Foreword
This whole experience started in September, 1997 when we all met at Quail Hill for the first time. Remember the meeting when we saw that "interesting" video on sexual harassment? Personally, I didn’t know any of the guys in what became Crew Four except for the scouts from my troop. However, this would all change in time.
We were introduced to the Philmont experience through two shakedown hikes, one in late 1997 and one in early 1998. Of course these didn’t show us exactly what Philmont was going to be like. The Appalachian Trail in New Jersey is not a lot like the mountains of New Mexico. But they introduced us to "hiking as a crew," and some of the Philmont methods.
Originally there were eleven of us. A scout from my troop named Matt Campbell was with us for every event except for our Conservation Weekend and was our first medic. Matt dropped out for personal reasons not long before the trip.
The Conservation Weekend meant learning how to set up and take down our campsite. Set up the tarp, stoves, bear bag, find the sump, and cook something. Over and over. I think this did more to prepare us for Philmont than any other training we received before the trip.
Finally we came to our last meeting, the one where our final payments were in, and everything was set. Car arrangements, final notes, and a review of other stuff were gone over once more. We thought we were ready . . .
CREW FOUR
(It was either Nathan Arentof or Blake Drummond who began giving us Spice Names on the second or third day of Philmont. The Spice Girls’ nicknames say something about who they are on stage. Ours say something about who we are on the trail.)
Scouts:
Nathan "Don’t have a heart attack" Arentof
Blake Drummond
Paul "It’s on the map!" Greenleaf
Tim Lavigne
Tim Lingelbach
Adam "M&Ms" Palmara
Dave "Wendy" Thomas
Dave "I donna care" Wiesenfeld
Matt "Campbell!!!" Campbell
Advisors
Dennis Longo
Larry Goldsmith
Brendan Donner
Most of the crew arrived at Newark Airport by carpool. We met up inside one of the main entrances and sat around waiting to be told what to do. Most of us spent the time talking. Three other scouts from my crew and I played cards with Dave Thomas’ deck.
We had been warned numerous times that we needed to be in full scout uniform to get on the flight. Adam Palmara didn’t have his hat with him before baggage check-in, and the crew wondered what our advisors were going to do about it. But Adam had left it at one of our earlier meetings and got it back at the airport – at a cost. He had to pay Mr. Longo 20 bucks for it. He’ll get the money back at the end of our trip, but every time he’s caught out of uniform during the trip he’ll lose a dollar. Mr. Longo called it "Adam’s Hat Fund."
We lined up alphabetically and waited to check in our luggage. Each of us was asked, "Sir, did any stranger tamper with your bag or ask you to carry anything for them?" I know everyone had a sarcastic response for the question, but no one was stupid enough to use it. Who wanted the consequences?
We had time to find something to eat, and Crew Four all ended up in the same Pizza Hut. A stand-up-comic once said, "Since when did all the places in airports become Four Star restaurants? I mean, I walked into an airport restaurant yesterday and ordered a hamburger and was charged like 8 bucks for it!" I think he was in Newark.
After about three hours (no kidding), we entered a waiting area where the airport would announce the boarding of our flight. Several of us, myself included, whipped out our CD players and started listening to music. We all knew there would be no electronic equipment on the trail. Better get our kicks in now.
The flight finally boarded at around 6:00 PM. Blake Drummond had assigned us seats in a block reserved for our crew, but Nathan Arentoft found himself between two men mixed into our group. There were evidently lots of problems like this one. Scouts in other crews were also stuck next to "civilians" they didn’t know. So much for airport organization.
We quieted down on the plane. I went right to music, others began reading. Dave Thomas found a great joke in one of the safety pamphlets. It said, "If you are sitting in an exit row and cannot understand this card or cannot see well enough to follow these instructions, please tell a crew member."
The captain announced that our takeoff would be late due to weather and air traffic. They will try to make up the time during the flight. Takeoff was finally at 7:00 p.m., 45 minutes after boarding.
We could see all of New York and Newark before the plane broke through the clouds. The "city that never sleeps" looks much more interesting from the sky, but the view didn’t last long. After a few minutes we turned towards the sun and were on our way to Colorado.
Dave Thomas and I noticed how much neater clouds look from the top. They’re more puffy, and they look alive. Sort of like little hills.
