We had an excellent Philmont warm-up hike February 8th, 2025 at Foss Farm. We will be training for our Philmont trip with increasingly more difficult backpacking trips over the next few months. We really appreciate Mr. Keene and Mr. Watters for leading the planning for this hike.
The following day, February 9th, we had a great time ice climbing at Camp Sayre in Milton, MA. The conditions were fantastic! We really appreciate Mr. Newman for doing all of the planning for this Troop activity.
We had an excellent Thanksgiving in the Woods campout at the Haynes Cabin and Camp Nobscot last November. We cooked turkey with orange slices in dutch ovens on a wood burning stove and had mashed potatoes and sweet corn as well. The meal was outstanding!
Troop 135 collaborated with leaders from Troop 195 in Westford to work through the canoeing merit badge requirements in preparation for our Northern Tier High adventure trip this summer including practicing capsizing and getting back on the water..
This was done over three meetings in conjunction with Troop 195 Wesford, the third of which happened on Forge Pond. Below are the YouTube links to the three sessions (plus a quick attendance check on the last day).
We had a fantastic canoeing campout the weekend of June 18-19! We canoed 8 miles on the Sudbury River from Wayland through Lincoln and stayed on Scout Island, a remote location on the river. The Scouts did a great job controlling the canoes in difficult, windy conditions, and we traveled at nearly a 2 knot pace. Some Scouts took some daring and fun shortcuts through the marshes. We saw much wildlife, including a flight of about 20 swans.
We had an outstanding campout to Sandy Neck on Cape Cod. In under 24 hours, our Scouts and parent attendees hiked nearly 9 miles with 30+ pound packs. The weather on Saturday was very clear. We had light rain early the morning before we left our tents to have breakfast and break camp.
We had an excellent cabin campout at Camp Nobscot the weekend of March 16, 2024. We stayed in a great cabin deep in the Nobscot reservation, and we took a hike to the top of Nobsot Mountain and Tipling Rock. The views were quite beautiful on the clear day we had. We could even see a part of the Boston skyline far in the distance.
On Saturday, February 3, Troop 135 Scouts worked hard and had fun helping the Conservation Commission with removing white pines and maples from the Cranberry Bog. This is part of the efforts to restore and maintain the Cranberry Bog as a wet meadow habitat.
Many trees were removed using saws and loppers, and carried to where they will be picked up by the DPW.
We had an outstanding Klondike Derby overnight campout at the Treasure Valley Scout Reservation on Saturday, January 27, 2024. Our crew had to work through a series of challenges throughout the derby, and we learned a lot along the way. Our most impressive success was the bucket transit challenge using lashed boards and ropes (photos below). We had to get a bucket with a 10 lb. weight over an imaginary river, without touching the river. The judges commented that our Scouts’ approach was the most sophisticated engineering solution of the day!
