Under a light flurry of snowflakes, Ranger Robert McPherson is making the rounds around a cold, empty Camp Wakpominee.
The camp in Fort Ann features rustic cabins and lean-tos, outdoor plumbing solutions, a ropes course, and two shooting ranges.
The 45-acre manmade Sly Pond is the beating heart of the camp in the summer. This time of year, it’s covered in about 8 inches of ice.
McPherson, who began working at the camp as a teenager in the early 2000s, now lives here year-round.
While the camp has remained open for nearly a century, McPherson recognizes the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Resident camp, where scouts stay for a week with their troops to sail, swim, craft and shoot, was cancelled for a handful of summers.
“Camp Wakpominee has been open in a continuous operation since 1930. We did have some program changes during the challenges of COVID and the national issues, but we still have been offering year-round camping and program opportunities for scouting America youth and other youth organizations in the Northeast,” said McPherson.
The camp, which is owned by Scouting America’s Twin Rivers Council, has a dedicated group of former staff members and volunteers. This past summer, for first time since the 2020 lockdowns, the camp was full, if only for a week.
“It's phenomenal. It was euphoric this summer seeing the camp full, seeing all of the program areas full. We have some drone footage of various activities going on, piles of pictures of activity on the pond. All the program areas full, scout skills being taught, crafts being taught, nature and environmental conservation things being taught. The ATVs running with scouts on them. It was just phenomenal, the energy was just incredible,” said McPherson.
It wasn’t just COVID-19 that brought summer camp to a halt. In 2021, Twin Rivers Council paid more than $2.5 million into a national trust to compensate survivors of sexual abuse.
Twin Rivers Council had considered selling Wakpominee. It previously sold its Cub Scout camp, Camp Boyhaven, in Milton for $1 million in 2018 amid declining enrollment. Twin Rivers still operates summer camp programs at its Rotary Scout Reservation in Poestenkill.
To make things worse, says McPherson, was a rumor that Wakpominee had already been sold.
“And some local news outlets ran the headline of Boy Scout camp on Sly Pond Road sells. Down in the article, they clarified which one it was, but people didn't get past the headline. Automatically believed it was us, because we had been the only Boy Scout camp on Sly Pond Road since 1995,” said McPherson.
The headline that McPherson refers to relates to the former Crossett Lake Scout Reservation, which closed in 1994, and was sold in 2023.
Prior to the pandemic, Twin Rivers Council had around 7,000 members. That number now floats around 4,000. But McPherson says that figure is gradually growing.
Following national trends, Twin Rivers Council’s scouting organizations are now coed. It began allowing girls in Cub Scouts in 2018. Girls were able to join Scouts BSA in 2019.
Recently, scouts, both male and female, gathered in Saratoga Springs for an Order of the Arrow winter banquet. Think of the Order of the Arrow as scout’s honor society.”
Ingrid Ragone is youth leader for the Twin Rivers Council’s Order of the Arrow Kittan Lodge.
She says there’s a lot of upside to Scouts BSA going co-ed.
“I think it has made the scouts and the scouting program a much more conscious and aware program of what can happen within scouting and all the different areas and boundaries. They’ve really revolutionized their youth-protection programs, all their safety barriers and everything just to make sure it’s not only a program for everyone, but it’s a safe program for everyone. As a female in scouting, it has definitely changed my life being able to participate in this program and I think the same can be said not only for females in scouts but people with sisters who maybe joined because of that,” said Ragone.
Greg Voyze is the CEO of the Twin River Council. He’s hopeful the uptick in enrollment will continue.
“We don’t see that stopping. We’re going back to communities that got shuttered during COVID. They lost their troop, they lost their program. And now, we’re going back and saying, ‘hey what can we do to help make sure our young people in your community are being served. And Twin Rivers Council serves 15 counties in upstate New York. We’ve got a vast geography, towns in-between that need to get served by scouting so it’s great to see so many communities welcome us back,” said Voyze.
And at Camp Wakpominee, Ranger McPherson is already getting ready for next summer.
“We've been very forctunate with my predecessors, volunteers, donors with being able to keep up on a lot of this stuff, but there's always more to be done to get ahead of the curve. We're also at a position right now where it's keeping the wheels on and keeping the roofs from leaking,“ said McPherson.
Twin Rivers Council's annual ice fishing tournament is set to be held Feb.14 on Sly Pond.
