WHO WE ARE
Crew 896 is a venturing crew, which is a branch of the Boy Scouts of America. Venturing crews don’t focus on earning ranks or merit badges, however. They are usually based around high adventure activities like going on backpacking trips or sailing adventures. Our crew is a unique venturing crew in that we have an exchange with a German scout group every two years. On a trip year, we hold Scouting the World (STW,) where either Germans come to the US or we go to Germany. This is a 3-4 week experience which involves camping, high adventure hiking, a city tour, and a host family stay. You can find out more about this in the Scouting the World page.
WHAT WE DO
When we’re not getting ready for the trips, we do smaller activities. We can’t just organize right before a trip every two years and expect to have a cohesive group experience, so every month we have a meeting and an activity. Because our organization is youth led, all the activities are entirely planned by youth leaders. Past trips have included camping, going to Sky Zone trampoline park, playing broomball, and going to a German themed restaurant. Traditionally, we also stay at Fort Rice in a cabin sometime in the winter, and we camp at Copper Falls State Park in the summer.
OUR HISTORY
The inception of our group began in the late 1980s when Tim Scott, founder of the crew, met a group of German scouts while staying in Germany. This friendship grew, and Tim invited the group to visit what was then called Post 896 in the United States in 1994 in a program that involved camping, hiking, and staying with American host families. They called this trip Scouting the World. Two years later a group of 25 American scouts visited the Stamm in Germany, and our two year rotation has continued ever since. Most recently, in the summer of 2018, 27 German scouts from Stamm Lörick visited the US for the 14th STW. We went hiking in the Maroon Bells in Colorado, spent a week at Camp Tesomas, and had a host family stay. Some of the adults on the trip went on the first few trips in the 90s.