Airplane food was rice and chicken (gag). The chicken was okay, but the rice was barely edible. Along with the meal we got a stick of bread and some salad. They ran out of regular soda because there were over 100 scouts on the plane. The only thing left were disgusting diet sodas. Dave Thomas got the last normal Coca-Cola.
There was bad weather below us, but we only had about 15 minutes of minor turbulence during the flight. We landed in Denver at about 9:00 PM (Mountain Time).
Denver didn’t look very interesting from the sky. It certainly didn’t look anything like New York.
We must have been a spectacle for the people in the airport. I doubt 110 scouts walking around an airport is an event people see very often.
The adults rounded up all the kids and marched us to buses waiting outside. The buses took us for an hour’s ride to Colorado Springs. We watched the movie "Desperate Measures" during the ride.
We arrived at a garage where we were to stay for the night at around midnight and were all very tired. To make matters worse, the guy who had the key to open up the (I guess it was a big garage) wasn’t there, so we were left outside for about 45 minutes. We finally got to sleep around 2:00 AM. The leaders retreated up a level into bunk beds, while the scouts all crashed on our mats. There were probably ninety of us all spread out on the floor.
Up at 5:00 AM, which means we hadn’t had much sleep. We piled onto buses and headed to a buffet breakfast place that wasn’t far away. The food was fancy, at least in comparison to what we’re expecting in Philmont, even though the eggs looked and tasted like instant eggs. There were also hash browns, home fries, pancakes, sausage, and various drinks.
After breakfast we got back on the buses and headed for "River Runners," a white water rafting organization. Exhausted, I think just about every person on the bus fell asleep. I drifted off about five minutes into the trip.
I’ve never seen mountains like Rockies before. They really are huge and steep. Truly spectacular. And the air is very, very dry. Our advisors weren’t kidding when they were telling us about dehydration prior to the trip.
The rafting trip started at 9:00 AM and ended at Noon. A woman named Kelly was the adviser for my group. We went through some Class Three and Class Four rapids, and they were a lot more fun than anything on the Delaware River. Giant waves drenched us, and there were water whirlpools around every corner.
I think we’re in a little town called Big Horn Valley. This is the place where we did all our rafting, but we ended in the town section. There are mountains surrounding us and small stores scattered about the plain. It’s like something out of a western movie.
The rafting was great. There weren’t many dull moments, but when there were we managed to throw each other off the raft. Kelly was pretty cool. She was very lenient, interested in us having a good time. We surfed some waves, getting completely drenched. Nathan and Thomas were in the front and were wet the whole time.
We walked back to the buses after it was over and waited around while everyone got organized again. The guys could buy stuff from the stores if they wanted to. Most of us have hung our clothes up to dry.
The trip is going pretty well in spite of everybody being tired. Colorado is incredibly beautiful. The landscape is indescribable.
Pictures were taken of everyone on the rafting trips and then sold to us later. The leaders used some of the crew money to buy the crew photos. I couldn’t help but notice Dave Thomas in the front posing for the picture as if he were going to be on the front of some sports magazine.
There could not have been a better event planned for today. It was incredibly humid, the air so thick it was as if we were inside a plastic bag. Morale is very high.
When we got the Air Force Academy chapel I realized I forgotten my camera, and I wanted to kick myself. The chapel has blue stained glass windows and decorations all over the place, and several other colors. The ceiling is about 200 feet high. The organ has 4338 pipes that are as much as 32 feet long and as small as a ball-point pen. It cost $122,000.
We saw a huge B-52 bomber and some F-15 fighters, but what impressed me the most was a bunch of cadets in navy blue or black uniforms. They were standing at attention in this incredible heat. I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached a hundred degrees. I wanted to die of the heat and I was just wearing a T-shirt. I can’t imagine how bad it must have been for them in this hot and humid weather.
We finished the day at a place called the Flying W Ranch, a combined mini theme park/outdoor mall/eatery and music center with lots of cowboy stuff around. You could climb up to the top of this huge rock/mountain and look down at the whole town beneath us. Lots of houses all around, trees, and the Rockies far off on the horizon.
Our group got a lot of attention because there were about a hundred of us dressed in full uniform. Lots of heads turned. I guess most people have never seen this many Boy Scouts before. I’m sure we irritated a lot of them when we all got in line for Italian ices.
