Camp Geronimo Field App

Clear it with the ranger Friday

You're placing transmitters, IR emitters and stakes on Grand Canyon Council property. Five minutes at check-in with the ranger or the on-duty commissioner. Ask specifically about the current fire restriction stage and whether another unit is on the same ground.

Structure for 14

Three patrols: 5, 5, 4. Named Friday night, kept all weekend. At this size you run one game at a time as a whole group, or three patrols working the same game in parallel. Not a rotation — rotations are for seventy kids and at fourteen they feel like busywork.

One adult walks with each patrol. One adult is the roamer with the first aid kit and the headcount. The parents are here anyway; give them a job or they'll hover.

Headcount discipline

Count at every transition, out loud, by patrol, before anyone moves. Fourteen is small enough that a missing Scout is instantly obvious, which is exactly why people get lazy about counting. Count anyway.

Night rules, non-negotiable

Buddy pairs, never singles. Every Scout carries a light even when the game says lights off. Boundaries walked and marked before dark, not described after. One whistle blast means freeze and shut up. Three means come to my voice.

Order of introduction

Compass, then dead reckoning, then beacons, then radio, then scope, then optics. Every tool gets introduced after they've felt the limits of the simpler one. Run it backwards and the compass becomes the boring thing you do before the good toys come out.

What the card colours mean

The stripe down the left of every game card tells you which band that game lives in. They run in spectrum order, lowest frequency at the top.

SoundHunt the Cricket, See Your Voice, Name That Frequency
AM radioNoise Safari, The Null, Skywave, You Are an Antenna, Battery Sag
Beacon, UHFFox Hunt, Triangulation Plot, Sensor Stack
UltravioletBlacklight Scorpion Sweep
Infrared and opticsThe Lighthouse, Ghost Walk
Navigation, no signal at allDead Reckoning Box, Compass vs GPS

Day and Dusk give you six distinct hues. Red and Green night give you six brightness steps of one colour instead — still tells the categories apart, without a single stray wavelength wrecking anybody's dark adaptation. That's the whole reason the night themes exist, so nothing gets to opt out of them.

There are seventeen games here and you have one weekend

You cannot run them all with fourteen Cubs in two days, and trying will produce a rushed blur instead of a weekend anybody remembers. Pick a spine and let the rest be spares for weather, for a game that dies early, or for next year.

If you run only six, run these: Dead Reckoning Box so the compass comes first. Fox Hunt as the daylight centerpiece. Noise Safari with Picture the Noise folded in. You Are an Antenna because it costs ten minutes and reframes everything. The Lighthouse for the moment the invisible becomes visible. The Sensor Stack to close Saturday night.

Skywave is the seventh if the dial cooperates. Everything else is depth you now have on hand and don't have to use.

Arizona doesn't move the clock. Sunset is right around 6:55, full dark by 7:30. Your night program starts earlier than it feels like it should, and the AM band opens up at exactly the same moment.

Friday

Arrival

Set camp, name the patrols

Ranger check-in. Confirm the fire stage.

Before dark

Walk all four boundaries with every Scout

Physically walk them. UV-mark the stakes while you're out there.

Dusk

Set declination on every compass

You do it, not them. Ten minutes at the table.

After dark

Blacklight scorpion sweep

Game 8. Twenty minutes and it doubles as the safety briefing.

Late

Skywave

Game 7. AM radio at the fire. Ends the night quiet, which is the point.

Saturday

Morning

Compass and pace count

Then Game 3, dead reckoning. Compass before anything electronic.

Late am

Fox Hunt

Game 1. The marquee daylight event. Budget 90 minutes.

Lunch

Rest and re-battery

Swap cells in everything before the afternoon block.

Early pm

Noise Safari

Game 5. Walk the camp with the AM radio. Forty minutes, no setup.

Mid pm

Scope block at the table

Games 13, 14 and 16. Sit-down work while legs recover. Then Game 17 before the night brief.

