This year’s first Pioneering Scoutcraft course of the year was run at the 1st Claremont scout hall base with about 40 scouts from various different troops in the region. This is a fairly large turn out for a course, but it’s great to see that there are so many scouts trying to pass off a few activities for their advancement. It started off with the scouts being divided into their patrols during the sign in process and then everyone went outside to fall in. There they received their instructions for what to do and then began said instructions.
The first day is just for teaching purposes while the second day is to pass off the requirements that you learnt the day before. The requirements involve a variety of different things; such as lashings, knots, hitches and basic whippings. I think everyone managed to get through all these different requirements in the different bases where the requirements were being taught.
At the end of the day 4 or 5 of the scouters also made a massive friction bridge, using our pioneering poles, as a model for the attendees to understand how a friction bridge actually works. On the second day the scouts started off similarly to the first day with signing in and with flag break. The difference was that this day is now to pass the requirements off that they had learnt the day before. Again I think everyone ended up passing everything off with a few people taking a bit longer.
On this second day the same group of scouters also decided that we wanted to make a small hourglass tower. This somehow took about 4 or so hours for us to build. Even though all of us had pioneer interest and we were making a small scale version using the patrol staves. Nonetheless the scouts seemed to think it was moderately good and it could hold about 2 of us scouters on top at one time… until it collapsed.
– Joel Foord
