A Scout’s Campfire

Care of Tents

December 11th, 2006 spryken

As a “drought buster” troop, that is almost every time we camp it rains, we have some experience with tents. We are hard on tents. The boys care for the tents after a camping trip, so some are not care for as well as the adult leaders would like. We try to overcome this with training.

The first thing we do with a new tent is to seal the seams. This is an easy step to overlook, but is essential for any one that does wet weather camping, well worth the effort. The next thing is to mark each tent is an out of the way place with a number. Each bag or stuff sack also gets marked. This is so we can keep track of which tent is missing what part. It also adds a level of responsibility to the scout. Each scout pair knows which tent number they have, so do the leaders. That means we can enforce accountability.

Each year, when the Webelos cross over, our troop goes through the new scout orientation. We have our older scouts teach the new scouts the way to pitch a tent among other essential scouting skills. They teach our troops method of handling tents. We tend to review this lesson during the first couple of campouts with the new scouts. Of course, we when have a really bad campout, that is no one came seem to treat the tents with respect, we schedule a refresher for the entire troop.

After any campout, each tent is sent home with one of the scouts that used it. They work out who will take it home. They are to set the tent up to dry it out. Usually, I would say air it out, but our troop’s experience is more along the lines of wring it out then dry it out. If it is still raining, they are encouraged to set it up in the garage. We try to get the tents dry as quickly as possible. Ideally, we would have enough space set aside for our troop, that we could hang the tents. We don’t, so we send them home. After the tents are dry and the scout has made sure that no extra gear has been left in the tent, he stores the tent, bringing it back to the next troop meeting.

This process has worked fairly well for us. We have had mildewed tents. We have had missing parts. That is why we have started marking the tents and encouraging more accountability. No one likes finding out that their tent is missing a stake or pole when you are trying to set it up, especially if it is raining. No one likes sleeping in a tent that is mildewed or smells like sweat socks. Encourage your scouts to take ownership, they are the ones who will suffer if the tents are not treated with respect. It is hard to overcome our society’s attitude of “If it breaks you’ll buy a new one, so why should I care”. Maybe we should consider adding a 13th point to the scout law…. A Scout is Frugal. What troop has the money to buy new tents every year????

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