We heard some country and western music there. The bass player could yodel really well and the fiddle player was incredibly fast, almost like he was playing a guitar. Someone in the audience called them a country band, and the lead singer corrected him, saying "We’re a western band. A country band is usually singing about somebody else’s wife." He was right. Their lyrics all seemed to be about working on a ranch.
We made it back to the garage where we were last night at about 10:00 PM and I’m looking forward to halfway decent night’s sleep. Guys are going to sleep right now or listening to CDs and talking. We saw the movie "The Little Rascals" on the bus ride back. It got some laughs.
Mr. Longo is really peeved about the missing button on Adam’s shirt.
We were up at 5:00 AM again and everyone but me seemed well rested. I always need tons of sleep now.
The buses took us to Pike’s Peak, probably the most famous mountain in Colorado. It has all these national landmarks and historical things on it. As the story goes, some explorer named Pike found the mountain and thought it was the tallest mountain in the Rockies. It’s actually the 32nd tallest, but it’s the most famous because it’s the first thing you see when you come in from the east. It tells you you’ve reached the Rockies.
We went up the mountain in a hydro-powered cog railway. We heard little gas emissions every once in a while. It went up at very great angle, with about a three story difference between the top of the first car and the bottom of the second car. Each car could hold about a hundred people. No one in our group was used to the altitude at the top, which is 14,110 feet. Dave Thomas and I had a snowfight, the first either of us has ever had in July.
I must have drunk a liter of water after that and I was dehydrated again five minutes later. There was also fudge for sale at the top. Good fudge.
After Pike’s Peak we drove a long way to an Indian reservation, which has 36 or 38 million dollars of Indian stuff here, artifacts and what not. About ten days ago another group came through here and trashed the gymnasium, so we have strict orders to be very clean and pick up everything. We passed the time by playing hackey-sack, basketball, and wall ball. Across the street there’s a pool room with ping pong, chess, and other games. Some guys are in the gym listening to classic rock on the radio.
Supper was spaghetti with little stuff on the side. For lunch, we went to a place called "Furr’s Buffet." We thought the customers that weren’t scouts would never stop coming. Mr. Longo decided "civilians" should go ahead of us in line, and a million people must have come in. It took us forever to get through the line. Dave Thomas and I spent the rest of the lunch period throwing spit balls at each other and other scouts (mostly Nathan Arentoft).
The reservations Indians were putting on a show tonight and we decided to have our crew meeting in our seats at the theater before it started. Unfortunately lots of people got there before us so we had to squeeze into a small spot in the bleachers and talk over the noise of the crowd.
The Indian show was neat. They had really fascinating costumes, very decorative, and very, very complex. Wooden masks and stripes on their faces. The stripes had to be very difficult to make because they were all perfectly straight.
The dancing went for two hours. The length of the show wouldn’t have bothered me except that there was nothing to lean on. But it was a good show.
[Advisors' Note: The Indian dancing was actually at the Koshare Indian Kiva in LaJunta, CO. which is a Boy Scout Troop/Explorer Post and is not a reservation.]
We were up at 5:00 AM again and rode for about three hours to Philmont. On the bus we saw "George of the Jungle" and a Pike’s Peak nature/historical film. That’s when most CD players went on.
We have arrived. Here is where the real deal starts.
The staff put us in tents. Today just consisted of us getting all our gear, first set of rations, and getting organized. Actual hiking begins tomorrow. The crew also discovered another thing the leaders had been talking about for the past year -- the weather. It seems that around 1:00 PM ever day in Philmont it pours for 10 to 30 minutes. Sometimes it rains for a couple hours. Today it was only ten minutes.
We had our dinner in the mess hall, Italian bread and spaghetti. Then we got our gear squared away and I wrote a couple post cards. I didn’t know if there would be a campfire or not because it had begun to pour again, but finally the rain let up and the campfire started. Immediately after, the crew split up for religious services. Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish scouts headed in different directions.
Nathan is feeling sick from the altitude and couldn’t eat supper with us. He will spend the night in the infirmary.
Up at 6:00 AM. We got most of our basic training this morning. We went over first aid for the trail with our trail advisor, who is named Brendan Donner. Brendan is a twenty year old guy out of Colorado who works at Philmont during the summers. He taught us what to do for various problems that might occur on the trail, such as a stick in the eye, running into a bear, or dehydration (which we have already been trained to death on).
