A HH was announced for NY. By itself, it wasn't all that enticing, because I had checked that box already.
Then, they said that it would be survival and land-nav-oriented. The skill-based element of it was more compelling to me, and I became much more interested.
Then, they announced the Cadre lineup - Dan, DS, Chuy, and I was immediately "in".
Other friends had either already been "in" or decided to jump in as well, so it was going to be a good time up there, with NC showing up in force in NY. There was a crew from CLT, another from Raleigh, and a third from the coast.
Some drove up. SB and I decided to fly up, to save on travel time. We checked in bags, since we had to bring some specialized gear that you can't carry on.
We landed in Laguardia, rented a car, and drove about an hour and a half through Thursday rush hour to go north. It's amazing. Less than an hour (during non-traffic hours) north of NYC, you can suddenly find yourself in hilly forest land.
We met up with the rest of the CLT crew for dinner, followed by a short little walk to the river side. This river actually flows down to Manhattan, which was crazy to think about. A train rolled by in the distance. The sunset was nice to watch.
SB and I stayed at a nice lodge overnight. It was by a lake, which would've been fun to explore, but we had a big event ahead of us.
The next morning, we had dinner at the lodge. The hashbrowns and eggs were delicious, and I got a second order for during the event. We got to bring as much gear as we wanted, and we'd be able to store stuff that we didn't need for a given mission back at our "home base", so I took advantage of that to bring "real food" for later.
We checked out and went to the scout camp, where the event would be held. As everyone assembled, it was good to see old GRT friends from around the country. For many of them, it would be their first time at an event branded as an "HH".
After quick intro near the parking lot, we split up into three groups, and carried all of our stuff to what would be our "RON" ("rest overnight") site. That was the one time where those who packed a lot might've regretted it, but it was maybe only half a mile away, and we are all good at carrying heavy, awkward objects, anyways, so we shared, and it was fine.
Our first class was on shelter building.
We learned how to plot coordinates on a map, taking into account magnetic declination.
We did a little practice run as a group, following a bearing through spikey plants.
Then, we did a navigation exercise in our three squads, where we were each given a coordinate, and we had to go find it and tell the Cadre what we saw on the sign that was located where the coordinate led us.
One squad struggled more, so SB was asked to move over to that team to help them. That was sad, since we had wanted to go on this adventure together, but we'd still have fun, even apart.
We were given our next set of coordinates, and I led us down a path, but it ended up being a different one that I thought we were on. I should've checked the bearings of the roads around us, to confirm, before I had set off. I had made the #1 mistake not to make... planning, and making sure, before stepping off, in my rush to get out fast and "win". And then when there were clear signs that the road we were on was not the right one, because the curves and directions didn't match up, I didn't stop and correct, but kept going on the wrong road anyways.
Eventually, we figured out where we were, and we were already way being schedule, so we decided to take the most direct route possible, to get to where we were supposed to meet up with the rest of the class. It involved a lot of bush whacking. The squad was very patient and stuck with me, despite all of my mistakes. There was no mutiny, and they didn't complain, and they tried to be helpful.
The other two squads were waiting for us when we emerged from over the ridge that bordered the lake. It was now time for water survival. We took off our shoes and extraneous clothes, but it turns out that we weren't supposed to yet, because we had to take a walk up the path on gravel in our bare feet first, do some squats while we waited for stragglers, get a lesson in not assuming things, and then go back.
Back at the dock, we split into 6 teams learned how to jump into the water safely (feet-first and in unison, in case there are hidden hazards below the surface) and then bob without using our hands. We also learned the combat side stroke. Staying afloat is a lot of work! We didn't even have shirts or shoes on.
We finished with a competition to see who could swim the farthest underwater in a single breath.
Once we got out the now very cold water, we got an opportunity to warm up during a fire making class. We first learned in a big group, with Shabrail getting to walk through the process with Cadre Dan. It's so cool to see the joy of someone who has made a fire for the first time.
We split up back into our 6 teams to build our fires, and we got some time to eat and rest. I enjoy finding sticks for firewood. I have, ever since I was a little kid. I enjoy it more than I enjoy the fire itself, I think.
We returned to our RON site, set up little camps in our three squads, and put together a rest plan, with 2 people awake and tending to the fire at any given time. As usual at these events, you wonder whether the Cadres are going to test your security element and try to plan a sneak attack on your camp. Nothing came. I suppose they want sleep, too. We had been worried about black flies biting us, but it was actually OK during the event. Unfortunately, we did have one gigantic snorer sleeping in the middle of the camp. Any opportunity to rest at an event is always welcome, though.
At one point in the night, I heard what sounded like firecrackers. My ears perked up, and I continued to listen, thinking it was an ambush on a different camp. Then, there was a loud noise, and yells. There was a call for a medic. I thought it might be for a scenario. Nobody knew what was going on, but people were running towards the site of the commotion. It turns out that a tree limb above one of the camps had fallen overnight, maybe from drying and deformation that happened as the fire burned below it. Fortunately, a couple of girls who had been right under it rolled away just in time, but one guy's ankle got smashed. They evacuated him. That was nuts... a freak accident, that apparently happens more than you'd think, in the forest. After that, we went back to trying to get some rest, although I'm sure that one camp was pretty shaken by the incident. It makes you think about life and death, when there's a close call like that. Life has risk.
