I Led a Group of Girls Up Big Boy and Nobody Died

About four or five years ago, I hiked up Big Boy at Camp WaBak for the first time.  If you’re not familiar with the top of Big Boy, the view is magnificent, but there’s this sheer rock cliff that kind of gets your attention.  Now, if you’re an adult, it would probably give you pause because you know better than to step out too far onto this granite face (at least for most adults).  However, if you’re a Girl Scout leader like me, then you probably have nightmarish visions of girls tumbling off into the abyss.

This picture might give you an idea of what the rock cliff looks like:

And here’s what it looks like from afar:

But I set a goal – at some point I was going to lead my troop up there.  At the meeting prior to this past weekend’s Junior Journey Weekend, I asked the girls again if they wanted to climb it Sunday morning.  They all said yes, so I listed appropriate hiking clothes and shoes in the packing list.  I asked again that Saturday night, and they all said yes again except for Haleigh, who then changed her mind when she found out a patch was involved.  WINNING

WaBak is beautiful this time of year:

I did not tell them much about it other than it is a steep hike and that they would probably get dirty on the way down.  I’m not sure if that was the correct thing to do, but I didn’t want them to shy away from it if I made a big deal about how difficult it could be.  But, I pointed out that tons of girls their age have climbed it before and that it would be worth the effort.

So we kicked off the hike with a big GOOOOOOOOOO Girl Scouts! cheer and then my obligatory “LET’S DO IT!!!!!”:

And we start rolling along:

Well, they were real troopers (see what I did there? 😉 ), and there was a little bit of complaining but less than I thought there would be.  I was asked, “When are we gonna get there?” about four times before they realized my answer wouldn’t change from, “It depends on how long it takes us to get there.”

The last leg of the hike becomes extremely steep.  You have to get on your hands and knees to get up parts of it.  This is a difficult part of the hike for anybody, but it’s even more difficult when you’re trying to show girls how to find a foothold and look ahead to the next step.  (Can you tell I was paranoid about them getting hurt?)  Slowly but surely….

We were still in it to win it in this picture and took a quick break at a place where we could sit without sliding:

AND WE FINALLY MADE IT TO THE TOP!

We stayed for a little while and ate our snacks.  Then I asked the girls to be completely quiet for one minute and to just listen.  The wind was blowing and you could faintly hear the cars on Highway 25.  I wish we could have taken a better picture with the view in the background, but there’s a big branch from a pine tree that’s blocking the view unless you don’t move out onto the rock.  It was damp and I had seen the girls slip a little bit already on the rocks, so I said let’s play it safe and stay closer in.

Then it was time to leave and make the trip down.  This was waaaayyy harder than I expected because they were much more apprehensive coming down than going up.  I felt like I was doing some kind of Jazzercise routine showing them how to turn around and step down and crab walk and where to slide and what to avoid and what trees to grab without tumbling to your doom and taking the rest of us with you.  (I paid for this dearly the next day, because I can’t ever remember when I’ve been so sore after a hike.)

We got past the really steep leg of the hike and stopped to collect our wits.  I said, “YEAH!  Let’s give ourselves a big round of applause for making it down that part!” and started clapping.  All I got was the slow clap, but it didn’t turn into this like I had hoped:

Oh well.  At least it wasn’t the sarcastic slow clap.

We finished the hike in 2 hours and 45 minutes.  I figured it would take 2 hours and 15 or 30 minutes, but the downward steep was what slowed us down the most.  FWIW, I took my GPS and the top elevation was 2060 ft, while it was 1774 ft at this point:

I believe it’s a mile round trip. So 300 ft in a half mile is nothing to sneeze at.  The girls were slap worn out, so their excitement of finishing was tempered, but their parents said they were really pumped later on.  I love this after picture.  It makes me laugh every time I look at:

Da-nice (aka Samona’s doppelganger) had these patches made up since there are no officially sanctioned council ones out there, so Haleigh will be excited to know she more than earned it.

And here’s something even cooler – before we started, the property manager said he would try to take some pictures of us on top of Big Boy with his telescopic lens.  He took this from the Smith cabin field (see my original picture at the beginning of this post).

I love this picture.  I hope the girls enjoyed the hike as much as I did taking them up there.  Also, a big thanks goes out to Christy (Ashley’s mom) for the pictures and hiking with us!