Mid pm

The Null, then Triangulation Plot

Games 6 and 2. Both end at the map table. This is the thinking block.

Late pm

Compass vs GPS Shootout

Game 4, run in the drainage under canopy.

6:15

Set the night course

UV route, beacon, two IR lights, sound machine. Two adults. Scouts stay at camp.

7:45

The Sensor Stack

Game 12. Everything they learned, layered on one operation.

Sunday

Morning

Gear recovery sweep

Placement sheet in hand. Nothing stays in the forest.

Before out

Fifteen-minute reflection

What did an instrument tell you that your eyes and ears didn't?

1 Fox Hunt

3 patrols · 90 min · timber bench west of the camp road

Hide them first

All three beacons placed by an adult before the Scouts arrive, one per patrol.
Waist height or above. On the ground the signal dies into the duff and the game turns miserable.
200 to 400 yards apart, all inside the boundary. Nothing across the road, nothing across the creek.
Write down exactly where you put each one. You will forget. Everyone forgets.

Teach the technique before you release them

Take a reading, turn slowly in place, note where it peaks. That's a rough bearing, not a location.
Body shield: hold the finder against your chest and turn your whole body. Your torso blocks signal from behind, so the reading sharpens instead of smearing across half the compass.
Walk 100 yards perpendicular to your first bearing and take a second reading. Where the two lines cross is your search box.
Close in and everything reads strong. Turn the gain down if the unit allows it, or the last fifty feet takes longer than the first four hundred.

Scoring

Time to find, plus a bonus for any patrol that plotted both bearings on the map before walking. Reward the method, not the lucky wanderer.

3 beacons
3 RF finders
Map per patrol
Grease pencil
Whistle per adult

You switch the beacons off yourself at the end, and you check them off the sheet. A live beacon left in the woods is next spring's mystery.

2 Triangulation Plot

Whole group · 40 min · three fixed stations, then the map table

Run it

One beacon, hidden. Nobody hunts it on foot.
Three stations at known points on the camp map. High ground, the flat by the dining hall, and a third well off that line — the stations must form a triangle, not a row.
Each patrol takes a bearing to peak signal from their station and writes it down with the station name.
At the table, draw all three lines. They will not meet at a point. They'll make a small triangle.
That triangle is the answer — the beacon is inside it. Then walk out and confirm.

The point

The error triangle isn't a mistake, it's the measurement. Every bearing has slop in it. Three sloppy bearings still box the target, and that's how search and rescue actually works. A nine-year-old gets this in about ninety seconds.

1 beacon
Finders
Large-print camp map
Protractor
Ruler

3 Dead Reckoning Box

Patrols · 45 min · open ground into light timber

Set it

Four legs, each a bearing and a distance in feet, closing back near the start. A beacon sits at the final point, switched off.

Run it

Every Scout gets a personal pace count first. Walk a measured 100 feet, count right-foot strikes. Most kids this age land between 20 and 24. Write it on their hand.
Walk the legs. Compass only. No phones out, and mean it.
At the end point an adult switches the beacon on. Inside thirty feet they'll hear it instantly, and the cheer is the whole payoff.

The point

The compass got them there. The electronics only confirmed what the compass already said. Run this before any beacon game so the order sticks in that order.

Baseplate compasses
100 ft tape
1 beacon
1 finder
Stakes

9 Hunt the Cricket

Whole group · 25 min · creek bottom

Run it

Hide the sound machine in the drainage. Set it to something intermittent if it has the option; a steady tone is far too easy.
Round one, ears only. Let them argue about direction for five minutes. In a creek bottom the sound bounces off both banks and they will point confidently at the wrong wall.
Round two, hand over the sound finder. Watch the argument end.

The point

Their senses aren't broken, the terrain is lying to them. That's the entire case for carrying instruments, and they worked it out themselves instead of being told.

