Autumn Adventure Itinerary

If I remember correctly, you’ll be coming from somewhere in Missouri?
Your Ranger may suggest a less ambitious route based on your home altitude, if nothing else.

Day 1 – Zastrow TR to Carson Meadows
This will kick your butt. Easy hiking until you hit Old Abreu. Some downhill from the TA to Zastrow. Flat (relatively) from Zastrow to Old Abreu. About a 400 foot up to Carson Meadows. It will seem like forever. You’ll be sucking wind all the way up. I know I was and we were near the end of our trek. (Of course I’m old, but the kids complained a bit too.)

Day 2 – Carson Meadows to Fish Camp
More up from Carson Meadows and then contour walking (not big ups and downs) to Fish Camp. I’ve never done that trail, can’t tell what’s there just from the map.

Day 3 – Fish Camp to Beaubien
More up right out of Fish Camp, about 800 feet (plus or minus), then down and more contour walking.

Day 4 – Beaubien to Crater Lake
If there was a way to do Trail peak as a side hike, I’d do it. Based on your itinerary, there’s no way. We did Beaubien to Carson Meadows in a day – a very long day. You’ll backtrack a bit in the valley and then up Trail Peak – it’s about 1,000 up once you start climbing. The trail is fairly good. After the wreck and the peak (not many views on the peak) you’ll be going down a bit steeper and straighter. The “trail” is rocky. Be very careful. It’s mostly downhill to Crater Lake.

Day 5 – Crater Lake to Tooth Ridge
There are two ways to Tooth Ridge Camp from Crater Lake. A – via Miners Park, NF Urraca, and Shaefers Pass, and B – via Lovers Leap, and Stockade Ridge Camp.

Either will be a long day.
A – Crater Lake to Miners is mostly downhill. Miners to NF Urraca is uphill then down (not a bad section). NF Urraca to Shaefers is all up with switchbacks. It seems like forever. The last segment, Shaefers Pass to Tooth Ridge is some up with a rocky trail past the Tooth to Tooth Ridge Camp (a dry camp). You’ll need to bring water from NF Urraca (last available water).
B – Crater Lake to Lovers Leap is mostly downhill. Lovers Leap to Stockade Ridge (dry camp?) isn’t bad either. The “trail” up to Tooth Ridge is more like a drainage than a trail. Our other crew did it as a sidehike and they didn’t like it very much.

Day 6 – Tooth Ridge to Base Camp
Assuming you summit the Tooth in the morning, you could be back at Base by noon. That part is also known, by our crews, as the never-ending trail. It switchbacks all over the ridge on the way down. You’ll think your near Base but then the trail will take you way over to the other side of the ridge where you’ll get a great view of the North country. It’s an easy hike but you’ll soon want a more direct route.

Enjoy your “Safety Trek”, you’ll have a blast! You’ll also be happy for a rest…

Ed,

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, from the St. Louis area. We’ve all been getting in shape, even the skinny ones, but we realize there’s nothing to prepare you for hiking at altitude except hiking at altitude. :-) We have humidity here but no altitude. My house sits a little over 500 feet above sea level and we are in the highest point in the subdivision.

I’ve looked at the maps a lot and your descriptions line up with what I saw on the south country map so at least I can still read a topo map. ;-) I looked at the trail up from Stockade and it didn’t look good even on the topo map. We’ve had a young man from our troop that’s been on staff at Philmont the past two seasons and was a ranger this year. His description of the that trail was pretty much spot on with yours. We’ll see what the ranger recommends when they get eyeballs on us. :-) I guess the good thing about an autumn adventure you might be able to call an audible if you need/want without causing too much trouble. I think they will probably saddle us with all of our food, 4 2/3 days worth, so we shouldn’t have to worry about changing a food pickup.

We are looking forward to it. If we are tired after the trip that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing in my book. We are only driving about three hours that day and stopping for the evening. I know we’ll be wishing for a regular bed and restful sleep if nothing else. :-)

Jamie.

Do let us know how it all went!