Finally we boarded the bus and headed to our starting point about twenty minutes away. We hiked just 2.7 miles to our campsite, where we are now. For some reason my feet hurt all the way. The scenery was mostly green forests, and we were on a dirt trail most of the time. The view wasn’t all that exiting.
It took us forever to get our bear bag up. Actually, it took us forever to get it up twice. We got it up once, and then somebody tangled his rope around ours and we had to take it down. Thanks to Blake Drummond we finally got it up again.
Every crew that comes through Philmont is required to do a conservation project. Ours was helping to build an adobe house. We were instructed by a guy named Sam, who taught us how to make adobe mortar and lay the bricks correctly.
(Here’s where Blake Drummond became "Anal Spice." Sam was briefing us when he said "Oh, I also need the most anal guy in crew -- someone who can measure with the level." Nathan Arentoft and I think it was Paul Greenleaf who pointed to Blake. Dave Wiesenfeld eventually did the work with the level, but Blake still got the nickname.)
The crew bickered a lot today. I believe it’s when we started saying "Don’t have a heart-attack," an expression that was with us for the rest of the trip.
The second day on the trail. Interesting morning with some very difficult climbing. Six miles, most of it uphill. I don’t think even the best hikers in our group were breathing normally. Paul Greenleaf suffered from altitude sickness and dehydration, one or the other, and was dry vomiting. Lots of coughing from everyone.
But the view was extraordinary. A small dot of beige in the distance was the parking lot near our starting point. It’s unbelievable that we have traveled this far already.
We rested at a place called Stonewall Pass and ate breakfast there. It was like Shangri-La to most of us after the hike up the mountain. We watched Blake Drummond juggle cow pies and after breakfast Dave Thomas and I took some pictures of individuals with the Tooth of Time in the background. Brendan did 20 pushups with his pack on and said we had to do ten for every piece of garbage he finds at our campsite in the morning. (But he didn’t find any.)
The rest of the day was easy. We got into camp and skipped lunch because of the late breakfast. After dropping our packs (and luckily covering them), we began a team building exercise or "Cope Course." There were typical activities like getting us all to stand on a block with seven points of contact with eight people in our crew. And we had to cross a "river" made of Jalopenia cheese. (In cope courses, the staff usually creates "rivers" out of deadly substances like this type of cheese, which is thought to be very disgusting by some.)
It rained quite a bit today. Several guys have blisters.
Dinner was a huge feast of Beef Stroganoff. I never ate so much campfood in my life. I was actually full for once. It was really good in the beginning, but it came back at night to haunt us. Thank you Dave Wiesenfeld.
Morale is pretty high, even though the crew bickers a lot. Brendan told us about rattlesnakes and how to shake a stick around the seat of a toilet to keep black widow spiders from biting.
We had a campfire where there were a couple skits and ghost stories about Vraca Mesa, the lost scout, blue lights (Boss Sanchez), and the bit about magpies. Some counselors that ran the camp played acoustic guitars. They played songs like "Knocking On Heaven’s Door" and "Bad Moon On the Rise."
Evidently we have a tough day tomorrow. We’re getting up at 5:00 to hike seven miles to a rock climbing program.
Third day on the trail, and our toughest hike in the morning, 6.5 miles. Lots of it was downhill. With every step we would stomp down harder than usual, so our feet began to ache. Then uphill right afterwards. It seemed never ending, but we made it and had a little bonus at the end: Showers and a place to wash our clothes. This is the longest I’ve gone without a shower - - six days.
Brendan left us after breakfast today. We had breakfast at Inspiration Point and did the Wilderness Pledge there.
The place is called Miner’s Park. It’s a decent spot, with mountains all around, but the camp is infested with flies and other bugs.
As soon as we’d set up camp, the crew began to hang up their wet clothes. It’s amazing how much water wool socks can hold. Paul Greenleaf wasn’t feeling very well. He spit up water/fluids/vomit. I gave him some Pepto Bismol, and I think he’s doing a little better now.
Captain Lou (a counselor for our contingent we’ve been making fun of because of his accent or speech problem) made us move for a truck. He said "Twuck comin’ thwu!" and "Dat sounds whike a good deal ta me!" - I know you guys know what I mean.