Sound machine
Sound finder

The radio will not find your beacons

Key-finder-style beacons transmit up around 433 MHz or on Bluetooth. An AM radio tops out near 1.7 MHz. It's not that the radio is weak — it's listening to a completely different part of the spectrum.

What the AM radio does that nothing else in your kit can do: it makes electrical noise audible, and its antenna is directional. Those are two real capabilities and both are better than a fourth beacon finder.

5 Noise Safari

Whole group · 40 min · daylight · zero setup

Run it

Tune the AM radio to a dead spot between stations, low end of the dial, volume up. You want hiss, not talk.
Walk the camp. Every few steps, listen. Buzz, hash, whine and clicking are all sources.
Every time the noise changes, stop and hunt it. Move the radio closer and farther to prove you've found the source, not a coincidence.
Log each find on a camp sketch: what it was, and what the noise sounded like.

What they'll find

Electrical panels, the water pump, fluorescent fixtures in the dining hall, chargers and inverters, a running vehicle's ignition, overhead line noise, and somebody's phone brick in a tent. Camp has an invisible electrical landscape and they're about to map it.

The point

Everything electric is also a transmitter, whether it means to be or not. That's the whole reason interference exists, and it's the reason a radio can hear something a person standing right there cannot.

AM radio
Fresh batteries
Sketch map
Pencil

6 The Null

Patrols · 35 min · open ground, then the map table

Why a radio can point

The AM antenna is a ferrite rod inside the case, and it doesn't hear equally in all directions. Rotate the radio and a station gets loud, then quiet, then loud again. The quiet spot is called the null, and it's much sharper than the loud spot — which is why direction finders hunt for silence instead of volume.

Run it

Ground truth first. Tune a Phoenix station. Phoenix sits roughly 210 degrees true from camp, about 200 magnetic.
Rotate the radio slowly, flat and level, until the station drops out. Mark which way the radio is pointing at the null.
Shoot that direction with a compass. Compare it to the known bearing. Now they trust the method, because they proved it against something they could check.
Then tune an unknown station and null it. Draw the line on the map and see where it goes. Two patrols nulling the same station from different spots gives you a crossing.

The gotcha to hand them

A null gives you a line, not a direction — the station could be at either end of it. That 180-degree ambiguity is real, it's why direction finders move and take a second reading, and it's the same problem they already solved by hand in the Fox Hunt.

AM radio
Compasses
Camp map
Ruler

Have them empty their pockets and stand clear of vehicles before shooting the compass bearing. A knife or a phone in a hip pocket will move a needle several degrees and you'll spend twenty minutes debugging the wrong thing.

7 Skywave

Whole group · after dark · at the fire · the quiet closer

Why this works after sunset and not before

In daylight the lower ionosphere absorbs AM signals and you hear only what's local. After dark that layer thins out and the same signals bounce off a higher layer and come back down hundreds of miles away. Same radio, same dial, completely different world. Nothing changed except the sun went down.

Run it

Start at the low end and walk the dial slowly. Stop on anything that isn't local.
Wait for the station identification — call letters and city, usually near the top of the hour but often between segments.
Log the frequency, the call sign and the city on a sheet.
Draw a line from camp to each city on a US map. Watch the lines spread across the country.

Likely catches from central Arizona

The big clear-channel stations carry the farthest: 640 and 1070 out of Los Angeles, 850 from Denver, 1160 from Salt Lake City, 820 from Fort Worth, 1120 from St. Louis, 720 and 780 from Chicago, 700 from Cincinnati. Log what you actually hear rather than what this list says — conditions change nightly and half the fun is the catch nobody expected.

The point

Signal isn't a thing you have or don't have. It's a thing that depends on time of day, terrain, and the sky itself. A Scout who understands that at nine will never again say "my phone doesn't work here" without wondering why.

AM radio
US map
Log sheet
Pencil

Batteries. An AM radio run all evening at volume will eat a set, and this is the last activity of the night when nobody wants to go hunting for spares.

