Treking

Mitchell went on a handcart trek last weekend with the youth of our stake. You might be thinking, isn't it a little late in the year to go on a trek?? Yes. It was. But having been in Stake YW's, I know how hard it is to find a date on the stake calendar to do an event like this and I trust that they thought and prayed about it and went with the best answer. There was a 4 day weekend at school, so they took advantage of that. I know we tried to plan a trek several times and couldn't fit it in... So I was very happy they were doing one and my son got to experience it.

They left on Wednesday after school and headed up to the ranch that Mitchell worked at all summer, just above Zion National Park. The kids got settled and prepared for the trek the next day. They spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday pulling handcarts and surviving freezing temperatures. Mitchell said they hiked 7-8 miles the each day and climbed over 1000 feet the first day. The temperatures Thursday night were between 5-10 degrees. Not everyone was prepared for that kind of cold. Mitchell said it was awful and he about froze. He said it was so hard to sleep and everyone was miserable. They woke up to frost on their tents, which made for yucky tents when they had to pack them up and set them up again that next night.

It sounds like they had a real pioneer experience! Murmuring and all. The leaders wanted it to be a hard experience for them and it was. I hope that when the youth experience hard challenges in their life that they can remember this one and know that they can make it!

Brother Merelli in our stake took some pictures and posted them online... here is the link to them all. I downloaded a few of Mitchell.

All ready...

Mitchell's Company

Mitchell's Family

Here we go!

Getting harder...

Let's take a break...

Mitchell said one of the hills was SO hard. His group made it up and several of the boys went down and helped other groups up. He said he went down and up 5 times helping people. Good job! 3 rows of boys pulling.

Stop for the night

it looks so cold!

Here we go again...

He said they went to the top of the hill on the left.

Mitchell shooting for food. He hit his bird! They made it into stew.

Brother Benson looking on... he worked so hard! Thank you!

Pretty view.

The battalion came and recruited the boys for a few hours...

The girls had to keep going without them...

They made it! Yahoo!!!

Mitchell was happy to get home and climb into his nice warm bed! He said it was very hard and he never wants to do it again! I hope he learned that he can do hard things!

Thank you to all the leaders who worked so hard on this!! I must say I was happy I wasn't in charge. But when I went to the post fireside I felt sad that I wasn't there.....