Saturday morning was warm and overcast with a sense of impending drizzle. We loaded the van and were off with 3 following cars to our planned breakfast stop at route 22 and the turnpike.? Nick Boltuch was missing from the beginning but I assumed he had taken some short cut. When we arrived at breakfast Nick asked me what the rest of the initiation was. I was puzzled but soon understood when he informed me that I had locked him in the cabin upon leaving. As far as initiation goes this was mild to what lay ahead. As we proceeded to our destination near the Water Gap the rain increased from drizzle to fairly substantial. However as we arrived at the trailhead at Worthington it stopped completely. We began to unload bet soon found that keys were locked in one car and a pack had been left at the cabin. For a moment I thought that Murphy had taken control. The plan soon became to call AAA to get the car open first. We waited for over a hour with no avail. Finally a idea surfaced from a cell call to the ingenious Mr.Ives to unscrew the antenna to use as a tool. It worked great. Don Leitner would now drive back for the pack and meet us at the campsite. We at lunch and were on the trail about 12:30 about 2 hours behind schedule. We climbed slowly along a beautiful stream and then turned to start a fairly steep ascent to a ridgeline. The going was slow with numerous rest stops. It soon began raining intensely. Some of the younger Scouts were having difficulty as we approached the ridge. It was after 3 when we hit the fire road on the top of the ridge. The plan was to take the fire road for about 2.5Miles and then descend to the campsite near Sunfish Pond. We were in a cloud as we walked the ridge trail. The rain and wind continued.

By 3:30pm the temperature started to drop and some appeared to be ill equipped for this development. The younger Scouts were really hanging in there but it was obvious that they were having difficulty. We decided to by pass camp and walkout to the van. By 4:30 we had still not hit the trail to Sunfish pond and from that point out we still had a 2 hr walk.? Ron took the initiative to call the ranger to see if we could find an alternative walkout. This worked out well as we continued another mile down the ridge to the reservoir and were met there for the shuttle. As the rangerís truck pulled up smiles developed on many bedraggled faces. Getting the van back to the reservoir took about 40 min. After loading we stuffed almost the entire crowd into the van and header for McDonalds. The place unfortunately had a power failure so we continued on to the park welcome center to meet Don Leitner who we were able to contact by cell phone. We finally had dinner at the breakfast stop and returned to the cabin.
We got a real taste of what bad weather in the mountains can be like. I think we can call the experience character building. Man has spent thousands of years trying to figure out how to avoid this sort of thing and we look at it as recreation. Go figure. It was a good lesson for me also. I need to more strictly abide by my own rules and listen only to the voice inside me. 
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On this latter point, I think the boys themselves and their internal leadership are to be congratulated for an interesting non-reportable statistic: no critical homesickness, particularly among new scouts, and no fighting...none. We had a number of brothers in camp, and through their example we learned the benefits and joys of being brothers which each other. Boys in camp often learn new words that previously were not a part of their vocabulary (at least as far as we knew). Those words may get blurted out in the coming months. While your son may have picked up this "knowledge" at camp from others trying to show off, understand this: Crude and abusive language is the mark of an ignorant man. It is never acceptable. It hurts our brotherhood. 

You have been very kind and generous with your comments regarding our efforts, and as scouts, we did try to do our best. However, we recognize that we can always do better, and therefore would appreciate hearing from you with any ideas or suggestions as to how we can make next year an even better experience for all. 

Bill Kiniry

P.S. I'd like to add my voice to that of others in particularly thanking Mike Ross for not only being there for our sons, in his calm, thorough and steady way, but doing it for our sons, while his son, Steve was out of the country on an adventure of a lifetime. We all missed Steve, but none of us as much as Mike, who just kept giving to our boys every day. 
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Assateague Trip September 2003