What the scope can and can't see

A pocket scope tops out somewhere in the kHz to low-MHz range. It cannot see a 433 MHz beacon carrier and it cannot see the AM carrier around a megahertz either. Probing a beacon with it will show you a flat line and teach a Scout the wrong lesson.

What it sees beautifully: sound, mains hum, battery behavior, and the demodulated audio coming out of the radio's headphone jack. That last one is the move — the radio does the hard part and hands the scope something it can draw.

Everything on this tab is a table activity. Small groups around a screen, not a field game. Which is exactly what you want for the middle of the afternoon when everybody's legs are done.

13 You Are an Antenna

Whole group, small clusters · 10 min · the single best demo in the kit

Run it

Scope on, timebase slow enough to see a few cycles of something around 60 Hz, vertical gain up high.
Have a Scout hold the probe tip between finger and thumb. A wave appears on screen. Their body is picking up the 60-cycle field radiating off the building wiring.
Now walk. Toward the dining hall the wave grows. Out into the timber it shrinks toward nothing. Under a power line it goes wild.

The point

There is an invisible field filling the camp and a human body is antenna enough to pick it up. They have been standing in it their whole lives. Ten minutes, no setup, and it reframes everything else they do this weekend.

Scope
Probe

Probe tip on fingers only, and nowhere near an outlet, a panel, or anything a Scout could mistake for a place to stick a metal tip. Say what the probe is not for before you hand it over.

14 See Your Voice

Small groups · 20 min · table activity

Run it

Feed the scope from a mic element, a piezo, or a phone playing tones through a headphone cable — whatever your rig supports.
Whisper. Then talk. Then yell. The wave gets taller. That's amplitude, and it's loudness.
Hum low. Then hum high. The waves bunch closer together. That's frequency, and it's pitch.
Whistle a steady note, then say a word. A whistle is a clean repeating shape. A word is a mess. Let them see the difference between a tone and speech.

The point

Tall equals loud, tight equals high. Two words and a nine-year-old owns the two properties every signal in this entire weekend has. Run this before anything else on this tab.

Scope
Mic or piezo
Cable

15 Picture the Noise

Runs inside the Noise Safari · adds 20 min

Run it

Carry the scope on the Noise Safari with the AM radio. Probe the radio's headphone output, not its antenna.
At each source they find, freeze the trace and let them sketch the shape on their log sheet next to the description.
Compare at the end. A broadcast station is smooth and organized. A motor is dirty hash. A switching supply is sharp repeating spikes. Fluorescent ballast is its own thing entirely.

The point

Noise isn't one thing, it's a family, and each member has a signature you can recognize on sight. That is exactly how a technician identifies what's wrecking a circuit without taking anything apart, and your Scouts just did it with a sketch pad.

Scope
AM radio
Headphone-to-probe cable
Log sheet

16 Name That Frequency

Patrols · 30 min · three ways to answer one question

Run it

Play a tone from the sound machine. Each patrol writes down a guess — is it high, low, and roughly what number.
Put it on the scope. Count how many horizontal divisions one full wave takes, multiply by the time per division, and that's the period. One divided by the period is the frequency. Write it down.
Now the noise frequency finder. It just tells you. Write that down too.
Compare all three columns. Ear versus math versus instrument.

Scale it by rank

Younger Scouts count the divisions and an adult does the arithmetic out loud. Older ones run the whole calculation. Everyone reads the finder, everyone sees how close the math got.

The point

Three ways to answer the same question, in increasing order of trust, and they can feel the gap between them. The ear was in the neighborhood. The math was close. The instrument was the answer. That ranking is the whole weekend in one table.

Scope
Noise frequency finder
Sound machine
Worksheet with three columns

17 Battery Sag

5 min · do it Saturday afternoon, right before the night brief

Run it

Put the scope or a meter across a fresh cell. Note the voltage.
Switch on an IR light or the night vision and watch it drop under load.
Now do the same with a half-dead cell from the used bag. The sag is dramatically worse.

