Mission Peak Backpacking Trip

For the first time, on March 5th, our troop went on a backpacking trip. About 15 scouts in our troop attended the trip, the first step in our preparation to go to Philmont in 2023. At 12 PM, we met at Chadbourne Elementary and did a gear check. We started hiking at 1:30, a little later than we had initially planned to. For many of the scouts, the first mile was hard because this was the first time that a lot of us had hiked with our packed backpacks. After that, we moved a lot faster and we all developed our paces. We exceeded our own expectations by reaching the campsite at around 4:30, much faster than we had projected.

Once we got to the campsite, you could see the beautiful view of the Bay Area from where we were. Soon after, everyone started pitching their tents. We started setting up for dinner at approximately 5:30. We all learned how to use a lightweight stove while backpacking and many of us brought backpacking food to eat. After we were done eating, we cleaned up and threw away our trash, and retired to our tents. Some of us hung out for a bit before going to bed, but we ended the night pretty early because we were tired from the long and exhausting hike to the campsite.

In the morning we woke up around 6:45. We packed up our tents and finished eating breakfast. Once we finished packing up, we hiked up from our campsite and went to the top of Mission Peak. We took several pictures and enjoyed the view from the peak for some time. We could even see our campsite from the top of the peak! After we went back down, we did a 'sweep' before leaving the campsite. Even though we had hiked up the day before through the Sunol trail, we went back down through the Ohlone trail. For many of us, this was much easier due to it being downhill. We all went at our own comfortable paces and reached the bottom fairly quickly at around 10:30.

Overall, we learned a lot from this trip and it was a success. We all had a lot of fun and did much better than we had expected. This backpacking trip was definitely a great first-time experience for all of us and we had an amazing time!