Saw this today on FB and Philmont’s site

[Nate Ward]

http://www.philmontscoutranch.org/~/link.aspx?_id=829043D2C6F54040B330C6D8D1FE4C6B&_z=z

This is bad…this poor family…thoughts and prayers for them…I will be showing this to my Troop

[Nate Ward]

Here's another write up on it: http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3837715.shtml#.VY_jKJXbLIX

[Mark Rash]

My oldest son is currently on a Rayado trek at Philmont. This incident happened at Indian Writings. The campsite was next to a small creek.

Be vigilant in your campsite selection and stay away from flash flood dangers. The 15 day forecast calls for rain almost every day.

I leave for my trek with my youngest son on July 10th. Pray for us as I will be praying for all scouts and scouters at Philmont.

[Kevin Buggie]

Very sad news. Thoughts and prayers to his family and troop.

[Jose Beltran]

My prayers and thoughts to his family and everyone affected by this tragedy.

[Mark Rash]

There was substantial damage to other parts of the ranch… specifically Ponil. All but the main cabin were damaged. The flooding started at 2 in the morning of Saturday, June 27.

Multiple crews and staff lost gear in the flooding, in addition to the crew with the fatality.

It's my understanding that some crews are being rerouted. Rains will continue almost everyday, so let's hope everyone stays safe.

[Jamie Barnes]

Mark said "Be vigilant in your campsite selection and stay away from flash flood dangers. The 15 day forecast calls for rain almost every day."

With Philmont deciding the trek route is there really anything that can be done if you suspect your campsite area is prone to flash flooding? I suppose any area that's in a canyon type of a topography would be susceptible to flash flooding given enough rain upstream. Recently in the Great Smoky Mountains NP there was a wall of water that came downstream from areas that had severe rainfall earlier in the day. I believe it was in the Cosby area but can't remember. As I recall fortunately no one was injured in that incident but several hikers/campers were stranded for several hours. The area that had the flash flood in the GSMNP really hadn't had that much rain.

The Philmont tragedy occurred in the middle of the night. Were there any additional precautions that could have been taken? I'm ABSOLUTELY NOT trying to say the adult advisers or Philmont staff could have done anything to prevent this tragedy. I've also never been to Philmont but our troop has plans to apply for a trek for 2017. Just trying to learn from a tragedy.

Jamie.

[Shane Watts]

Intensely sad, both for the life lost and those lives that will never be the same.

I've not yet been to Philmont (heading there in three weeks), but being scoutmaster of an avid backpacking troop from the Washington Cascades, I have more "learned it the hard way" experience than I'd like backpacking and camping in the rain. It requires a certain skill set–and a certain mind set–that if one does't have could lead to trouble.

I'm hoping that "rain every day" means part of every day and the other parts are alpine desert dry. But I won't count on that. If it rains hard every day with few-to-no windows to dry gear, that's tough, miserable and demoralizing. It's critical to remain upbeat and positive to keep the boys' morale from circling the drain. If there are regular breaks in the rain, a crew really must be disciplined and use that time to air-out wet gear and clothing before the next system moves in. I imagine that could mean missing out on program time, which would be very disappointing.

As for the campsites, I'm counting on Philmont to have placed them well (because I don't get to choose). But obviously a lot of things can happen with enough water. Given Mark's report of structural damage to buildings, this must have been an unusually large storm.

[M B]

Really sad. We have a crew just finishing there.

Sounds like an unprecedented event for that area. But unprecedented events do happen.

Philmont is a very safe place, because it has to be. Thats actually one of my beefs with it. It bypasses the participants need to think, and plan, and excercise caution.

When you believe someone else has done this for you, you dont do it for yourself.

[Hikin’ Jim]

Wow. That's really really awful. Poor kid. Poor crew. Poor family.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving
Hikin' Jim's Blog

[Mark Rash]

I'm quite sure the crew that had the fatality was camping exactly where they were told to camp :( It was a freak flash flood the likes of which had not been seen there since 1965. There was damage as far north as Metcalf Station in the Valle Vidal.

On my upcoming trek in July we have two campsites that are near enough to creeks that I may stay up on those nights. It weighs heavily upon me that parents are trusting me to bring their kids home.

[Michael Gunderloy]

NM State Police have released the name of the young man who was killed:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article25770799.html

Alden Brock, 13, apparently from Troop 380 in Rosemont, CA.

[Jamie Barnes]

More details about what happened in the flash flood tragedy. Evidently their Philmont ranger was still with them, was swept away and was one of the four in earlier reports. With the size of the wall of water that was reported it's a wonder more people weren't injured/killed. Kudos to the crew for deciding to continue with their trek and to all the Philmont staff. Story here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article25933819.html

[Jamie Barnes]

In case you are interested here's a link to a gofundme site for the family. I have no connection with them or their troop at all. The names check out based on the story posted earlier. Looks legitimate but check for yourself. Account is for travel and funeral expenses. http://www.gofundme.com/y52amw

[John Myers]

I really can't imagine the loss of a child.

