Running a Trek or Voyage (High Adventure)

A high-adventure outing is more than a calendar entry. A Philmont trek or a Sea Scout voyage needs a crew with current health forms, a transportation plan, an emergency plan, reservation tracking, and per-scout fees — and after the trip, a logbook that turns real miles into advancement credit. MySummitKeep models a trek and a voyage as their own events so all of that lives in one place.

This guide covers the full lifecycle: from a saved template, through the publish wizard, to the post-trip logbook. Treks and voyages share the same flow; the differences are called out where they matter.

From template to event: the instantiate wizard

You don’t start a trek from scratch. You start from a template in your unit’s event library, then “use” it to spin up a dated instance. Using a template fires a create-from-template handshake and drops you straight into the instantiate wizard at /events/:id/wizard, with a variant=trek or variant=voyage flag that controls which steps appear.

The trek wizard has these steps in the step rail: Dates, Crew, Transportation, Lodging, Packing list, Reservations, Emergency plan, Costs, Permission slips, Review & publish. A voyage uses the same rail but drops the Transportation step (its crew manifest is per-phase instead — see below).

The Dates step is where you set departure and return and break the days into pre-trek travel, on-base, and post-trek travel days. You can move between steps freely, Save & Exit to come back later, and the final step’s button is Publish event.

Note

Lodging and Packing list are in the rail but are lightweight in this release — the heavy lifting on a trek is Dates, Crew, Transportation, Reservations, and the Emergency plan.

Crew step and the hard-gate eligibility chips

The Crew step lists the hard-gate safety checks that run when you publish, as five chips: two-deep adult leadership, all drivers 21+, swim test currency, training currency, and AHMR (Annual Health & Medical Record) forms complete.

In this release these chips are placeholders — each renders in amber with the note “Will be checked on Publish — currently mocked as eligible.” The live pre-flight evaluation (so the chips can show green/amber/red before you reach Review) is still being wired in. The member picker and role assignment are not on this step yet either; for now the crew is taken as the unit’s full roster at publish time so the gates have something to validate against. The real enforcement happens server-side when you publish, where each of these checks — including per-part AHMR completeness — runs for real and can block the publish.

Tip

The same gates run at publish time, so a missing health form will block the publish, not just warn you. See Health Forms for how families complete Parts A, B, and C.

Transportation and the vehicle/crew manifest

A trek has a transportation manifest, reached from the trek detail page. It lists one vehicle per row, grouped by phase — Pre-Trek, On Route, On Base, Return — because the cars driving to the trailhead aren’t always the cars driving home. Each row captures the vehicle type (private car, van, charter bus, trailer, other), owner, license plate, capacity, and how many passengers are assigned.

Caution

Driver eligibility — 21+, licensed, and BSA Defensive Driving for legs over two hours — is checked server-side at publish time, not on this page. The manifest just keeps the data correct; the publish gate enforces it.

A voyage has a crew manifest instead, with per-phase assignments — Pre-Launch, Underway, Anchor — because the same Sea Scout can be Skipper underway and watch captain at anchor. Assigning the Skipper role on the Underway phase triggers the USCG eligibility check when you publish.

Emergency plan

Every trek and voyage carries one emergency plan. The form captures emergency contacts (parents, council line, etc.), the evacuation plan, the nearest medical facility name, phone, and address, and a rally point where the crew gathers if things go wrong. Saving is last-write-wins and stamps a “Last reviewed” timestamp so you can tell at a glance whether the plan is current.

The plan, along with the manifest and roster, flows into the printed Packet PDF described below.

Reservations and deposits

The Reservations step tracks your high-adventure base booking: a confirmation number (Philmont, Northern Tier, Sea Base, or Summit Bechtel), a lottery status (entered, selected, not selected, or direct booking), and a free-text deposit and payment schedule so the whole committee can see what’s due and when.

Permission slips on publish

You don’t hand-build permission slips. The Permission slips step is a preview; the real work happens on publish. When you publish, MySummitKeep auto-generates one permission slip per youth crew member and sends each of them a “Permission slip ready” notification to review and sign. Slip creation is idempotent, so re-publishing won’t generate duplicates. Adults don’t get a slip.

Publishing and what it creates (child events, dues)

Publishing is the moment the trek becomes real for your families. On success it does several things automatically:

• Calendar fan-out: four linked child events appear on your unit calendar — Shakedown (about 30 days out), Pre-trek meeting (about 7 days out), Departure, and Return. If you later delete one, a re-publish won’t resurrect it.
• Permission slips go out to every youth crew member.
• Dues: if you set a per-scout cost, a dues-ledger line is added for each youth and a payment checkout session is created. If payment setup can’t complete, your leaders, treasurers, and admins get an alert so the gap is visible — see Finance & Payments.

Note

Each of these legs is failure-isolated: if billing or the calendar hiccups, the publish itself still succeeds. The trek is never half-published.

Youth proposals and the approval queue

Treks are youth-led, and the proposals queue makes that real. Youth crew members can suggest a change — add a logbook day, add or remove crew, edit the description, add a packing item — and it lands as a pending proposal. From the proposals page a leader reviews each one and approves (which runs the matching change automatically) or rejects it with a note the youth can see.

The Packet PDF

From the trek (or voyage) you can download a Packet PDF that bundles the trip into one printable document. The first download generates it and caches a signed link; if details change, use Regenerate to render a fresh copy.

Post-trip logbook and automatic awards (50-Miler, Hiking MB, OAA)

After the trip, open the Logbook. You record day-by-day actuals — miles, service hours, conditions, and notes — tick off who actually attended in the participant checklist, and attach photos. A live “Trek Totals” panel sums miles, days with miles, and service hours as you type.

The Publish Logbook button is the trigger. It stays disabled until the trek is published, its return date has passed, you’ve logged at least one day with miles, and at least one participant is checked. Publishing is one-way: it auto-credits each participating youth toward the awards their logged miles and days earn — Hiking merit badge, the National 50-Miler Award, and Order of the Arrow camping. Crediting is idempotent, so a scout already working a badge isn’t double-started.

Tip

Mark participants carefully — only checked participants receive credit. Credits flow into each scout’s advancement record; see Advancement Workflow.

Clone, archive, and unpublish

When the season ends you have options. Clone as event copies the trip into a fresh draft for next year with new dates; clone as template saves it back to your library so the whole troop can reuse the plan. Archive soft-deletes a finished trek (and Restore brings it back). Unpublish retracts a published trek to draft — it soft-deletes the auto-created child calendar events and cancels unpaid dues, but it refuses if any trek payment has already been paid or refunded, so you can’t pull the rug out from under families who already paid.