Have a great trek!

We had a great autumn adventure. We showed up Sunday afternoon after a four hour drive from Liberal, KS. Should have left earlier but it worked out OK. Will know if we ever do it again. We had a slight change in itinerary. We started out at Old Abreau instead of Carson Meadows. We were able to get dropped off at the Abrea turnaround instead of Zastrow. They don’t use the Abrea turnaround for normal treks evidently but got us closer for the first day’s short hike since we got gone later than planned. The 2nd day, which would really be a normal trek’s first day, was our biggest mileage day and a fairly tough hike. We left Old Abreau for Fish Camp. We had a cooked breakfast the first morning. Not the best thing for the start of a long day on the trail at Philmont. We ate in town on Sunday and took our guide/ranger with us. No one was hungry for the spaghetti the first night at Old Abreau so she thought we needed to cook that for lunch. Sounded OK the night before. However, we had to find a trail camp along the way so we could sump our dishes. The only camp along the way to Fish Camp was Crags. If you’ve never been there it’s about a half mile to 3/4 of a mile straight down with six switchbacks – we counted them. :-) Got to fish camp in time to setup camp and cook our third meal of the day. Lots of cooking and cleaning that day due to three cooked meals but it worked out OK. The wind was blowing around 30 mph according to the weather report our ranger got on her radio. It stayed that way until we got our tents up and the dining fly then it died down. Weird weather out there. There were a couple of adults who had some issues on our long day. It was about 8-9 miles according to Philsearch.org and the maps using my map wheel. Our ranger said six. We all called bull on that one. :-)

The next day was easier – Fish Camp to Beaubien via Phillips Junction. We got into PJ just as the rain started in earnest. We had some rain from the night before also, not much but enough to make tents wet. The sun came out and we were able to hang things up on the PJ staff cabin’s porch. We went for a side hike to Porcupine Camp while our stuff dried and then on to Beaubien. Nice camp – really big. Our ranger picked about the furthest campsite from the cabins. :-) She said the camp director recommended camping in the meadow. Nice view but had to hike from there past the staff cabin on our way out. Passed some really nice campsites up the hill from the cabin. Oh well. The horses got really curious once we showed up in the field. Had to shoo them away.

The next day was from Beaubien to Crater Lake over Trail Peak. One of our guys works for Boeing and wanted to see the B-24 bomber wreckage. Pretty impressive how far the wreckage is scattered over the mountain. Sobering too. Had lunch on top of Trail Peak. Long climb up but folks did better that day. Went slower and were a bit more acclimated. The climb down the backside of Trail Peak should have a special name. Not sure what but it’s no fun to hike. We all agreed that was our thorn for the entire trip. We found out that was done by bulldozer so crews could get up to the wreckage back in 1942. Makes sense because only a sadistic trail builder would build a loose rock trail straight up a mountain. Hopefully one of these years they’ll put in a real trail with switch backs. I don’t ever want to hike the backside of trail peak up or down. Really bad trail. Our ranger had arranged for commissary (fresh) food to be delivered at Crater Lake. She had butter, packaged chicken, ramen noodles, peanut butter, eggs, tortillas, sausage, peppers and onions delivered. She made some sort of thai chicken peanut butter noodle thing that night. It was delicious! We had breakfast burritos the next morning.  Eating well for those two meals!

We had a decision to make at Crater Lake. We had originally planned to go up to Shaefers Pass and over to Tooth Ridge campsite and walk into camp Friday. However, some of our adults weren’t in as good of physical shape as they thought they were. We decided the night before to pull an audible and just hike to Lover’s Leap camp and get taken out from Lover’s Leap turnaround. That worked out well. Less mileage than we had planned but we weren’t trying to do a ton in the first place. Had a nice leisurely morning packing up at Crater Lake and short walk to LL. Took a side hike down below LL and got some good pics. We hiked out the next morning over LL to the turnaround. We had a 9:00 pickup so we got up at 5:30 to break camp and get on the trail right after first light and ate breakfast at the turnaround. We had time to go out on Lover’s Leap and take pictures. Neat place. We got in early enough to hit the showers, tour Villa Philmonte, grab lunch at the St. James and make the requisite trip to the Tooth of Time Traders before heading back out to Liberal, KS to stay for the night.

