Scouting

Some years ago I took over as scoutmaster for a local troop of about fifteen guys. I was one of those kind of scoutmasters that believed that the boys should be able to try virtually any healthy activity, such as camping and hiking, etc. Because of this we camped once a month, rain, snow, shine, heat etc. We also sent teams to backpacking trips and canoe trips. As a result over a three year period my troop grew from fifteen to over forty-five boys. With this came the need for leaders, and I was fortunate to have twelve active assistants, including two moms, one of them the mother of my son's best friend. Amy and my wife Nancy were best friends. Our sons were born within a few months of each other and both had a healthy desire to breastfeed. They met at a mothers group and became friends. Our two sons were practically inseparable once they reached walking and talking age. As a result our two families spent much time and many activities together. Amy's husband was, unfortunately, a deadbeat drunk, which resulted in me frequently being a "dad" figure to Chris. We even joked on occasions that Amy was my second wife, although not in "that" way. Not that I hadn't had a few accidental peeks over the many years, but we respected the boundaries and that was that.

Being a scout leader means that you frequently go on outings with boys, and this requires at least two leaders at all times. Amy was an active participant, believing that if her son wanted to go, she was willing to try it as well. This resulted in her attending many campouts and "high adventure" treks such as repelling, backpacking and canoeing. The boys had attended a number of winter campouts, and I had passed on a lot of my knowledge of winter camping and survival that I learned from my many winters as a kid in the northern part of the country, and my almost annual ice fishing trips into the northern wilderness of upper Minnesota and Wisconsin. Some of the boys wanted a more advanced taste, and we planned a winter trip to the Canadian high adventure camp. This trip would be complete with advanced classes on winter survival, such as how to trap food and deal with blizzard conditions. This was not the kind of trip you could easily take in Missouri, just not enough snow. In order to have this kind of trip you had to have a minimum of two leaders. To complicate things, the boys in our troop had talked to a number of other scouts in troops around us and the group wishing to go had grown to nearly twenty boys. The size limit of the teams at the winter high adventure program was 10, including adults, so we were going to need a number of trained leaders so we could break down into smaller teams.

Getting leader training in the boy scouts is usually just a matter of finding or waiting for the right training class, and then going and getting certified. This kind of thing was regularly done for water training and such, but there were no training classes for winter survival or camping. After a number of calls to council headquarters, they agreed that my own personal certifications and experiences would allow me to create and teach a winter camping and survival class for leaders. The only problem now was how to conduct such a class in Missouri. The answer was to head up to Wisconsin during the early winter for training. A number of leaders enthusiastically agreed with the plan... that was until a few weeks before it was time to go and they realized they were going to have to slog through a foot or more of snow. In the end I had six male leaders and one female leader, Amy, besides myself that could go on the five day training trip.

The trip started out normal enough. We left early in the morning for the nine hour drive, hitting the trail head just before dark. We had only planned on hiking in a mile or so the first day to make camp. It took a little while to get all our heavy clothing on and the trailer unpacked and everyone geared up, finally hiking out for our campsite just as the sun was hitting the tops of the trees. I wasn't worried about light, the bright December moon was nearly full and already high in the sky as the sun slipped away. The guys, most of them in their late twenties to early thirties, tossed snow like a bunch of kids and had a great time for that first mile, slogging through foot deep powder in the crisp twenty degree air. It was an easy trek to find the site we selected, following the GPS right to the clearing in the heavy woods. This particular state park had a twisting twenty-eight mile loop trail that was off limits to snow-mobiles. In the summer it was a spectacular hike, with stream crossings and beautiful trees. We didn't need to cook, having had dinner on the road, so we set about putting up camp and starting a fire. The first task was to find dry wood, and I showed the guys how to locate dry wood to start a fire with, by picking dead branches of the underside of pines and whittling the wet outer surface off.

