The pagonging continues. Sticking together for another week despite Scout Lee Cloud's attempt at some endgame planning, the six women of Survivor: Vanuatu's Alinta tribe continued the systematic ousting of their male colleagues, booting Chad Crittenden, the 35-year-old teacher from Oakland, California, during last evening's Survivor broadcast.
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The first step in Scout's two-pronged plan would be to convince all the women that given their dominant numerical advantage over the men, it was now safe for them to vote out the Eliza, the 21-year-old pre-law student from Syracuse, New York who most of the women had been wanting to send home since they first arrived on the island over three weeks ago. With Eliza gone and the remaining group of castaways reduced to seven, Scout would then team with Twila, the 41-year-old highway repair worker from Marshall, Missouri, and the two men to oust Ami, the 31-year-old barista from Lakewood, Colorado perceived to be the leader of the women. Knowing they had little other options and looking to do anything they could to remain in the game, Chad and Chris quickly agreed to Scout's plan.
When the castaways assembled for the Reward Challenge, they discovered it would be a team challenge in which the tribe would be divided into two competing groups. Dubbed the "Sacrificial Lamb," one member of each team would wear a harness and have their hands tied while the rest of the team navigated the "lamb" through an obstacle course of ropes, fences, logs, and hitching posts. The first team to successfully navigate their lamb through the course would win a visit to a Vanuatu village.
Selecting their smallest team members to be their "lambs," the two teams proceeded to throw, poke, jam, and drag Julie and Eliza through the obstacle course. Despite a close race, Eliza's team won in the end, and as a result Eliza, Chad, Chris, and Ami left for an overnight excursion to the Vanuatu village.
Back at camp, the remaining group of Scout, Julie, Twila, and Leann Slaby, the 35-year-old research assistant from Kansasville, Wisconsin, struggled to keep their campfire burning through a night featuring torrential downpours. The next morning, sensing her opportunity with Ami and Eliza still away, Scout used the pretext of keeping the men around to help with camp chores to suggest that the women vote out Eliza at their next Tribal Council. While Leann appeared silent about the idea, both Twila and Julie appeared quite receptive to the suggestion, with Julie noting that "her time is definitely overdue."
At the day's Immunity Challenge, the castaways learned they would be competing in an endurance challenge involving climbing a ladder and stepping off and grabbing onto a large pole. The winner would be the person who could remain gripped to the pole for the longest time without sliding down to the ground. Chad and Twila emerged as the challenge's final twosome, with Chad eventually slipping off the pole as Twila tauted him, leaving Twila as the challenge's surprising winner.
Back at camp, Scout immediately began talking of voting Eliza out, but with Ami once again around and urging the other women to stick with their original plan to vote off all the men before turning on themselves, Scout's lobbying seemed to be ineffective. Lacking confidence that Scout's plan wouldn't simply result in a 4-4 split decision tie that would force the survivors to randomly draw a purple rock as in Survivor: Marquesas' Final Four Tribal Council, even Twila, Scout's closest ally, seemed unwilling to take a chance with her plan.
In the end, even Scout gave up on her plan, and as a result Chad was voted out in a 6-2 Tribal Council vote. Chad became the eleventh survivor to be ousted from the competition and joins previous bootee Lea "Sarge" Masters as the second member of the nine-person jury that will ultimately decide who wins Survivor's million dollar prize.