Overall a great trip and I highly recommend it for Philmont rookies if you can swing it before going out with the scouts on a normal trek. We only have one adult who’s been to Philmont as an adult. We have a couple that went as a youth but that was decades ago. It was great for us just to get first hand experience with all the different things you do the Philmont way vs. a regular backpacking trip like hanging bear bags, sumping, etc. Got to try out a different cooking method – two four qt pots and two six qt for cooking with a full crew. Allows some flexibility in the cooking plus we don’t have to deal with the huge 8 qt pot from Philmont that probably won’t fit in any of the Scout’s backpacks. We also tried some amsteel rope for our oops bag. Failed on that one. It’s too flimsy to deal with every day. It gets tied in knots VERY easily if you don’t wind it up and tie it each time. It’s also hard to pull with much weight on it. Had to use sticks to keep from burning our hands. Decided to leave that at home and just go with the Philmont supplied ropes for the trek next summer. Would save some space and weight but not worth the hassle. One thing very different in the autumn is they have the water turned off in most, if not all, of the staff camps. It was a bit of a challenge getting water some places. We were faced with getting water out of the pond at Crater Lake or the small stream that runs past the staff tent area. We chose the stream. The water was pretty cloudy but at least it wasn’t out of the stagnate pond. :-)

Can’t wait for June for our trek!

Forgot to mention they’ve changed the maps around. I think that happened this year but not 100% sure. I purchased maps last year before the season started and they have a 2014 revised date on them I believe. They are normal topo maps and there were three – South, Central and Valle. For 2016 they’ve been consolidated into two maps that contain everything. South and then the rest. They also improved them by making them a shaded relief topo map instead of straight topo. In my opinion, that makes them MUCH easier to read. I didn’t purchase new maps in the Tooth of Time Traders like some of our crew did. I only noticed the changes when we got on the trail. Then I had map envy all week. :-) They also changed the scale to 1:31680. My old maps are 1:24000. I assume they did that so they could get them down to two maps instead of three. That should make things easier to manage map wise for those going north into the Valle.

” It was about 8-9 miles according to Philsearch.org and the maps using my map wheel. Our ranger said six. We all called bull on that one. :-)”

That’s RANGER miles. We mere morals measure a bit differently.

@Jamie,
Great trip report. Thanks for sharing.

So the Ranger was with you the whole trip?

Cheers.

That’s the procedure for Autumn Adventure. All the backcountry staff are gone once the summer program is over, so the ranger is the emergency contact.

Bruce – yes, exactly what Ed said. The ranger contacted me about 3 days or so prior to our trip to discuss things like what we wanted to do/see and we talked about an itinerary. She mentioned we could do some fishing but we decided not to mess with it. She had a radio and would check in every evening after we go to camp and got setup. She also received a weather report at 6:00. They just gave it for a few camps. She told us we were the only ones out on a trek that week so I’m not sure how they chose the camps they were reporting on. They had eight rangers on staff for the autumn. I think they were all going to be out around the first week of October during their peak time.

Jamie.

Glad you had a good time!

Wonderful report.  I am working on a trip with all new to Philmont scouts and advisors.  Can you give me  some idea of the price for this autumn trek?

– ATG

ATG – it’s $50/day per person. Includes Philfood and crew gear just like a summer trek. We only took Philmont bear bags/ropes. We were trying out our crew gear.

Jamie.

You do have to provide your own transportation to Philmont.

Good point Ed. We drove. It’s about 13.5 hours from where we live in the St. Louis area. We split the trip in two – drove about 10 hours on Saturday before we started then drove the rest of the way Sunday and started hiking that afternoon. Reverse the process on the way back. Driving four hours after being on the trial all week was about all I wanted to do. When it got dark my body was telling me it was time for bed. :-)