The point

A battery that reads fine sitting on a table can still collapse the moment something asks it for real current. That's why "it looked full" isn't a checkout. And it's the visceral version of every battery warning in this document — two minutes here saves you a dead optic mid Sensor Stack.

Scope or meter
Fresh and used cells
One IR light

Full dark by 7:30. Three optics for fourteen Scouts means one per patrol, and the Scout holding it has a job, not a toy. Rotate the optic on a five-minute alarm or one confident kid owns it all night while thirteen watch.

8 Blacklight Scorpion Sweep

Friday after dark · 20 min · camp perimeter

Run it

Five blacklights, buddy pairs, an adult on every light.
Sweep the ground at the base of rocks, along log edges, the woodpile, and the dirt around the tent line. Slow passes, low angle.
Scorpions fluoresce bright blue-green under UV. Once they find the first one you will not get them to stop.

Hands stay in pockets

Look only, full stop. Bark scorpion stings hurt badly and hit kids harder than adults. The lesson is exactly this: they were there the whole time and you couldn't see them. Which is why you shake out boots, don't reach under rocks, and don't walk barefoot to the latrine.

Second use for the lights

UV-mark your boundary stakes and the route back to camp before dark. Invisible by day, obvious under a blacklight, and the boundary becomes part of the game instead of a rule.

5 blacklights
UV paint pen or highlighter
Flagging stakes

UV is light, not a toy. Not in faces, not in eyes. Say it once, firmly, and enforce it the first time or you'll say it forty more.

10 The Lighthouse

Patrols · 30 min · open ground into timber

Why it works

An infrared emitter is dead black to the naked eye and blazes like a porch light through night vision. Your Scouts are about to walk past one seeing nothing, then pick up an optic and find it instantly. That moment is worth more than any explanation you could give them.

Run it

Set both IR lights out before the Scouts come over. One easy, in the open at 150 yards. One hard, partly screened by timber at 300.
Round one: walk the ground with white lights off, eyes only. They'll find nothing, and let them look long enough to be sure of it.
Round two: one optic per patrol. Sweep slowly and low. First patrol to reach both lights wins.
Rotate the optic through every Scout on the way. Everybody looks.

The question to hand them at the end

If you can see an IR light this way, how would you hide one so this doesn't work? Let them argue it out. That's the good part, and a couple of them will get to the right answer on their own.

2 IR lights
2 IR night vision
1 green NV binocular
Rotation timer

11 Ghost Walk

Whole group · 30 min · flat open ground with scattered cover

Run it

Three sentries with the optics sit at one end of a marked field. They may not leave their spot.
Everyone else starts 150 yards out and tries to reach the sentry line without being called by name.
A correct call sends that Scout back to the start. A wrong call costs the sentry thirty seconds of eyes closed, which stops wild guessing fast.
Rotate the optics through every Scout. Everyone spots, everyone crawls.

What they learn without being told

Movement gets you caught, not shape. Low and slow beats fast and clever. Skyline is death, so stay below the ridge of anything. And the nervous kid who rushes the last twenty yards always gets called.

3 optics
Boundary glowsticks
Whistle

Walk the field in daylight and pull anything that trips a crawling kid. Nowhere near the creek bank.

12 The Sensor Stack

Marquee night operation · 60-75 min · the full course

The setup

Everything from the weekend, layered onto one course. Two adults set it at 6:15 while the Scouts are back at camp.

A UV-marked route through the timber. Markers only visible under blacklight, spaced so the next one is findable but never obvious.
One beacon hidden off the route. Not on the marked path — they have to leave the trail to get it.
Both IR lights placed as waypoints the patrol has to physically reach and touch.
The sound machine as a decoy, well away from the beacon.

The mission

Each patrol carries one blacklight, one RF finder, and one optic. Follow the UV route end to end, touch both IR waypoints, recover the beacon, come back with everybody. Fifteen minutes between patrol starts.

