The Narrative: Each Trek starts with a safety briefing, followed by the reading of the Narrative, the story that explains why the Trekkers were brought together. In this case, the team must retrace the path of an aborted mercy mission to bring medicine to a besieged fort. They were given a copy of a journal which contains the compass bearings and distances they must duplicate if they were to find the cache of medicines. Once recovered, they would proceed to the fort.
Scavenger Hunt: The Narrative has them making camp and settling in for the evening. This gives each team its first opportunity to earn points. Points are given for each completed task that would be appropriate for an 18th century excursion into potentially hostile wilderness. Here a Trekker earns team points for having an item on the Scavenger Hunt Check List.
Stolen: The Trek teams were caught in an ambush with hostiles. They discovered that all their promised horses and nearly all of their provisions were gone, save the contents of single thinly stocked chest. Trekkers had a few minutes to decide which articles, if any, to take with them.
After some discussion, the direction is determined with a reproduction 19th century magnetic compass, and the party sets out, careful to keep track of the distances covered.
Bead Of Fate: The Bead of Fate Ritual provided a way to randomly determine the outcome of an unforeseen calamity, such as an ambush by hostiles that wasn't successfully repulsed. The beads are stored in a canvas bag and are identical in size and feel. Drawing a White Bead means that no harm came to the bearer, while drawing a Blue or Red bead had serious consequences. This unfortunate Trekker drew a Blue Bead, and the penalty would be the loss of the use of his shooting eye. He would be forced to wear an eyepatch for the rest of the Trek. Drawing a Red Bead was more serious, as the Trekker would be condemned to death. This would pose some immediate and future problems, as the team now had one less gun for its defense, two fewer eyes to scan for danger, and potentially dozens fewer bits of wilderness wisdom that might have proven essential.
Recovering The Cache: If the instructions were followed, the Trekkers would have found themselves at the base of great tree where the medicine cache was hidden.
This team was careful to cover any evidence of their stay, a sound eighteenth century survival practice when trekking through unknown territory.
The Trek ended in two skirmishes, the first hand-to-hand and the other a test of long range marksmanship. The former required each Trekker to throw their knife and hawk, and in one case, the tomahawk head stuck in the block but the handle slid off. A stick is a stick, even if it looks a little odd.
When the points were tallied at the end, the winning team demonstrated a clear understanding of eighteenth century woodcraft was at least as important as marksmanship.
I believe that this year's Trekkers found the course challenging, and perhaps a little devious on the parts of the authors. It is our hope that those who participated will be back again next year, and that those of you who haven't yet formed a team, will.
