The pre-course weekend for Mapping 2006 was held before the holidays. I was sitting at the “Know-it-all” table where we had the answer to everything. We were on such a roll - we got to a stage where we could’ve argued with Einstein and won. Eventually we were told to shut up and stop answering all the questions. So we thought this whole thing would be a walkover.

We were given two tasks and the holidays to do them in. We had to draw two maps, a plain table and a strip map, which sounded simple enough. This was not the case. For those of us (i.e. about 90% of the course participants) who left doing the maps to the night before the test weekend,  we discovered how time-consuming and difficult they actually were. The next day, tired and bleary-eyed, we were not so confident any more.

That weekend was colder than it had been this whole winter. As we got closer and closer to Hawequas, the whiter the mountains got. We were told that the previous night there had been snow on the Hawequas hut, and it sure felt like it. The weather wasn’t such an issue except that it made some of the practical activities slightly difficult, but all in all it was a successful weekend. Only about a third of the participants passed first time, but all four of us from 1st Durbanville were amongst that group, all achieving between 70% and 80%. A true sign of the scouting ability of our troop!

Joseph Rom