explore deep into the Amazon jungle. The Team  flew to Lima Peru and then on to Iquitos ,Peru, the largest city in the world(600,000) that cannot be reached by road. It is the western most city on the Amazon. There the group boarded motorized aluminum boats and traveled 50 miles up  the Amazon to Tahuayo River  and then an additional 40 miles to a rustic lodge built on stilts with no electricity where the Team met their guides and porters , all members of the local villages.

The next three days were spent training to travel into the jungle with instruction in jungle movement, machete use, poisonous snake identification,fishing for Piranha, and camp building in the rain forest. The Team and their guides ( all hired by Dr. Paul Beaver , famed Amazon Jungle explorer),would be exploring a part of the jungle that had never been visited by human beings searching for and cataloging monkey species.

The Team then traveled by dug out canoe to the outmost research station, La Cia operated by the Tahuaya River Amazon Research Center (TRARC) where they were briefed by Dr. Michael Pereira the noted primatologist. He instructed the Scouts in the various monkey species that were being tracked and that the Team  had been given permission  for the group to enter an unexplored region . The Scouts , all members of the elite Immortals group in Troop 175  came with their machetes (Standard issue when members are inducted) and once the porters and guides were loaded up they headed off into the jungle. The guides hacked out the main trail and the group followed in line ,often up to their knees in mud and subjected to frequent downpours of rain. According to Scoutmaster Brad Mead, the organizer of the expedition," Some  of the Scouts on this trip were with us on the Kilimanjaro climb last summer. This was a very different kind of hike.We found the going hard in the rain forest. The mud slowed us down, we were wet all of the time and there was the constant need to keep watch for snakes, poison dart frogs, tarantulas and vegetations that was ready to scratch and infect the skin. We came upon just about everything you find in the jungle including a Fer-de-Lance, the most poisonous snake in the world and sitting coiled on a log to the side of our trail. We gave it wide berth.  At one point the guides asked us to stop and they started chattering amongst themselves. The we heard the sound of stampeding and the guides told us to quickly stand behind trees. A minute later group of about 100 wild boars , each about 200 lbs, came running through our camp" 

After two days the group reached a boundary river where they set up camp, hacking away the jungle to put up tents. According to Lee Adamowicz, Troop 175 lead Scout, "The jungle skills of the Indians were truly amazing. We learned allot just watching them make camp sites, using palm fronds for bedding, stripping bark and making rope on the spot.These guys were exceptional outdoorsmen". As camp was being set up the group was observing the different monkey species in the trees. At one point the Scouts spotted a group of Red Uakari , a species so rare it has not been seen in the northern Amazon for 26 years . The guides who identified the species were  ecstatic.

The groups Expedition doctor, Dr. Mike Ring, formerly of Simsbury and now Head cardiologist in Spokane Hospital kept watch over the groups health as a number of adults and Scouts became ill from the constant wet, cuts that didn't heal and bad stomachs from the local food. All recovered on the trail .

According to Mead, "We collected allot of information for TRARC and eventually made our way back to the Tahuayo Lodge where we finally got to dry out and get a cold shower of river water. Our guides asked us to play their village in a  game of soccer and we agreed and got beaten solidly by the locals. They toured us through their thatched hut village and we got to see a very different way of life."

Twelve days after the group arrived in the jungle they flew back to Lima and then back to Simsbury. The group members were Scouts  Lee Adamowicz, Rob Moore, Carter Hill, Ryan Mead, Jeffrey Mead, Cortland Carter, Rob Carter. 

Scout Leaders included Brad Mead, Peter Adamowicz, Dave Moore, Dave Carter, Mike Hill.  Additional members of the group also from Simsbury included Andy Glassman, Nathan Glassman, Sam Glassman ,Amanda Glassman, Allison Mead, Lis Phillips.

Troop 175 Adventure Crew Trip to Maine High Adventure Base

On June 29^th, our eight-member Adventure Crew departed from Simsbury and headed to the Maine High Adventure Base in northern Maine. After a nine-hour ride, we arrived at Matagamon Wilderness, a campground on the banks of the East Branch of the Penobscot River where we spent our first night. Early the next morning, after a great breakfast cooked for us on an open fire, we traveled a short distance to Grand Lake Matagamon where we were met by Maine High Adventure Base staff. We loaded our personal gear and boarded a pontoon boat for the ride across the lake to the landing at Maine High Adventure Base.