Scoring

Item	Points
Beacon recovered	10
Route completed, no markers skipped	10
Each IR waypoint touched	5
Chased the decoy sound	−5
Patrol returns with every member	10

That last line is worth as much as the beacon on purpose. Say so out loud before they start, because at this age the failure mode is a patrol leaving the slow kid behind to win, and you can price that out of existence with one line on a scoresheet.

3 blacklights
UV markers
1 beacon
3 finders
2 IR lights
3 optics
Sound machine

4 Compass vs GPS Shootout

Three teams, one course · 50 min · run it under the canopy

Three teams, three tools, same five legs

Team Steel: baseplate compass and pace count only.
Team Satellite: phone GPS, dropping and navigating to pins.
Team Wolfpack: your web compass app.

Where to run it

In the drainage under heavy ponderosa, not out on the open flat. On the flat all three tools work and the game teaches nothing. In timber, in a canyon, with sky blocked on both sides, the GPS team drifts and starts arguing with their own screen. That's the whole lesson and the terrain delivers it for free.

Debrief questions

Which team finished first, and which team was most confident while being most wrong?
Read out every phone's battery percentage right now. Now read the compass's.
What happens to two of these three teams when the phone gets wet, cold, or dropped on a rock?

Baseplate compasses
Phones
Course stakes
Stopwatch

Declination, the part everybody skips

Central Arizona runs roughly 10 degrees east. The needle points at magnetic north, the camp map points at true north, and here those are about ten degrees apart.

Over a 300-foot leg that's about 50 feet of miss. Over half a mile it's 460 feet, which at Camp Geronimo is the difference between the beacon and the wrong side of a drainage.

Simplest fix for this age group: set the declination on every compass yourself Friday night before handout, then teach them to just follow the needle. Don't explain the math until a Scout asks. The one who asks is ready for it, and that's a great five minutes.

Your compass app needs re-waypointing

The build on wolfpack101.com carries Gilbert Riparian Preserve waypoints. Here they point at nothing. Camp center is 34°24'10.6"N 111°22'06.1"W. Swap the waypoint array for your Geronimo course points before Friday, or leave the app out of the weekend entirely. Handing kids a broken tool in front of the group is worse than not having one.

Worth knowing either way: a phone magnetometer is a real compass and it works with no cell signal at all. It is also thrown off by anything magnetic in a pocket, which is the same gotcha as the AM radio null.

Every game below is pinned to a named place on the camp map. Camp runs north to south along Webber Creek, sites 3 through 15 west of the creek, sites 16 through 29 east and north. Dining hall flat sits around 5,578 feet; the Tonto boundary ridge northeast runs to 5,742. Camp center is 34°24'10.6"N 111°22'06.1"W and the gate address is 2599 W Webber Creek Rd.

These are landmark placements, not coordinates

I'm not going to invent GPS waypoints for stakes nobody has walked yet — a made-up coordinate is worse than no coordinate. What's below is anchored to buildings, trail numbers and site numbers you can find on your own map in the dark.

Fill in real coordinates on the placement sheet Friday as you set each one. That sheet is also your Sunday recovery list.