The rain started around lunchtime. It was a complete downpour, so we couldn’t go rock climbing. Everything is soaked and people are cold. We missed our program, and you get twice as dirty in the rain. Most of us are covered in mud. I remembered on the hike that I forgot to put my raincover on my backpack. Thank God I ran back to put it on! Every trail in the area turned into a river. I think the worst part was the 30 minute hike up the mountain to find out our program was canceled.
Someone from a Monmouth Council "sister" crew hated Nathan after meeting him in Junior Leader’s Training last summer and started calling him "Naren" to irritate him. So now we do too. Rich Goldman also started calling Mr. Longo "Viagra Spice" today. To return the joke, Mr. Longo is calling Mr. Goldman "Weenie Spice." Mr. Longo claimed Mr. Goldman was dead! D-E-D, dead. It’s a little inside joke.
An indescribable day. Okay, it took us three and a half hours to get out of bed and ready, and then too long to hike down to our rock climbing activity, which turned out to be canceled due to the rain again. So we never got to go rock climbing. Then, while we were on the trail (which was really neat today, very jungle like, sort of like a mini-rain forest) there was a stream we had to cross 48 times. Really -- the advisors counted it. Cold water, but no one fell in.
The day improved with the terrain and because it stopped raining. Everyone was aggravated till then. We hiked from Miner’s Park to Black Mountain. Mutiny was brewing near the end of trip. Most of the crew wanted to stop and have something to eat and everyone was dead tired. All changed when we saw the lodge, our ending point for the day.
The minute we got into camp it began to pour. How long did it last? Five or six hours. And it was cold. It made everything painful. After about three hours it turned into a drizzle, but that wasn’t much of an improvement.
I was cook for the day. It wasn’t too bad except for dinner, when I spilled some fuel onto the ground. I had forgotten the spill when I lit the stove and the ground caught on fire in a spot about the size of a CD. When Adam and I were stamping it out, Adam side kicked the fire and sent the fluid flying to a second spot. Two stupid mistakes in about 10 seconds. Mr. Longo heard our shouts and feet and rushed over, and I got a long lecture that I deserved (goodie).
We sat in our tents during the rainstorm playing "Egyptian Rat-Screw" and other card games.
For breakfast we had oatmeal, and for lunch we had spreadables and squeese cheese on crackers. Dave Thomas made what he calls "hyper juice" from dehydrated Gatorade packets: Sugar with just enough water to make it wet. AKA Sugar syrup.
We stopped in a very cool camp. Once again, we were supposed to be doing blacksmithing and burrow racing, but NO! The acursed rain came again. Black powder rifle firing was pushed back two days because of this.
Tomorrow sounded bad till we heard all the details. We will hike 8.5 miles but stop at three locations: Phillips Junction, Crooked Creek, and Comanche Camp (our end point). At least it’s divided up. It would be horrible to do it all in one stretch. Even five miles in a day in these mountains kills us.
Mr. Longo broke his tooth during lunch and is wondering if he should continue. (He does.)
We left Black Mountain and are now in Commanche Camp. Barely any rain today, thank God. I finally got all my stuff dry. We hiked up a pretty big hill in the morning, but got a break at the top for breakfast. My feet are killing me. I think I’m getting blisters.
We got into camp at about 5:00 PM. Lots of great scenery today, including waterfalls. We got everything set up, cooked and ate quickly.
There’s homesteading course here. Four people are in character as people living in 1868. They’re pretty decent actors and had their roles down pretty well. Evidently it got pretty hot in their house. All the "kids" had to sleep up in the attic (there really weren’t kids there). Their bedroom was the size of my dining room in New Jersey, and that’s really small for a family’s only bedroom. The kitchen was even smaller, bathroom-sized. The family has two kittens who don’t want to be held. Very timid, yet cute. They had been taken in to catch mice.
Top 10 ways you know you were at Philmont too long:
We had an interesting Thorns N’ Roses session today. Thorns N’ Roses is a reflection process and a chance to learn more about the guys you’re with. We discuss a "thorn," our bad event of day, a "rose," our good event of the day, and a "bud," our hope for the future.
Adam Palmara is now on some sort of medicine for his cold. He looks pretty bad.
We got to go to the trading post and I bought some potato chips and M&Ms. It closed before some of the guys had time to get there.
