Eight Boy Scouts, aged 11 to 14, and their three adult leaders marched to safety Monday morning after failing to return to Raleigh Sunday from a backpacking trip in the Pisgah National Forest.
Their account is less harrowing than it might have been: Mild weather and level heads (Be Prepared!) kept the scouts safe despite a lack of cell-phone reception.
Twenty-eight rescuers and nine dogs were deployed to find the wayward troop, which emerged from the woods near Cruso. A few of the young campers had recently earned their Wilderness Survival merit badge, shown here, and probably had little idea that they would have to put their lessons to work so soon.
— Kent Priestley, staff writer
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Why did they go off the trail to begin with? And why do the accounts of this keep saying how well the troop did? Obviously they goofed.