Where each game goes

Game	Where, specifically
Assembly, map table, scope block	The open flat along Caddo Pl between the Dining Hall and the Health Lodge. Tables, level ground, health lodge fifty yards away, and the only place at camp with reliable shade and a hard surface.
Pace count calibration	The long open dirt run south of the Dining Hall toward the parking area off Pawnee Dr. Straightest 100 feet at camp.
Fox Hunt	The timber west of Webber Creek holding sites 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Beacons in the vicinity of 6, 9 and 11 if those sites are empty. Bounded west by Geronimo Trail #240, east by the creek, south by Handicraft and Brownsea Island, north by the road to site 12. That box does your fencing for you on all four sides.
Triangulation Plot	Three stations that actually form a triangle: A Staff Hill, high and west. B the Dining Hall flat, east. C the Tower and Honor Fire area beside HQ, center north. Hide the beacon in the Brownsea Island and Handicraft ground between them.
Dead Reckoning Box	The open dirt between the lake, the Dining Hall and Pawnee Dr. Four legs closing back on themselves, all on ground you can see across.
Noise Safari	Dining Hall kitchen and its fluorescents, the Health Lodge, the Trading Post, West Showers and Pancho East Shower, the Maintenance and Ranger buildings at the south end, and any vehicle at the parking area. The single best find at camp is the Aquatic Center pump house — a pool pump is a big motor and it will roar on the dial from thirty feet out.
The Null	The flat south of the lake, well clear of the metal buildings and every vehicle. Sightline to the southwest is open there, which matters because Phoenix sits about 210 degrees true, roughly 200 magnetic, and that is your ground truth.
Hunt the Cricket	The Webber Creek bed below the lake, between HQ and the Lower Family Cabins. Steep sides, hard banks, and it will throw sound off both walls exactly the way the game needs.
Compass vs GPS	West Webber Creek from the Commissioners Shack down past Vogel Nature Lodge and West Webber Lodge. Heavy ponderosa overhead and canyon wall on both sides. This is the GPS-hostile ground and it is why the game works here and not on the flat.
The Lighthouse	Stand them on the Dining Hall flat facing west toward the timber edge. Easy light at 150 yards right at the treeline. Hard light at 300 yards, back in the timber and partly screened.
Ghost Walk	The big open dirt between the lake, the Dining Hall and Pawnee Dr. Flat, cleared, scattered ponderosa for cover, and no creek bank anywhere near a crawling kid.
Sensor Stack	UV route along Geronimo Trail #240 running north from near site 7 toward sites 13 and 14. IR waypoints at two bends in the trail. Beacon off-trail on the creek side. Sound machine well to the west as the decoy.
Skywave	The campfire bowl northeast of the pool. Away from the buildings, which matters — the same electrical noise you hunted all afternoon will wreck a weak distant station.
Scorpion sweep	Your campsite perimeter first, then the rock edges and retaining walls around the pool and the Health Lodge, then any woodpile. Rock joints and wood edges are where they are.

The turn-them-loose boundary

One box, used for every field game, walked by every Scout Friday before dark.

North: the road to sites 12 and 13. East: Webber Creek. South: Handicraft and Brownsea Island. West: Geronimo Trail #240.

All four edges are things a kid can stand on and recognize at night. UV-mark the stakes at each corner and at the midpoints.

The catching feature

If you're lost, walk downhill until you hit Webber Creek, then follow it toward the lake and the dining hall. The drainage is the handrail and it runs the whole length of camp. Every Scout says that sentence back to you before dark Friday.

Hard off limits

Rifle Range, Archery Range, Muzzle Loading and Shooting Sports, all off Pawnee Dr on the east side. They need certified range staff and the camp program is very likely not running this weekend. Don't route a game past them and don't let a curious parent wander one.

Wranglers and the horse corral, Maintenance, Ranger, Staff Hill cabins, the Duplex, the Aquatic Center itself, and every occupied campsite that isn't yours.

FR 300 and Rim Road to the north, East Webber Trail #289 to the east, and anything beyond the Tonto National Forest boundary. Those are real trails going real distances and they are outside your box.

Two things the maps told me

Camp is long and narrow, strung along a creek in a drainage. That's why the boundary box works and why a grid course wouldn't — use the linear features, they're already there.

The east side by the dining hall is open dirt; the west side across the creek is timber. Put every night game with running or crawling on the east flat, and every game about finding things hidden in the timber on the west. Don't mix them.

Fill this in Friday as you set each item. Sunday morning you walk it backwards and check the right column. Nothing gets left in the forest and nothing gets left on Monday's to-do list.