We head to Mount Phillips tomorrow. It’s the second the tallest mountain in Philmont. Mount Baldy is 700 feet higher, but we’ll go up Mount Phillips with our packs on. People that go to the top of Mount Baldy usually do it as a day hike, leaving their packs at the bottom.
Up Mount Phillips today, all 11,741 feet of it, according to a vertical angular bench mark, which is supposed to be accurate within 6 feet. Windy and very cold up there. The hike up wasn’t too bad because we talked about food the whole time. I think that made all of us hike faster. The adults had a hard time keeping up and were much more tired than the scouts at the top.
We came down and camped at Clear Creek and tried the black powder rifles and ax throwing that’s here. We used Dave Thomas’ "Far Side Shirt" for a target, and now it has huge holes, slashes, and black powder all over it. Looks cool though.
We also got into a little fight with a sister crew but didn’t use the rifles or axes. It was all verbal. Mr. Longo and Mr. Goldsmith got in an argument with their leaders too. That crew seems to love annoying us. Our advisors lectured theirs about their scouts’ behavior and it got better.
We gave our counselors a coffee hour today. Our advisors usually visit the lodge at a campsite and get some coffee from the camp masters. There is no lodge in this camp, so we took on the job. Mr. Goldsmith had some twizzlers for us, and we spent a half an hour in group conversation.
Unfortunately, this is a dry camp, so we had to haul all the water in from the camp before. The supper we had planned for tonight required a lot of water, so to be safe we decided that we’d make our supper for lunch and our lunch for supper. That way we conserved water and didn’t risk dehydration.
A very dry day with high winds. We’ve heard that about five kids from other crews have been sent back to base camp because they got hypothermia.
Pemican bars for breakfast. You know it has to be good if it has a picutre of a squatting Indian on the wrapper. A mule deer walked into camp while we were eating and Paul got a picture of it.
We pulled out of Comanche and hiked quickly all the way down to the Sawmill Camp.
Our program today was to make our own .306 bullets for a Springfield rifle, three apiece. We were given an empty cartridge case and were taught to take off the primer case, reshape the cartridge so everything fits perfectly, smooth the edges, oil it down, put the charge in, and then put the bullet in. Then it was inspected. After it was inspected you were to say what it smelled like to you. I said it smelled like citrus. Dave Thomas said it smelled like Charvey Pence and Dave Wiesenfeld said "I donna care." Other guys said it smelled like chicken, ham spreadables, or a Magic Marker.
Then we got to shoot the .306. It had a lot of kick and hurt quite a bit if you didn’t press the rifle against your shoulder very tightly. We used Dave Thomas’ shirt for a target again and blew a few more holes in it. Adam Palmara sent it flying. I hit it twice.
Mr. Longo told us about a guy who had come to Philmont several years ago and entered a "tough-man contest" at Cyprus Hill, representing his crew. He said, "I’m so tough, I can eat horse shit." To call his bluff, a staff member ran and got a bucket of horse shit and said, "Okay, prove it." Well, the guy ate a whole turd in front of everyone. How’s that for nasty?
Either Blake or Nathan got the idea that we should get up early to see the sunrise. Blake stuck his head out of the tent at 4:00 AM, but it was cloudy. Nathan set his watch for 5:30 and when it went off the sky was clear. They sprang from their tent and woke up the rest of us and we all made it up to the ridgeline two minutes before the sun came up. It was spectacular. I don’t think I will ever see a better sunrise.
Our hike to Cimmeroncito took two hours, which was great for a five mile trip. We were able to make the 10:00 o’clock rock climbing program instead of the one at noon.
Rock climbing was really very easy. The instructors gave us pointers and safety tips. After we scaled a fifty foot rock wall, we rappelled down the other side. Quick and easy.
Food for lunch was at Ute Gulch, 2.5 miles away. We needed to send four people for it, but no one was forced to go. Blake, Nathan, and both Daves volunteered. I think we’re finally getting in shape for the mountains and the altitude.
I took a shower while they were gone. The water here is warmed by a wood-burning stove. It tastes almost like medicine.
I was sitting in my tent when the hiking group got back. They had found some pieces of food Adam had left behind that had been partially eaten by mini-bears (which is what we call the chipmunks and other little critters that know hikers carry food with them). Mr. Longo got very upset when he heard about this. We’re all very careful with food at night, especially when there are supposed to be real bears in the vicinity. I recall Mr. Longo saying while we were still in New Jersey, "Don’t be afraid of the bear coming into our campsite. Just be afraid of me when I find out about it."
