Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Calumet High School’s JROTC Program hosted its annual Arctic Raiders Challenge this past Friday and Saturday. JROTC cadets spent Friday Night at the Calumet National Guard Readiness Center.

CALUMET TOWNSHIP — Calumet High School’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) hosted its 11 Arctic Raider Challenge this past Friday and Saturday at the Calumet National Guard Readiness Center.

In the case of the Arctic Raiders competition, the events were specific to local conditions and required snowshoes.

Calumet has hosted the Arctic Rangers competition for 10 years, but due to COVID, did not hold the competition for two years, said JROTC Instructor Maj. Michael Foley (U.S. Army, retired).

Fellow instructor, First Sgt. Mark Powell (U.S. Army, retired) said this year broke attendance records, with 13 teams from 10 schools in Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin.

“The good thing about this year,” said Powell, “is this is the most teams we’ve ever had, by far, almost double.”

Foley and Powell refer to themselves as “weapons of mass instruction.”

The Arctic Raiders competition consisted of three outdoor events. The Biathlon was a 2.5-mile event.

As the teams negotiated the snowshoe course, at about 2.3 miles, they came to the rifle range. There, they were required to hit one bull’s-eye as a team with pre-loaded pellet rifles positioned at the range. Each team member fired one pellet from the standing position. Each pellet on target took one minute off the team’s total time. Missed targets did not count against teams.

There was also a Cross-Country Rescue and a 1.5-mile timed ahkio sled pull, which was timed. Teams were required to complete the sled race with all team members.

An ahkio sled or scow sled is designed for people to pull heavy cargo over snow in remote snow-covered locations. In civilian use, ahkio sleds are used to haul supplies and can also be used as a deer sled or for evacuating someone who is injured or ill, explains armynavy.com.

Foley said the Arctic Challenge is the only one of its kind in JROTC programs in the U.S.

“This is unique,” he said. “Nobody else does this. Not in the same conditions and environment that we have.”

“There are a lot of Raider challenges and programs and competitions,” added Powell, “but none of them are winter-based like ours. Our philosophy was ‘Use your environment to its advantage. We’ve got snow, we’ve got cold weather, so why not use that?'”

It is about understanding your environment and using it to your advantage, he said.

“One thing is we’ve both been in active military duty in cold-weather environments,” said Foley. “I was in Ft. Devens, MA, and [Powell] was in Alaska, which is worse than Ft. Devens, but they’re both cold, snowy environments, which gave us a leg up on something like this.”

Powell said on Monday that he and Foley are already discussing switching up events for next year.