Scouts Climb High at the Action Centers
By Reed Skyllingstad Jamboree Today Staff
Portable climbing walls are popular at every jamboree. They're so popular that for the 2010 National Scout Jamboree, climbing walls have been set up at each of the four action centers.
Scouts can climb belayed to the top of the tower, then be lowered by belay. Staff members provide helmets and other safety gear.
Each action center has expanded its program since 2005. Action centers provide the kind of activities—climbing, rappelling, shooting, mountain boarding, and others—that Scouts love.
Confidence courses provide team-building and low COPE activities to Scouts. Their design reinforces a Scout's confidence in other Scouts, and their physical and mental awareness. COPE is an acronym for Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience. The low version of the activity includes rope courses and challenging puzzles. The confidence course is best tackled by a team or patrol of six to eight Scouts.
Each action center also provides other popular activities such as shooting sports, bikathlon, and motocross courses.
The shooting sports include trapshooting and archery. For trapshooting, Scouts use a 20-gauge shotgun to blast clay pigeons out of the sky, raining orange bits all over the ground. At the archery range, Scouts fire arrows at large paper bull's-eyes. On the bikathlon course, Scouts ride geared mountain bikes cross-country, stopping at designated stations to fire air rifles at targets. This event is based on the Olympic biathlon.
Motocross is more strenuous. Scouts ride BMX bikes around a dirt track with many short hills, dips, and banked turns. They also get a shower of water at the end of the course from a staff member with a hose.
B. Sabel, 15, Life Scout from Jamboree Troop 1104 from New Boston, Ill., said, "The bikes are a little small; being 6-foot-2, it isn't easy for me to ride a 4-foot bike." But Sabel also said he enjoyed the ride.