We had to meet back up at the parking lot early the next morning, so we had to allocate plenty of time to pack up and put away our stuff, and make the half mile walk back to the parking lot for a 4am start. You never want to be late.
The day started with another land nav exercise, where we had to find a series of points. Things went much more smoothly this time. We also took turns with the nav tasks, so that everyone had a chance to learn and practice.
The waypoints that we were looking for were marked by titles of books that the Cadres wanted to recommend, which was a nice bonus.
Our team finished first, which was a good feeling.
The next class was on "personal security", which meant a little BJJ, which was a lot of fun! We learned and practiced one move at a time, tried with different partners, and then got to go free-style at the end. At one point, I was the odd man out, so I got to roll with Cadre DS. He could've probably controlled me with his pinky with the matchup, but that was cool. So much fun.
Next, we had another round of water operations. We waterproofed our stuff and turned our rucks into floatation devices. This would be a race. We had to cross the lake as a team, with our rucks tethered together. Then, we had to be the first team to boil water. We didn't know that we'd be doing this, so nobody in our squad had metal cups with us, but we were able to borrow one from a Cadre, fortunately.
We got smoked in the water by the top teams, and did well in the fire, but we weren't able to make up for the gap and lost. The winning team won coffee from the losing teams.
We navigated back to the RON as one big class, and then rucked to a lot where we filled up sandbags and stacked firewood to help out the boy scouts as a way to thank them for letting us use their facility.
After that, we worked on clearing some trails that had become a bit overgrown, using rakes, loppers, and a chainsaw. We had to find some tree-sized logs to carry down, too. There was a big one that took us too long to bring down, so we got smoked for it.
There was a change in leadership, and then we ended up carrying it down anyways.
Now, it was time for a long land nav exercise, in 4 squads this time. To me, this was less about learning now, and more for testing and optimizing performance on a mission. I took the lead nav role, with Justin as co-navigator. We made our way from checkpoint to checkpoint. We had to stay off of roads, which meant more bushwhacking and roundabout routes. Cadres would be patrolling the roads. We'd need to generally find all of the points in sequence, to get all the pieces and information that we needed.
We found our first point, dead reckoned onto the second point through some rough terrain, and then handrailed the road while being far from it, around a pond area that took us by a bee's nest, unfortunately, and then back up to a path. We were supposed to find something up at that path, but apparently, we weren't at the right spot, as the cadres told us later, but that didn't negatively impact us, since the subsequent points still gave us the next coordinates that we needed to find, and the objects that we had to collect along the way. Maps with roads and trails can be quite confusing sometimes, and don't always match up to what you see in the real world. It was like flashbacks of
Sea to Sea.
When we went to the bridge where we had to do a "little duck" (originally a riddle in Spanish) to retrieve objects, we counted the objects and determined that we were the first to arrive, which was a good feeling.
The items included some oranges and "bags of rice" (sandbags), that we figured we'd be using for barter material later on. We now had extra weight to carry, on undulating terrain. Since I was navigating, I didn't carry the weight, since I had to focus fully on navigation, and needed both hands and all of my awareness to be centered on that. It's similar to how a TL shouldn't carry extra weight if it can be avoided, since their #1 job is to make sure that the team is functioning properly more broadly.
The sun was setting, we we wanted to make as much progress as we could while there was still daylight. Navigation and movement gets much more difficult at night, when you can't see very much, and have fewer visual cues like land features to help you know where you are and what direction you're traveling in.
We found the next point, and plotted the next coordinate, only to find that it was like quite a few miles away, on the far, far end of our map. We weren't sure that this was right, because it was so far away from everything else we've been doing. The Cadres met us, and advised us to take a certain path. It seemed to go in the opposite direction that our map wanted to go, and I tried to point this out, but they insisted, and brought up my earlier mistake with being on the wrong trail. If they were going to tell us that we should go down a certain trail, though, they must know where it leads. The trail systems don't always match the trail system on the map, anyways, so maybe it would eventually work out.
We started up the trail. We pace counted, and we kept comparing what we were seeing against what was on the map, but it didn't match up. We radioed in, to bring this up. We were told to keep going. We decided to go another 1K, and still, nothing was matching up, so we called again, and were told to keep going. We decided to go 1K more, and if we still didn't see anything, we would turn around against the Cadre's claims, and go on the trail we had originally wanted to go down. Mike was an excellent team leader during this challenging time. He stood up for us, and the conditions we were seeing on the ground, and was willing to make the difficult decision to go against what the Cadres were saying. We radioed in, to tell them that we were going to do this, and the Cadres said ok, and didn't fight our decision.