Before long we had plenty of dry kindling and I taught them how to build a fire pit that wouldn't melt and put their fire out. With a fire now blazing away in the middle of our campsite, we all set to work putting up our tents. Being a large troop we have been pretty successful with equipment. This trip we were using brand new backpack tents, the trainees paired up in two's, with one tent for myself and a separate tent for Amy. It would be a bit colder sleeping in the two man tent alone, but I was prepared for it and I hoped that Amy was as well. These new tents were a nice units with two high tech carbon fiber poles that crossed in the middle, making a tube seven feet long and about four feet wide. It was about four feet high at the center as well. This was the first use and all of the teams were supposed to have put up their tent before we left, partly to make sure all the parts were there, but also to make sure you could set it up. I was hard at getting mine set up when I heard the most awful sound. Imagine the sound of branches snapping followed by paper tearing, followed by the frustrated howl of two grown men, immediately followed by a significant amount of foul language. That combination of sounds generally means trouble, and on a survival trip, it's a sound you do not want to hear, and it was unfortunately the sound I did hear. Even though each tent had been set up once, this particular tent had a set of poles had a small flaw in the high tech carbon fiber, and when bent, the pole fractured and turned into a knife, lancing through the thin nylon fabric like a hot knife through butter. This was not a good situation.

"Well, what do we do now?" I asked the guys, pushing them to work out the choices and make a decision.

"Well, we could triple up!" one of the pair with the trashed tent suggested.

"You're kidding right?" Came an almost immediate response from Tim, one of the older men. "You know how tight these are. Two man is being charitable, three is impossible."

"We could make them sleep in the snow!" Chris, a twenty something slender guy suggested.

"Oh Thanks!" Mark, the other leader with the trashed tent replied.

"Well, the Amy and Mike have two tents, can they share?" Tim suggested.

Amy and I looked at each other. It was the logical choice, and we had shared a tent a few times on family outings. One of these provided an accidental glimpse of her naked body. On that particular trip she was sitting naked on the air mattress in the second room of our large two room tent, facing the hanging divider, when the wind blew through the tent, pushing the bottom up enough for me to see her bare body from the chest down for several seconds. I got a second quick peek under the partition while she spread her legs to pull her swimsuit on. I was never sure if she knew or not. Part of me suspected that she did it on purpose because of how long it took her sitting there naked before the wind blew. We had never overtly done anything, and we didn't want to ruin a friendship, so my ideas of her stayed as fantasies, with the few accidental glimpses I had seen.

"Yes, we can share." Amy said, confirming what I was thinking. We're adults and I'm sure we can respect each other's privacy." A couple of the younger guys elbowed each other clearly thinking that it would be an interesting arrangement.

With that settled we went about finishing setting up camp. The guys and Amy wanted to stay up around the fire a while longer, but being tired from 9 hours of driving, I said my goodnights and headed into my tent. Now winter camping is different than regular camping. The coldest time of the day is when you're sleeping. I had long ago taught all the boys that you sweat during the day, and at night that sweat will cool and you will be uncomfortably cold. For that reason I always carried a spare set of polypropylene long underwear, wool socks and a wool stocking cap to sleep in. I zipped stripped out of my cold weather gear and crawled into the tent, pulling my boots off last. I rolled my coat for a pillow and put my nylon snow pants next to my boots at the door end of the tent before zipping closed. It was a cool few minutes, but I stripped naked and pulled my polypros on before sliding into the down mummy bag. Now I would be toasty warm all night.

Amy woke me up when she crawled into the tent, landing on my feet. For a two man tent these were not a bad size, but then, backpack tents are always small. I didn't stir as she moved off my legs and rolled onto her own sleeping bag. The bright moonlight filtered into the tent making it more than bright enough for me to see her as she spread her bag open to sit on the plush insides instead of the cold nylon outer covering. Her eyes must not have been fully adjusted to the light yet, after sitting and looking at the fire, and in some ways it looked comical to watch her feel around for things. She must have thought I was still asleep, because she didn't make any attempt to cover herself as she peeled her layers off, ending up with her bare chest fully on display. Room was tight, and she lay down with her feet pointing toward my head as she pushed her pants down her legs, and tossed them to the end of the tent. Next came her long underwear. Using her feet and shoulders to lift her butt off the ground, she pushed them down her legs and then tucked her legs to her chest to be able to reach to pull the stretchy material the rest of the way off. This pulled her panties tight across her pussy, making my dick almost instantly hard. The last thing to go were her panties, which were interestingly brief. She lifted her butt again, and pushed them down her legs, pulling them up to her chest again to get them off her feet. From my position I had a wonderful, if brief view of her whole pussy exposed for me. If my dick wasn't hard before, it felt like a steel rod now.

