Overnight Lock-In at the Alaska Rock Gym

We arrived at the Alaska Rock Gym just after 8:00 pm on Saturday, April 23, and started climbing in the bouldering area, and if you were 14 years or older, you had the opportunity to be belay trained.  We worked on the fundamentals of belaying, and then we were briefed on the rules and given instructions.  Once the initial talk was complete, we grabbed our climbing shoes and started climbing

Around 11 pm, the second year scouts arranged a "sharks and minnows" game, but after about 20 minutes of playing time, Mr. Strickland shut down the game, and told us to stop playing.  I think some of the boys didn't go to bed until about 3 or 4 am.  I felt sorry for a couple of the adult chaperones who probably wanted to be in bed, sleeping long before that time. 

Around 11:30 pm the adults brought out the first round of food, which was hot dogs, chips, and gatorade, and the around 1 am, we had crackers, cheese, salami, and pepperoni.  If you like food, this is a good event to attend.

The next morning we woke up about 6-6:30 am, and started getting our stuff packed and ready for the trip home. I think that one of the highlights of the event, in addition to the climbing, was the breakfast we had in the morning.  Mr. Estes made, from scratch, biscuits and gravy with sausage patties for breakfast.  After breakfast we went over to the corner of the two climbing walls and two boys climb the rock wall and held the troop flag while we took the troop picture.