Severe Wyoming Weather, And Threat Of More, Cuts Short Gillette Camporee

GILLETTE — Maegan Whitlock liked the idea of Wyoming a lot more than the reality of actually being here. More specifically, the reality of the volatile summer weather in Gillette.

Since arriving Monday, the Maryland teen got a dose of Wyoming’s whiplash weather, complete with rainstorms, a 20-plus degree drop in temperature and the Cowboy State’s famous wind.

Whitlock shivered against a misting rain in her hoodie early Thursday morning outside the Heritage Theater at the Cam-plex events complex alongside fellow travelers Monica Ngoye, Jordyn Gardner and Stacy and Aaron Shipowick, also from Maryland.

She and the others are among the roughly 60,000 Seventh-day Adventists who traveled from more than 100 countries to attend the International Pathfinder Camporee in Gillette scheduled Aug. 5-11.

This is the first year the quinquennial event (once every five years) has been held in Gillette, after being moved from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where it had been for the past 20 years.

The weather has so far has been such a problem for the tens of thousands of campers that, with more dire storms predicted, Camporee leadership decided to cancel Saturday night’s final show.

Friday’s nightly event constitutes the final performance of the Camporee’s sequential theatrical production based on the story of Moses from the Old Testament.

Along with shutting down the final performance, it’s not clear if the weather will also prompt campers to leave before close of the event Sunday. Those decisions will be up to the directors of the various conferences and clubs, said Kimberly Maran, director of communication for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America and one member of the media team.

Maran said it’s inevitable that some campers will leave, but ultimately, the decision will be up to those groups. Apart from the cancellation of the nightly event Saturday, all indoor activities that day will continue as planned, she said.

Dramatic Weather

The weather has provided a dramatic backdrop for the massive event that has been at least three years in the planning.

Torrential thunderstorms and lightning downed tents and flooded out sleeping bags Tuesday night as campers were forced to take shelter in outlying Cam-plex buildings and barns.

Most campers were not impacted by flooding caused by the storms, including the group from Maryland that traveled out in campers and RVs.

Heavy rain and flooding, however, wiped out about 40% of campsites in the “International Village” in the low-lying areas, said Ron Whitehead, IPC executive director.

Between 400 to 700 of these displaced campers from Brazil, Ghana, Germany, Pakistan, South Korea and many other countries took shelter with the help of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other churches that stepped in to provide overnight accommodations.

The remaining displaced campers spent the night inside Cam-plex buildings.

Gillette Rallies

Many campers returned to damaged tents, drowned sleeping bags and bedding, prompting the community of Gillette to step in.

Within hours of the storm, local residents began dropping off replacement gear and warm blankets for the campers, said Campbell County Commissioner Jim Ford, who has spent much of the week onsite helping organizers.

Gillette resident Daniel Cooley, who shared a post Tuesday night asking people for donations, was immediately inundated with calls and messages from locals offering tents, spare campers and travel trailers, and even the loan of empty houses on the market.

He said he spent much of Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning directing people to the city of Gillette and Camporee organizers to coordinate their drop-offs. He, too, felt compelled to donate after seeing photos of the flooding.

“I’m a dad, I have children,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I would want people to help my kids if they were traveling to a different country.”

In total, the city collected 50 tents, 120 sleeping bags and numerous blankets, pillows, canopies and things, said Jennifer Toscana, director of public affairs for the city, which were all delivered by 6 p.m. Wednesday.

“We just can't thank our community enough for coming together for that,” she said.

Calm Before The Storm

In the light rain Thursday morning, Maran drove her golf cart along the makeshift roads between camps.

The formerly vacant 1,000-plus acre complex had been transformed into a sprawling tent city overnight with camps of matching tents divided by state, countries and regional conferences.

The organization is structured into 13 world-wide divisions under which there are 59 conferences across the more than 95,000 churches worldwide, complete with its own schools, Maran said.

Many of the conference campsites are marked with unique own monuments or installations depicting that group’s state or regional character, including a 30-foot rocket with a Moses astronaut for the Texas conference.

An estimated 50,000 attendees were onsite camping with the rest of the roughly 60,000 staying in hotels and other off-site accommodations.

Despite the cloudy, gray skies and light rain, hundreds of campers milled along the makeshift trails between campsites going to various onsite and offsite activities, or more than 40 community service projects taking place throughout the city this week. That includes clean-up projects at schools and parks, assembling and delivering care packages for veterans and various activities with seniors among others.

Along with the numerous onsite honors or skill building activities, the Camporee rented spaces like the Campbell County Recreation Center and pool and worked with area businesses for a variety of off-site tours and other activities throughout the week.

Inclement weather did not slow down the campers.

Their Own Little City

Parades of pathfinders in tan uniforms marched through camp while others competed in drill programs or gathered in the food court with dozens of restaurants run by church members from all over the country.

Other members passed out daily newspapers that are printed for the week while others lined up to watch an onsite rodeo.

Apart from piles of broken tents and clothing and blankets hanging on fences to dry, the sites seemed in working order as Maran drove through the hundreds of campsites throughout the grounds.

The biggest complaint apart from the weather was the porta-potties, many of which were backed up and without toilet paper after the storm Tuesday.

By Thursday, Big D Sanitation, one of the vendors were onsite emptying their porta-potties and had dropped off more to accommodate the masses of people, Maran said.

Weather and porta-potties aside, Maran said that things had been going well despite the challenges in their first year in the new venue. Weather can’t be helped, she said, and they are making the most of it.

Contact Jen Kocher at jen@cowboystatedaily.com

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.