Amy sat up on her sleeping bag, cross legged, and in the moonlight I could clearly see her nipples, hardened from the cool air, standing out on her firm tits. Even for having breast fed two kids, she had really nice tits. They were easily a C cup, and had a bit of sag, but not nearly as much as my wife's DD cups had. She felt around looking for her pj's, and finally ended up on her hands and knees, digging in her clothes bag at the foot of the tent looking for them. Her knees were at least a foot apart, and I had a much longer view her pussy as she bent over, her tits nearly touching the sleeping bag as she rested on her elbows to see in the bag. Too soon for my liking, she found what she wanted and rolled over on her back. Just when I thought the show was over, she lifted her knees up to her chest again, causing her pussy to be fully exposed as she pulled the flannel pj's onto her legs. I swore I could see a glisten of moisture on her lips before she strghtened them to pull them up her body. She sat up and her sexy tits disappeared as she pulled the almost skin tight top over her head and down her body. She moved around and slid into the sleeping bag, pulling the stocking cap down over her ears before curling up for the night. I tried hard to get my seriously hard dick to lay back down before falling asleep some time later.

Morning came gray and overcast. I didn't need to look outside to see that the sun should already have been up, but then the forecast was for light snow later in the day. I stretched my arms and legs slowing inside the sleeping bag, waking my body from its curled position, not loving the idea of getting out of my warm cocoon and into the cold. I looked over and saw Amy's eyes flutter and close again, so I was pretty sure she was starting to wake up. My morning woody became significantly harder as I remembered the show she had inadvertently given me the night before. The more I thought about it, the less sure I was that it was accidental.

Either way, I decided I might as well return the favor. I unzipped my bag and pushed the material back so I was exposed to the cold air. I sat up, which had my head brushing the top of the tent and worked the top of my Polypros off. Without looking at her face, I lay back down and lifted my hips off the ground and slid my polypro bottoms down to my ankles, letting my hard dick stick straight at the ceiling. I heard a short intake of breath, which told me she was indeed watching. I pulled one leg up to my chest, pointing the head of my dick straight at her face, while I pushed my polypro's down and my legs and pushed my wool sock off. Finally I pulled the other leg up, repeating the process and then set my clothes aside. I sat back up completely naked, with my dick pointing out at a forty five degree angle, and dug into the bottom of my sleeping bag for the clothes I stashed there the night before. I pretended to not find a sock, and turned around so my feet were pointed toward the head of my bed and dug around, laying on my side to give her a really good view. I finally pulled my missing sock out and then turned around again. I moved to my knees and bent in half to pull my poly top on and then lay back down again. I found my underwear and pulled them up my legs to my butt before extending my legs again. The last thing I did before covering my dick with them was to wrap my hand around it and stroke it a few times. I really would have liked to jack off about then, but figured that would have been much too obvious. I lifted my butt off the ground and pulled my briefs up and then went to work on my poly long johns. My final clothing was a pair of synthetic, insulated exercise pants and a wool sweatshirt.

With all my thrashing around there was no way she wasn't awake, but when I looked over her eyes were closed as if she was asleep. I could see her sleeping bag moving ever so slightly down around her waist. I could imagine what might be happening there. I pulled my snow pants on my legs and pushed my feet into my boots before unzipping the tent flap and sliding out. I pulled my pants up and my jacket on before zipping the tent closed. According to the thermometer I hung on the tent, it was a balmy twelve degrees.

Amy crawled out of the tent about half an hour later, joining myself and the rest of the guys around the fire. Breakfast was dehydrated eggs with bacon flavor, hot coco and instant oatmeal, all made with fresh water from melted snow. I taught the guys how to make fresh water to put in their canteens by laying a piece of plastic in a depression in the snow and filling it with fresh snow and pouring hot water from the fire over it. With snow you didn't have to purify it, unless of course it was yellow. I also made up my thermos of hot coco, which while being heavy, was well worth the weight. We broke down the camp and before heading down the trail we made last trips to the bathroom, one side of the trail for guys, the other for Amy.