Our troop was there at the time and ran across this crew several times after the event. Our Scoutmaster had some long discussions with the mom of one of the other 3 survivors who were washed downstream and obviously it was an extremely difficult time for everyone involved.

Our thoughts and prayers for the family.

[Ryan Weaverling]

I have to start out by saying that I haven't posted anything about our experience to date because I still wake up in the middle of the night having nightmares about what we went through. This trip became something that is beyond memorable for me and the rest of our crew.

I am the Scoutmaster and served as the lead adviser for 625-H1. Our sister crew was also from our home unit out of central Iowa, 625-H2. We had, shall we say, a rough experience for our first trip to Philmont. And it all started the day we entered the back country…

Our fist day in the back country was on 6/26 and we were dropped off at the Ponil Turnaround to start our adventure. We continued some of our ranger training in the horse pastures right there north of the turnaround. After that was done, we hit the trail and hiked up past Ponil on our way to Sioux, about a mile NW of Ponil. We got to camp, set up our fly, hung our bear bags and got our tents set up. Our ranger continued some of his training and a small storm rolled through. Once it cleared, we made dinner and decided we would have a joint campfire between us and our sister crew. We enjoyed some camaraderie, then I was ready for bed. As I was leaving the campfire ring, I asked our Ranger, "Do you think we'll get any rain tonight?" His response was one I'll never forget. He said, "I don't think it's cold enough for any significant rainfall tonight." Famous last words.

My son and I were tenting together in a TarpTent Double Rainbow. I went to bed a little after 9PM and he came to bed around 10PM and we got settled in. At around 11PM we got hit with a pretty good storm. I woke up to the thunder and lightning, some wind was whipping up some mist from under the fly that I noticed on my bald head. I monitored it for a bit, maybe a half hour, then it began to subside. My son managed to sleep through it, for the most part. I decided we were all good and hunkered down to finish out the night.

But she was just clearing her throat.

At around 3:30AM, I was woken up again by some thunder and lightning. The rain started to fall and then the winds picked up. The tent was rocking and rolling with the wind, luckily we were faced to "cut" the wind a bit with the shape of our tent. Then the rain picked up significantly, and so did the wind. This is what I will call the beginning of the peak of the storm. A gust of wind suddenly hit us and our tent was leveled. The gusts of wind that hit us for the next few minutes were sustained at 60MPH with gusts around 100MPH. With the tent flat on top of us, stakes pulled out, this tent has no chance at keeping you dry. We had a raging river flowing through our tent 3"+ deep.

I said a prayer at this point realizing that this was no regular storm and that we were completely unprepared for something of this magnitude. There is no preparation possible for this scenario. Period.

So, we I laid there next to my son, I had to yell instructions to him because of the volume of the storm. Our heads were 18" apart at most and we still had to repeat ourselves on some of our communications. I was telling him to push out the corner against me pushing out on my corner in hopes of getting the waterproof tub to raise up out of the flow of flood water and go around us instead of through us. After a couple of minutes of doing this and having some success, I got smacked on the back of the hand with a piece of hail. I thought, "Oh, great. Now it's going to hail on us?" Well, the first one stung, the next barrage that hit my hands and head (through the tent that was flat on top of us) freaking hurt! I yelled over to my son to protect his head at all cost. I covered my head up with a bent left elbow over my head. My son pulled his down sleeping bag up over his head and got some protections from there.

We had an adult sleeping by himself about 15' from our tent. At least that's where his tent started at. He was rocking a Double Rainbow, too. He was more sideways to the wind and his stakes pulled before ours did, but he began sliding off his ground cloth and landed within 5' of our tent. He was yelling at us thinking we had a medical issue even though it was just my son and I trying to coordinate keeping some of the water out.

Side-bar. I'm a grown man, scoutmaster, outdoorsman, hunter, avid Boundary Waters enthusiast with more than a dozen wilderness trips under my belt. I've weathered some pretty nasty storms while on these treks, too. I was inside the tent with my son defeated. Broken. Scared. I was going hypothermic. I looked over at my son at one point and could see his face in the flashes of lightning and thought to myself, "What have I gotten him into? If I don't bring him home safe to his mother, I might as well not come home either." And there was nothing I could do about it. We were in God's hands.

After the hail stopped and the winds calmed down a bit, I knew we had to get the stakes back in the ground to get some loft to the tent. I was soaked from head to toe and had a down sleeping bag. My rain gear bottoms were in my pack, in the bear-a-muda triangle. My son had his rain gear in the tent, so I needed him put his gear on and go out and stake the tent. It took a little bit of encouraging (coercion?) but he got ready and went out into the storm.

As soon as he popped out, the wind/rain came into the tent from the side that he exited. He had to look around a bit for the stakes and when he finally found one, the tent sprung back up like it was magic. He found a couple large rocks and set them on top of the stake. He then went over to the leader next to us and got him re-staked, but with only rocks as his stakes got sent into orbit on that first big gust.