After a tour of the Base, the Crew met with Base staff to discuss trip planning and options. Base staff plotted 4 different trips for the Crew to consider.  The Crew picked an exciting trip with lots of white water on the St. Croix River on the Maine/New Brunswick border from Vanceboro, Maine to the Ocean. The Crew chose this trip because of the allure of an exploratory element to the trip along the lower reaches of the St. Croix River and out into Passamaquoddy Bay. No Maine High Adventure Base crew had ever before paddled down the St. Croix all the way out into the Bay. No one, including the Base staff and our guide, was sure what we would encounter for river/water or campsite conditions along the lower reach of the St. Croix River and open tidal water. We spent the rest of the day preparing for the trip; packing food, gear and supplies we would need for the entire trip. That evening, we camped along the shore of Grand Lake Matagamon where the Crew enjoyed cliff jumping into the lake.

 The next morning, the Crew paddled back across Grand Lake Matagamon, loaded the van and trailer and head out on the three-hour ride to the St. Croix River put-in at Vanceboro. We had the great fortune of having Jason Cross assigned as Guide for our Crew. Jason is a Maine native, a Registered Maine Guide, and he comes from a family with a background in professional guiding. Jason was a great source of knowledge and experience, which he freely passed on the Crew.

Some of the highlights on the trip included learning to maneuver a canoe around rocks and river obstacles; running class 2 and 3 rapids; getting up at 3 am to paddle in the early morning river smoke, encountering numerous bald eagles, a family of beavers, a moose crossing the river and an unexpected longhorn bison; loons calling through the night; bushwhacking a campsite along the exploratory reach of the river; fishing; walking out into the rapids in a chain-like maneuver; learning new cooking techniques and quick-release knots; a tour inside a hydroelectric generation plant; and interloping across the US Border into Canada. Near the town of Calais, after a strenuous portage around a dam, we had the exciting experience of having the dam release water with us below it.  We had to move quickly to load up, get into the water and make it through the speedily increasing rapids before they became impassable.

Our last day on the river, we covered 21 miles which included long reaches of slow water on the lower St. Croix, as well as waves and head wind in the cold, salty waters of Passamaquoddy Bay, an inlet of the Bay of Fundy.  The day included 13 hours in our canoes. We arrived at Robbinston, our take-out destination, in the early evening, toward the end of the day, a total of 72 miles downstream from our put-in at Vanceboro. We had made the entire trip without dumping a canoe.

 

The next morning, July 7^th, we packed and loaded for the three-hour ride back to Grand Lake Matagamon and our last paddle across the lake back to the Base. After turning in our gear, we sat down for a bean hole supper that was absolutely delicious.   

A unique aspect of this trip was that we cooked great meals including chili (river guide style), river-itos, and moose cakes over open fires built the Maine Guide way.  We enjoyed sunny, clear weather every day, a river breeze that kept the infamous bugs of Maine at bay (at least while we were on the water), and Hudson Bay bread.  The whole trip was a great experience.

Along the way, the Crew learned river safety and rescue techniques and developed teamwork and skills necessary to quickly and efficiently make and break camp, cook and clean, accomplish difficult portages, and to handle the physical challenges encountered on the trip.

CL&P Offering Grants to Fund Environmental Initiatives

Connecticut Light and Power is offering grants to fund small environmental initiatives.

This might be a great opportunity for the scouts of Simsbury Boy Scout Troop 175 to come up with ideas that help the community and the environment and receive funding to implement those projects.

This might also be of interest for individual scouts looking to gain funding for eagle scout projects.

The deadline is Oct 15 and April 15 of each year, so be sure to plan ahead!

Here is the website with the complete info.

Ben's Boathouse at Camp Mattatuck

Camp Mattatuck’s Director, Chris Moon, who asked me to communicate his “sincere appreciation to Troop 175 for their efforts in the construction Ben’s Boat House”. Over the past weekend the camp had stored all of its watercraft and docks within the boathouse, “with room to spare”.  Chris said that the Boat House exceeded his expectations and “it’s awesome”.

This is just one example from many that makes this Troop so spectacular, we are very proud of you.

Thank you,

Mr. Adamowicz.