We went back to where we started. I did carry sandbags at this time, since no navigation was required as we backtracked about a mile and a half. We came across another team a while later, and told them about what had happened, so that they could also turn around. When we got back to the intersection where we started, we were told to hang tight, as we waited for all of the teams to arrive. Who knows what happened. I'm guessing the Cadres made a mistake. We're all human, and it's almost liberating, to know that even experts in fieldcraft and navigation can make mistakes, so I don't need to be so hard on myself when I make mistakes.
It was good to sit there and rest for a while. We had been pushing hard. We had just gone through a strange incident, but we knew we were in the right, and our intuition had been correct. The other teams trickled in. Some of them looked dejected. We had been able to go fast because we were in "mission" mode rather than "teaching and giving everyone a chance to take turns on nav" mode. There are good reasons for doing each one, and maybe different evolutions for doing each one. I don't know the right answer for myself.
We did some AARs as a big group, and then set off as one giant team towards our next destination, with our squad leading the way. We set off in the right direction this time, the one that we had wanted to go on initially. It still wasn't easy, with the physical trail not matching up with the trail system on the map. Another challenge is that contour lines supersede trail lines on the map, so you completely lose visibility of the trails sometimes, and can't tell where they really are. We moved along, up and down technical terrain, carrying sandbags. There was a surprise intersection with a cairn where we made our best guess and stayed straight. There were long sections where we were next to a big downhill valley on our left, that didn't match up with anything on the map that matched, based on the trail that we thought we were taking. We felt like we walked for a long time, not 100% sure that we were going the right way. We were looking for hardball, though, so it should be obvious when we do go far enough.
At last, we made it to the end of a trail that led up to hardball, and we met up with the Cadres for a Key Leader Engagement scenario. The overall team lead brought several people from the team into a meeting with locals. They talked in the middle of the group, so that the whole class could hear the conversation. Talking to the locals isn't easy. You have to listen to and understand their needs, without overcommitting or being overbearing. It's also interesting to see what happens when many people with different messages try to make their point, vs having a more central message go through just 1-2 people.
Eventually, we got to a point where we were rewarded with a couple giant boxes of MREs. I might've eaten like 2 pea-sized tastes of my entire MRE, and even that made my body not feel right. That stuff is not real food. We were happy to have succeeded in the KLE, and now had instructions to book it out of the area because bad guys would be rolling in, and get back to a specific coordinate (the lake where we had done BJJ) by a certain time.
The time hack was tough, and it was a huge group to get through the hilly singletrack, but at least we didn't have the sandbags to worry about anymore. We moved, and got back to the main intersection, where we staged for quite a while, maybe while waiting for everyone to catch up and get through the singletrack. The last part of the movement only required us to get to the other side of a hill, essentially, but we couldn't use certain roads. I decided that we were going to do dead reckoning and go straight up and down the hill. It would be difficult and long (through who knows what kind of rough vegetation) to follow terrain all the way around the hill, especially at night, when you can't see more than 10m ahead. IT would take longer, and we might get lost in the process. I could see my compass, though, and just follow the arrow, so that's what we did. We went straight up and down, pulling ourselves up the steep slope using roots and stuff sometimes. The whole team performed well, and got up. It required some obstacle course racing-style moves, so I was quite impressed by everyone. We descended the hill into the lake area, meeting our time hack.
We ended up getting to rest when we got there. We weren't sure how long we'd get to rest, because even when the time hack came due, the Cadres let us continue doing priorities of work. I had devices to recharge, but I didn't pull out the charger for a while, since I wasn't sure if I'd only get a couple minutes to recharge. It turns out that we got like an hour or two. The rest was welcome, although I wish we had known up-front how long we had, so that I could make better use of the time. We had a fire going, which was nice. I had some personal issues to address during this time, too, but Jenny and Cadre Dan kindly helped me through it.
When the classroom time resumed, we got to learn the water knot, we learned how to make a stretcher out of webbing, we learned how to make a person carrier backpack out of webbing. Cadre DS was serious about us learning the knots, too. We had gotten instruction on it at the beginning of our long navigation exercise, with the expectation that we all teach each other and figure it out. If you couldn't do it now, you had to go into the water!
We had a boat race next, where we didn't have paddles to use. That was just for fun, which it was.
Next, there was a land-based boat race, where we had to transport some boats back to where they belonged. Since I'm shorter than the rest, I couldn't do much for the team with boat carrying, so I mainly called out upcoming rocks and trip hazards a few steps ahead of the team.
It was time to wrap things up and start to put things away. We distinguished the fire, and cleaned up the boat ramp area.
We cleaned up the RON site, including breaking down the giant limb that had fallen on the one camp.
We learned some more BJJ, since everyone enjoyed that a lot.
We kept our minds sharp and activated, with Simon and Bop-it.
We organized the logs.
We had some parting words and got patched.
I scarfed down some BBQ, and then had a hobo shower in the sink, before heading back to Laguardia to catch a plane home.
It was a fun weekend in the woods with my friends! The skill-based events are a nice change from beat-down events.
