How does The Patrol Challenge work?
The Scouts are given a list of clues to figure out, then they decide where to go and what to do. Photos are taken at the Photo Safari locations, Scavenger Hunt Items are collected and Unique Activities are completed. An example of Unique Activities are videoing a commercial about the Patrol Challenge, making a boat out of cardboard or bottles for their Adult Leader to row, or make cookies and bring them to a Fire or Police Station. We are constantly amazed at the creativity of the Scouts. You can see some of the commercials they created during the 2017 challenge at our Patrol Challenge Facebook Page. Final clues are given to the Scouts in October. But select Early Bonus Clues are available every month starting in May. Many Troops, Packs & Crews use these as their activity for the months leading up to the challenge.
Is The Patrol Challenge a competition?
Everything is done for points. The Patrols usually do a combination of Photo Safari, Scavenger Hunt, and Activities. But if you want to only work on clues from one or two categories, that's totally fine, the PC has tremendous flexibility. After all photos are taken, items are collected and activities are done the Patrols turn in everything to one central location on Sunday to end the event. It’s a festive carnival type atmosphere where Scouts can show off their treasures and swap stories of their weekend adventures. Awards, ribbons, patches and full statistics of how each Patrol scored are given out at our PC Awards Celebration.