Beacons and lights

Item	Landmark	Bearing / paces from it	Coords	Back
Beacon 1				☐
Beacon 2				☐
Beacon 3				☐
IR light 1				☐
IR light 2				☐
Sound machine				☐

Course stakes

Stake	Which course	Landmark	Back
1			☐
2			☐
3			☐
4			☐
5			☐
6			☐
7			☐
8			☐

Boundary corners — UV marked

North corner, road to sites 12 and 13
East, Webber Creek
South, Handicraft and Brownsea Island
West, Geronimo Trail #240
Midpoints marked between each corner
Route back to camp marked

GPS and offline maps

GPS works with no cell signal. Maps do not. The receiver in the phone talks to satellites and needs nothing from a tower, so position is fine at camp — what dies is the map underneath it. Download the Camp Geronimo area in your offline app while you still have bars in Payson, then put the phone in airplane mode and check it before you drive up.

Use the Waypoint Capture tool on the Friday recon walk. Stand at each point, tap it, and it records your phone's fix. Export the GPX and share it to the other leaders by AirDrop, Nearby Share or a cable — none of that needs a connection.

Offline map area downloaded and verified in airplane mode
Waypoint tool open and GPS permission granted before you leave the house
All six game items captured — three beacons, two IR lights, sound machine
Four boundary corners captured
Our campsite and the health lodge captured, on every leader's phone
GPX exported and shared to each leader
Each leader confirms the points opened in their app before dark

The council map PDF is marked Not To Scale and will not georeference in Avenza or anything else. Treat it as a diagram for names, and navigate on a real topo or satellite layer.

Under canopy in the drainage, expect the fix to soften to 50 feet or worse. Capture game items from the nearest open spot and record the offset in paces and bearing rather than trusting a soft fix at the item itself.

Friday recon walk

Do this before you set a single thing. Forty-five minutes and it prevents every problem in the sidecar notes.

Ranger or commissioner briefed on transmitters and emitters
Current fire restriction stage confirmed
Which campsites are occupied by other units
All four boundary edges walked
Ghost Walk field checked for trip hazards in daylight
Ranges confirmed closed and off the route
Health lodge location known by every adult
Cell dead zones noted — where do the adults lose each other
Declination set on every compass
Batteries fresh in the radio, the optics and the emitters

Everything electronic gets a number, a name, and two checkmarks. Anything that goes into the forest and doesn't come out is either expensive or somebody else's problem next season.

Item	Qty	Out	Back
RF beacons	3	☐	☐
RF finders	3	☐	☐
Signal detectors	2	☐	☐
RF + sound finder	1	☐	☐
Sound machine	1	☐	☐
IR lights	2	☐	☐
IR night vision	2	☐	☐
Green NV binocular	1	☐	☐
Blacklights	5	☐	☐
AM radio	1	☐	☐
Mini oscilloscope	1	☐	☐
Noise frequency finder	1	☐	☐

Consumables and support

Baseplate compasses, one per Scout if possible, minimum one per buddy pair
Declination set on every compass before handout
100 ft tape measure for pace count calibration
UV paint pen or UV highlighter
Flagging stakes and flagging tape
Glowsticks for night boundaries
Camp maps in sleeves, one per patrol
US map for the Skywave log
Grease pencils, protractor, ruler for the map table
Scope probe plus a headphone-jack-to-probe cable, tested at home before you pack it
Mic element or piezo for See Your Voice
Three-column worksheets for Name That Frequency
Folding table and a camp chair for the scope block — it is a sit-down activity
Written beacon and IR light placement list, which is your recovery sheet
Spare batteries for every device, counted, in one labeled bag
Headlamp per Scout plus spares
Whistle per adult
First aid kit at the flagpole, not in a truck

Batteries are the failure mode of this whole weekend. The AM radio at volume all evening, night vision, and IR emitters running continuously are the three biggest draws, and cold nights at 5,420 feet make every one of them worse. Count spares before you leave the house, not at the trailhead.