He then went around to each of the other tents to make sure all were safe. Another tent with two leaders in it, using a 2015 Philmont/MSR Thunder Ridge, broke a pole and the tent was collapsed on top of them. The other two tents were also Philmont issued Thunder Ridge tents. Both were upright, but they were wet inside. He then checked with our ranger and his advice was to hunker down and ride it out in the tents. Then he added, "In the lightning position." For the record- the lightning position is not possible when the tent is flat on top of you…

He returned to our tent and hunkered down inside his sleeping bag with his rain gear still on. I had on my rain gear top for warmth, but I kept getting colder and colder. Just when I thought we were going to have to do something to take care of my internal body temperature, the rain subsided and we started to see a bit of light coming from the east. I got up and got my cloths from my backpack. It had been knocked over in the rain/wind and most things inside were at least a bit damp. I threw on a couple of layers and began to walk around camp, surveying the damage.

The damage in our campsite was shocking. Our sister crew lost a tree that their bear bag line was attached to, but none of their tents took any serious damage. They were, for the most part, in a little better spot for drainage than we were and they didn't get too soaked. They had left their cooking pot out and it had filled up overnight. We were estimating we got around 6" of rain. Later we would learn that it was actually 9.5".

We started hanging dry lines in camp to get our gear (sleeping bags and clothes) dried out. We put out every line we had, 450' in all, and started the process of drying out.

We got rescued by Philmont staffers at around 1:30PM the next day. Our bridge had been washed out that we had to cross to get back to Ponil to replace broken gear. It was downstream 30' and laid at a 60 degree angle up against some trees. Ponil creek, which is normally 6' wide and ankle deep swelled to well over 150' wide and 15' deep at it's peak. By now, it had subsided quite a bit and was in the 20' across and 6' deep. Working with Philmont staff, we rigged up a bear rope line to zip line the packs across the ravine. Once all the packs were across, it was time for the people to get across. We took another bear rope about 30' downstream and put an adult on either side. If someone fell into the raging torrent, they would drop the rope down and hopefully snatch them up out of the water.

We only had two people slip when trying to cross the river, but they both caught their balance on the rope and were able to continue heading over. Once all of us were over, I huddled all the boys together and had a hands-in kind of moment stating how proud I was of each and every one of them.

We retreated to Ponil and got well taken care of by the phenomenal staff there. It looked like a refuge camp with around 800-1000 campers seeking refuge and gear. The water supply was knocked out by the flooding so eventually they brought in some buffalo's (water tanks on trailers).

There was a sense of organized chaos at Ponil. They were not prepared to handle this many people. At one point they announced that they needed one adviser from each group to hike to the top of Hart's Peak to get internet service. They wanted us to "use those devices you were told not to bring on the trek" to contact people back home to let them know you were all OK. This seemed odd at the time, but it became obvious that something tragic had happened. They changed the start time for this "hike" three times then finally they cancelled it. They then started, at 4PM, sending crews to other camps to try and get us spread out a bit. They did have us connect to a pickup truck that had satellite internet and an open wifi access point thus saving us the extra hike up the mountain.

Over the course of the next couple days, we saw the destructive power of this storm. All along Ponil canyon, the canyon walls let go spewing rock slides out over the highway. Boulders the size of houses were evidence in other canyons. Trees uprooted and stripped of all their bark were everywhere. The camp director's cabin was knocked 15' off it's foundation and nicked a propane line underneath. A new washout was created at Dan Beard. The Beatty Lakes in the Valle Vidal were full of water.

We wouldn't learn of the death of Alden Brock for two days after leaving Ponil. It was a somber reminder that when you step foot into the back country, you need to be prepared for anything that mother nature may throw at you. We prayed for the family and Alden's fellow crew members regularly throughout the rest of our trip.

I realize that I've just written a book. I also realize how many things I've left out of this, too. We met some amazing people along the way. Some real life heroes that saved lives that dreadful night. The phrase, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" has new meaning to me and the rest of 625-H1 & H2.

I found a site with historical radar data and was able to screen capture it and made a short video of it. It doesn't do it the justice that it deserves, but if you care to watch it, you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SehE1MuwPxk

[Kevin Buggie]

Thanks for posting your trip report, Ryan. Glad you all were safe

[Matt Dirksen]

Ryan,

Thank you for sharing this. Our crew started out of Ponil and had our fist night up at Sioux as well – but back in July 2014. We had about a total of 15 minutes of rain on our trip, until our last night at base camp.

When I heard about what happened last month, my heart broke.

So glad you, your son, and your troop came out of it alright. Don't know if you have an opportunity to post some pics of the trip, but I would love to share some of your pics with the crew from our troop, since they clearly remember Sioux, Dan Beard, and the Valle. I think it was about 100 degrees when we were hiking past the "lakes" in the Valle.

YIS,

Matt

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