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This is probably my all-time favorite Scouting game! The heaving bar is a race to throw rope over the bar, secure it to a peg driven into the ground with a clove hitch, tie a log to the other end of the rope with a timber hitch and then lift the log off the ground by taking up the slack in the rope with a sheepshank.
The heaving bar is an event in the biennial Paul Bunyan Field Day at our summer camp (Camp Horseshoe). The cheering is deafening as four Scouts at a time compete, it’s a great opportunity for a skilled Scout to demonstrate his prowess with knots.
If you practice your knots and tie them quickly it’s possible to complete the race in under ten seconds. I have known a few expert competitors who can actually do this blindfolded!
This Scouting game has a practical side too: is great practice in properly coiling then accurately throwing a rope, and two First Class required knots (the clove and timber hitches).
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Another great activity for in the hall is the Knot relay.
Patrols at one end of the hall
Patrol Leaders plus stick, 2x short ropes, sandbag for each team at the other end.
On “Go” each scout takes a turn to go to the other end and tie a correct knot so that the stick is connected to a rope, the ropes are connected to each other and the second rope is connected to the sand-bag (clove-hitch, reef/square knot, sheet-bend)
Last scout runs to the completed chain of knots and pulls the Patrol Leader back to his patrol while he sits on the sand-bag.
[introduce other elements and rules for different knots as desired]
Lots of fun and if knots are incorrectly tied then the chain could fail and require re-tieing.
One of my favorites too! In the older (very real) edition of the Pioneering Merit Badge Pamphlet, Pioneering legend, Adolph Peschke refers to this activity as the “Rope-Throw-Log-Lift Game.” In my neck of the woods and in the Jamboree’s Pioneering Area, we call it the “Rope-TOSS-Log-Lift CHALLENGE.” Wonderful for camporees! Here’s a link to the activity with some action photos: http://scoutpioneering.com/2013/02/08/rope-toss-log-lift-challenge/