The whole crew went to play volleyball and other games after dinner at a game center. Several other crews where there, so we got some tournaments going. We played volleyball till it got too dark to continue.
Mr. Longo told us a story about a guy who saw a mountain lion here in Philmont. A nice day that ended very well. Gotta love the showers.
We hiked to Window Rock today, a place our advisors had said has the best view of Philmont, and they were right. I’ve never seen a more colossal view of anything. Photographs of individuals and the crew were taken, from all angles and using all ideas. We spent about two hours of free time there, climbing as high as we possibly could to get the best view. Tim Lingelbach led us in a little interfaith service afterwards to commemorate the moment and we sang the Philmont Hymn whie looking out from Window Rock.
Other crews were there too, and some of us started talking with them. Dave Thomas and I got into a conversation with a crew from Texas, and we briefly talked to a crew from Tennessee.
We started on the trail again with me on point. I like being point man. You can set the pace and can see where you’re going instead of looking at someone else’s backpack. We passed a sister crew that warned us about a rattlesnake about 100 yards ahead. Mr. Longo and Mr. Goldsmith went ahead of me after that, but we never saw that snake.
When we got to our destination, Clark’s Fork, we got everything set up and headed to a program about branding. We could brand either a "Crazy S" (a backwards S) or a "TH," both of which were symbols for Philmont’s livestock, cattle, and horses. Guys branded just about anything they could get their hands on. I branded my boots and was luckier than some guys with my cap. If you didn’t time it right it would melt all the way through and burn the brim. Our advisors branded their walking sticks.
We had a chuck wagon dinner: Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I was selected as cook and had two huge pots to fill up and heat. It was very filling, and I liked it despite what the other guys said.
The camp put on skits promptly afterwards. Typical ones with original songs, quite a bit of attempted comedy. We headed back to camp afterwards.
Because of the bears, we put every possible smellable into the bear bag, including all water bottles and various pieces of clothing.
We broke camp very quickly this morning and everyone got ready to go horseback riding. After we got instructions and proper equipment we were each given horses and told their names. The guides told us that they would call out the horse’s name when they wanted to yell at you. My horse was named "Quarvo."
Dave Thomas took pictures of most of our crew on horseback. Then we started the trail. It wasn’t what I expected. I wanted to see some scenery and go at a gallop, but neither happened. It was boring terrain compared to what we’ve seen in the past few days and we were riding at a walk. I started to fall asleep but didn’t because I was afraid I’d fall off. We then returned our horses and prepared for another day on the trail.
We arrived at Tooth Ridge in the afternoon on foot.
Our last day on the trail.
In the morning, we hiked up to the Tooth of Time. The Tooth is a lot of giant rocks piled on top of one another and not as impressive up close as it is from base camp. But the view from there is almost as good as the view from Window Rock. Maybe it’s better, because you can see really far in every direction. Crew shots and personal photos were taken.
We hiked back down to our packs and started the five miles to base camp. It was all downhill, but it seemed to take forever. It was very, very dry coming down. Dave Thomas dumped water all over me and I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be wet five minutes later.
We are in base camp now. Even though I enjoyed this week, the 70 miles of hiking really made me tired and thin. As the guys dropped their packs and began turning in equipment, Paul Greenleaf and I decided to sneak off. We ran for the snack bar and bought whatever was sweet.
Mr. Longo chewed us out when we got back, but it was worth it.
We were free for the rest of the day except for campfire at the end. Guys spent it loitering around and eating. Everyone’s been in the trading post for souvenirs.
The campfire was really good. Awards and commemorations were given out. Then we got to sing some songs and watch some skits. Not bad.
We bid farewell to Philmont. It seemed that we had been there a long time, but I wish I could stay longer. We loaded onto buses and were gone.
We stopped at a pizza place for lunch, and the owners had a good day when 110 of us came through the door. My crew devoured seven giant pizzas. Other crews ate more. It was pretty good pizza, and we would have eaten bad pizza today.
We’re on the road again and most the guys have fallen asleep or are listening to music. But falling asleep is dangerous on this bus. Signs are posted on every individual’s head or back.
Next stop, New Jersey.