It was a nice day for a winter hike. We were scheduled for 10 miles, which the guys had thought was way to short when we started, but soon realized that walking through foot deep snow was a lot harder than hiking up a mountain trail For my part I was defiantly going to be ready to quit when we hit our selected site, just past Johnson creek. We made the creek a bit past two, and stood looking at our camp site. The only thing keeping us from setting up camp was the fact that it was on the other side of the creek, and apparently the spring rains had washed out the footbridge. In the summer it was a simple task to hop from rock to rock or wade the foot deep water. This time of year it was rushing three feet deep and about ten feet wide with liquid ice. There was a thin coat of ice all the way across, maybe a quarter inch or a bit more in thickness, and you could see the water rippling along below the layer. This was not ice that you crossed, not ever!

Survival rule number one: In winter survival, you must stay dry and prevent hypothermia at all costs!"

I learned this rule very early in life and because of this I always carried my gear and clothes in waterproof or at least water resistant packs or bags. Even so, I wasn't about to try to wade across a three foot deep stream. I might try it in my winter weight gortex hikers if it was six inches deep, but not this. I sent the guys looking for a crossing point both up and down stream. They soon came back indicating they found a downed tree that had been used as a temporary bridge. I followed alone and looked it over. Aside from being slick with snow and ice, it looked sturdy enough. The guys crossed one by one until only Amy and I were left. As usual I was bringing up the rear. Amy stepped onto the log and was almost half way across when a chunk of the icy covering broke loose. Her foot shot out toward the water, and with the heavy backpack on there was no way she would ever recover her balance. I was already jumping feet first into the creek downstream of the point she was falling for before she hit the ice and broke through. The first danger in this is getting sucked under the ice and not being able to get up. I hoped that if I broke the ice enough with my own landing that we would avoid that fatal problem. I watched her go under as my boots hit the ice, fracturing it from shore to shore. I reached for her pack as the current started to carry her past, grabbing and pulling with every ounce of strength I had, pulling her back from under the still solid ice sheet that extended down stream. The cold water started working inside my snow pants and boots burned like liquid fire where it touched my skin. I could only imagine how badly Amy was as I dragged her sputtering form toward the shore. The guys reached down and helped drag the two of us up the steep slope, water streaming off and out of our clothes. I had been fortunate, only getting wet up to my chest, Amy, on the other hand had been fully submersed, and her body was already reacting to the shock. She was curling into a fetal position her lips turning blue and her whole body starting to shake uncontrollably.

I immediately started shouting orders, designating some of the men to build a fire, two to get my tent set up and one to pull Amy's sleeping bag out and spread it out. I knew what needed to be done, and we didn't have much time. I shucked my back pack and then went to work dragging Amy's pack off her shaking body, tossing it aside as water poured out of every gap. I unzipped my pack and dumped the contents out, along with plenty of water. Fortunately nearly everything in my pack was in Ziploc style waterproof bags. It only took me a second to find what I needed, my camp towel. My next step was to start peeling her water logged outer clothing off, water pouring from the pockets and sleeves as I pulled it off of her.

"Mike. Her bag is full of water!" The Mark shouted as he pulled her bag out of its covering.

"Ok Get mine then!" I responded as I continued to pull wet outer garments off of her, just tossing them into a heap in the snow. Mark went to work pulling out my bag and stretching it out in the snow. "Put her air mattress down on the snow and then put the sleeping bag on top of it!" I said as I turned and pulled my own air mattress out and quickly unrolled it. Amy was in bad shape, and I could feel my own body complaining about the ice water by losing the feeling in my feet. This was no time for modesty though. I continued to pull Amy's clothing off until I was pulling the final layer from her body, leaving her naked on the air mattress. Mark tried not to stare, but he clearly couldn't help himself as I toweled the excess moisture from her body and then picked her up and moved her to my sleeping bag, stuffing her unceremoniously into it, zipping it closed behind her. With that done it was time to take care of myself. I started peeling off wet clothes while I gave Mark directions on what needed to be done, making him repeat back my directions. In order, get the tents up, get the fire going, dry what you can over the fire, be careful not to burn things, make hot broth, there's emergency stuff in my red bag, and finally, if I become unresponsive, call 911 and use my GPS to tell them where we are. The emergency teams would be several hours getting here and by then we would be either dead or recovering. With instructions given, and being stripped down naked I wiped off the excess water off my own shivering body. I stepped back into my sopping wet boots and scooped Amy up in my arms, sleeping bag and all.