It was 14 degrees below zero on Saturday, Jan. 24, when the Boy Scouts in Voorheesville’s Troop 73 took part in the Winter Skills Klondike Derby at Camp Wakpominie in Fort Ann.

“Scouts from all of the Capital Region were there,” said Michael Jarus, adding that one troop came from as far away as Brooklyn and another from Massachusetts.

The century-old camp includes 1,000 acres of Adirondack forest, a 40-acre pond, and Shelving Rock Falls.

Jarus is the troop’s High Adventure chairman, a post he believes is unique toTroop 73.

He describes himself as “an aging but not balding Eagle Scout.”

Jarus grew up in the Cleveland area where he worked as a guide to the 30,000 islands in Lake Huron’s Georgia Bay.

Amidst the snow and cold, the Scouts in the January Klondike Derby — the name was inspired by the Klondike Gold Rush — competed in accomplishing various winter survival skills. 

One task involved building an emergency shelter with minimal supplies, like a tarp.

Referencing one of Troop 73’s legendary leaders, the late Howard Coughtry, Jarus said the Scouts were told to “select a site Howard Coughtry would be proud of — that meant looking up to be sure there were no widow-makers overhead.”

A widow-maker, he explained, is a tree branch that could “come down and kill you when ice melts.”

A second task involved rescuing someone who falls through the ice. “How do you go about rescuing someone like that without losing your own life?” asked Jarus.

The boys tied a bowline — “a famous Scout knot that doesn’t slip” — so a rope could be thrown over someone’s head and shoulders and they could thereby be pulled to safety.

A third task in the Klondike Derby was using a compass “to find a way out of the forest to a road.”

Jarus explained “Everybody these days uses GPS, but batteries can die or satellites can be obscured” so traditional skills of navigating with a map and compass are still useful.

Asked how the Troop 73 Scouts fared, Jarus said, “It was their first time to compete. They were above average, which was a lot to achieve.”

Jarus sees other high adventures on the horizon.

He has proposed a trip to Iceland which “could still happen,” he said, but more likely for this year or next is a trip to “the Grand Canyon of the East, the state park at Letchworth,” Jarus said. “I pre-scout all the trips and the best time for that would be in late April, early May when the water is really flowing.”

Another trip he has pre-scouted and is excited about is traveling to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown, Pennsylvania. On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the four commercial airlines that was hijacked by terrorists was headed for the Pentagon. The 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93 fought back, crashing the plane on a field in Stoystown.

“Every American ought to see it,” said Jarus of the memorial park. “It’s amazing the people on that flight saved the Pentagon.”