Girl Scout camping, Las Vegas Sun

Local Girl Scouts take roughing it to the extreme Lisa Sciortino Thursday, Aug. 15, 1996 | 11:59 a.m. It's the camping trip to beat all camping trips. Trekking through the Minnesota wilderness on foot with a 53-pound canoe in tow, they'll tackle rugged terrain, paddle for miles across pristine lakes and camp in woods where black bears and wolves prowl. Nothing a seasoned Girl Scout can't handle, though. "I think it's fun to rough it," says Cassandra Caswell, a Bishop Gorman High school senior and 14-year Scouting veteran. She's one of seven local Girl Scouts participating in the five-day primitive canoeing and camping trip, sponsored by the Frontier Girl Scout Council, which began today. And when Cassandra says "rough it," she's not kidding. The Girl Scouts, ages 13-18, will likely be rowing about 15 miles a day on several lakes in the Superior National Forest, located near the Canadian border. "There are areas we will have to portage," says Trish Elliott, a Frontier Council volunteer and canoe program administrator. She'll also chaperone the trip, that's been in the planning stages since last fall. You might say the girls, who were selected for the trip through a Council-wide application process, are real troopers. They've already taken canoeing classes and tested their skills on a river trip in the Topock Gorge near Needles, Calif., so "we're used to river canoeing," Elliott says. Still, she personally chose the locale for this "high adventure" trip, "because it does have waterfalls ... and it looked the most interesting" terrain-wise. "What we were looking for was something to keep the girls who had been active in canoeing interested," she says. Like Shauna Cotrell. The Eldorado High School senior has been a Scout for 13 years. She has confidence in her fellow campers' rowing abilities. "All of us have been in Girl Scouting for a long time. I know we can do it." If canoeing doesn't strike their fancy, maybe the crude camping will. Sure, they'll be sleeping in tents. But, besides that, it will be back-to-basics for the hearty Scouts, who'll forge their own firewood and catch their dinner. (No Thin Mint cookies on this menu -- just fish.) They'll have to string their leftovers in nearby trees, out of the sight and scent lines of hungry bears "that like to rummage through your pack," Elliott says. To refresh their camping skills, the girls recently spent a weekend at the Council's Camp Foxtail in Lee Canyon practicing their knot-tying, map-reading and mountain-climbing abilities. "I think they're very confident in their own abilities. It's girls ... reaching beyond what they think their potentials are," Elliott says. "They're in a place where they can't say, 'I can't do this.' They have to go on. They'll have to work together from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed."