2019 Philmont Post Trip

Philip

Are you monitoring Philmont’s facebook page?

Some folks are posting brief highlights on the philmont.io group
To learn more about the [email protected] group, please visit https://groups.io/g/philmont 

I am not seeing any report as detailed as your questions though.

Bruce

We arrived back July the 3rd. The tags are orange this year. The bugs were not really bad at all… But we were on Trek 12 so I can’t really speak for your areas. There were plenty of snow sections coving parts of the trails on top of Baldy but it was really more of a refreshing change than anything else.

Chris,

7 liters of water each, up from Clarks Fork to Shaefers Pass. Wow, that must have been fun.

It doesn’t sound as through you had a great experience, shithole camps, humping 7 liters of water up to Shaefers, running out of fuel, what other fun things???

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine

Glad you had a good time and great trek despite some difficulties. Like some say, “A bad day at Philmont is still better than a good day in the world.”

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine

John said, “Parents with kids arent allowed to share tent at Basecamp or on the trail while the ranger was with us.”

That is interesting. How do they deal with odd numbers of Scout or adults? Philmont used to discourage solo tents because of “bear safety”.

Our troop discourages dads tenting with their sons too so the Scouts can better assert and develop his independence and growth, bound and work together with his peers without parental influence (hoovering). We don’t allow dads to even direct or correct their sons, other adults intervene to allow the Scouts do that (police their own).

But, at Philmont in the past we have allowed a dad to tent with his son only because there was an odd number of Scouts and adults. Having one 2-man was better than two solo tents because of lack of descent tent sites in most camps and generally, few solo tents are lighter than half of a 2-man tent. We have carried a 3-man tent rather than have a solo tent.

We may not have that option in the future, interesting!

Thanks for sharing your experience.

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine

Trek 32 in early July with all older (15-17), experienced boys from Ohio.

1.  Very proud of our boys together standing up to a bully.  Too bad it was the lead Advisor.
2.  Boys could have done Philmont with no adults. We saw more than a few crews far less prepared than us (and we totally wasted our pre-season).  We adults mostly stayed away from the youth — let them do all the camp chores, sleep in, get lost cross-country, stay 3x long for some programs & skip others.. as it should be.
3. Quite crowded this year.
4. Boys decided to sleep 3 per Philmont tent to reduce total weight by 12#.
5.   “78 miles” was rated strenuous but the boys could have easily done 100 miles.  Some of us adults, maybe not.

Just back from trek 12.  No dry camps and finished with a climb of Mt. Baldy.

This was the first trek for all of us, but one of our adults, a 21 year old who went through our troop to Eagle did NAYLE training there.  We had a young crew of 14 and 15 year olds.  Two just turned 14 prior to the trek.

This was the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done.  I’m very glad I’ve been hitting the gym several times per week for the past few years.  I saw guys there who clearly did not meet the height/weight requirements.  I saw a few on trail who were slowing their crews down.

The bulk of gear/food was a bigger issue than weight. We began with our longest food haul of 4 days.  I had to show our crew how to mash their mashable gear to make more room.

The crew like the COPE course, spar pole climbing, horseback riding and most of all, summiting Baldy.

My youngest and smallest in the crew went from collapsing on the trail from New Dean to Ponil and wanting to quit to 2 days later asking about being a ranger.  That change was cool.

Speaking of rangers, our ranger Emily was ranger of the week for good reason.  She was awesome.  I have no doubt she will be a success in life.  I gave her a great review.  She brought a pound cake for us and iced it on trail.

The root beer at Ponil was a big morale booster.  Glad we went through there twice.  The only time we got lost was trying to find our campsite at Ponil, though.

At New Dean, we had campsite 3.  When we arrived, there were 3 horses in our site.  Just staring at us. We stayed.  One started coming a little close to our lunch, but otherwise they left us alone.  They’d go out in the fields together to eat and then come back.  We named them Moe, Larry and Curly.  That was interesting for a trail camp.

Horse Canyon was a beautiful campsite on top of a mountain with a great view of Baldy.  We really liked that one.

Baldy Town was very interesting.  I knew that climbing to the top was a challenge, but until you experience it, there’s no way to truly know.  That last steep part was really hard.  The crazy thing was going from calm air to taking the last step up to the top and getting hit by 50? mph wind and wind chill that felt like it was in the 20s.  The view was worth it.

Our crew leader has 3 younger brothers.  He took 3 small rocks from the peak that his brothers will have to take back up. Pretty cool idea.

In our regular activities, we adults cook for ourselves and we eat well.  It was nice having the crew do all the work and we just showed up to eat.  They weren’t perfect, of course and mornings took longer than ideal, but for a young crew, they really took on the challenge.  I’m so proud of them.

I appreciate all the advice from here.  One thing that kept coming up was how tight the camping sites were.  We had 6 scouts and 3 adults, so 5 tents.  I took a 1 person tent as the solo adult, but could have easily fit a 2 person tent in every spot I chose.  That’s what I’d do again.

Six quart pots worked just fine.  I’m glad we took our own. If we had more experience, I’d have tried the 1 pot method.  Maybe next time.  I will suggest this to Philmont as it meets all of their requirements (patrol method, etc.), reduces bulk/weight and by cleaning with cold water (which we did), you use less fuel.  Thrifty and good for the environment.

We flew into Denver a day early.  We spent time at Garden of the Gods and the Air Force Academy.  I rented a 15 passenger van.  They tried to give me a 12 passenger van, but with no storage behind the last row, you need a 15 passenger van for 9 people with luggage.

We stayed at a hotel in Colorado City, CO and drove to Philmont the next morning.  I might find a place even further south next time.

Heading back, we had a red eye home. We had time to check out the Red Rocks Amphitheater.  What an amazing venue.  Wish I could have stayed a day to see Joe Bonamassa.  We drove around Denver and ate at this great, cheap Mexican hole in the wall restaurant El Taco de Mexico. Definitely recommend it.

Having the van let us pick and chose on our own schedule.  I like that.  We also stored stuff in it.

The crew wants to go back!  Looks like we’ll plan for 2021.

Great report and thanks for sharing. I hope we helped make your adventure great.

If you want more specific information on our One Pot Cooking methods, please email me.

Definitely.  Thank you!  I’m sure I’ll ask when the time comes.