THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: Last year’s Klondike Derby winner, the Woodchuck Norris Patrol of Scout Troop 101, hold up the Yukon Jack Trophy at Camp Drake in Fairmount. The trophy will have a new name added to it this weekend. (Photo is provided)
FAIRMOUNT — Mike Graham easily remembers the feeling of being one of the Boy Scouts pulled on a sled in the pinnacle race during the Klondike Derby growing up in Wisconsin.
Graham, now senior district executive for Scouting America Prairielands Council’s Many Trails District in Champaign, hopes the snow sticks around so the participants in this weekend’s Klondike Derby at Camp Robert Drake in Fairmount have a weekend to remember.
Graham said in more recent years, there’s not been snow, but this weekend’s activities and overnight camping will be affected by what’s left of recent snowfalls.
More than 40 Scouts from Illinois and Indiana will gather at Camp Drake, located on the Salt Fork River near Oakwood, to test their skills and build others in teamwork and leadership.
This year’s theme for the annual outdoor competition is “Fire & Ice.”
On Saturday, Scouts will go through 12 different challenges, traveling between them with their survival gear on snow sleds.
Patrols — groups of six to eight Scouts — will have to make a shelter, build a fire and show their rescue skills, among other tests.
The Scouts, boys and girls in grades 6 through 12, will also experience emergency-rescue action with first-aid simulations.
The opening flag ceremony is at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The grand finale, following the skills competition, is the championship sled race.
At the end of the tiring day, all the patrols and their sleds are lined up on a large field. The Scouts serve as a team of Huskies and pull their dogsled throughout the woods.
The Yukon Jack trophy is presented to the winning patrol sled.
Several troops also are camping overnight in tents or cabins.
Jamie Ellis, committee chair of Troop 6 in Urbana, has fun volunteering at the Klondike Derby and other events.
The troop has 15 boys and three girls right now.
Ellis, who was a Scout in his youth and whose son became an Eagle Scout, said he’s an adult leader at the Klondike Derby as needed and has been on staff at the fire-starting challenge station and helps with check-in.
Graham said the Klondike Derby started around the 1950s.
He said the number of local Scouts is picking back up since the COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on activities.
“We had a growth this past year,” he said.
Troops from nine counties, seven in Illinois and two in Indiana, will be involved in this year’s event.
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