After taking several day hikes and having a training workshop at a troop meeting, 7 out of our Cadette-Senior-Ambassador Girl Scout troop’s 100 girls have successfully pulled off their first backpacking trip at Topanga State Park in Southern California.
Our girls were all new backpackers – our troop does not have a tradition of backpacking so we don’t have older girls that serve as role models – and it is no surprise that we ran into some challenges. Getting to the trailhead and then getting started took until early afteroon. Then, hiking with a large backpack seemed awkward to the girls and we had a lot of stops to make adjustments; but after a mile or so everyone settled into the hiking rhythm.
Our plan was to hike where we would get the cool Pacific ocean breezes, so we did the Eagle Rock loop at Topanga State Park. Typical September weather, however, was replaced that week by what Los Angeles people call “Santa Anas”, in which hot air blows in from the desert making the weather was unusually hot – we were hiking with 96 degree air temperature and the early afternoon sun blazing down through a gorgeous clear blue sky. We adapated – we hiked in spurts, resting at each shade tree, for a total mileage Saturday of 3.5 miles with 800’ elevation gain.
Morale stayed high and my impression is that these 6th, 7th and 8th grade girls were tough. Our loop hike had a ½ mile spur trail to the spectacular Eagle Rock and when we got to the intersection, we were all overheated and tired. Yet every girl wanted to push on to Eagle Rock.
Our trail camp, Musch camp, was a walk-in campground that had running water and picnic tables. This luxury really made the later afternoon enjoyable, first with card games and then fabulous camp cooking. The girls divided into three cook groups, each with a backpacking stove and different menu. We came together when the food was prepared, sang grace, and the 7 girls and 3 women sat down to a enjoy three one-pot meals; which were Mac & Cheese with spam sautéed in the skillet, Knorr cheesy spiral noodles with broccoli, and Knorr chicken flavored rice with a 7 oz. package of cubed chicken.
After dinner one cook group made an instant cheesecake and another made Flatbread (Laurie Ann March’s backpacking yeast bread recipe), which they had kneaded up before dinner and let rise while we were cooking and eating dinner.
In the morning the weather was cool and the three cook groups offered up quesadillas, pancakes & bacon, and hot chocolate, coffee & tea. Before we set off on Sunday’s hike we had a troop meeting and the girls all agreed that backpacking is a lot of fun and they are eager to do it again. We talked about future hikes and what I heard is that they’d happily put up with cold hands and noses if we could avoid the crushing heat, they said that climbing mountains isn’t something they find exciting, but what did get lots of interest was – “let’s hike to a waterfall”. Our troop is planning to offer overnight backpacking trips for March and May, and then a multi-day Sierra backpack for the summer.
Since this is BackpackingLight forum, a trip report would not be complete without a paragraph on gear: On Thursday night we met at our troop leader’s house where looked through 13 backpacks that had been borrowed from BSA Troop 860, and girls picked out a pack that they liked. The packs were REI Flash and Osprey Exos lightweight internal frame packs. We then went through the packing list item by item and put things in our pack. We took some time to look at various alternatives that people had brought, and one girl (my daughter Leah!) had a pair of blue jeans, so a leader gently explained why jeans were not good for backpacking. I had put my digital postage scale on the coffee table so that girls could weigh items; in particular it seemed everyone wanted to know how much their sleeping bag weighed. We used our Girl Scout troop tents which were three REI Half Dome tents and one Avon pink 3-person tent. Our cooksets were borrowed from BSA Troop 860 and each contain a MSR Windpro remote cannister stove, a 3.5 quart aluminum pot, dish soap, matches and a scrub pad. On Saturday morning we weighted packs and the girls cheerfully redistributed group gear in order to even out their pack weights. The girls pack weights were 18, 18, 19, 21, 22, 22, and 22. The adult’s pack weights were 24, 28, and 28.
