Lottery Strategy

[Brad P]

Our troop has asked me to be the adult leader for high adventure trips. We’re doing Sea Base next year (I hope my motion sickness won’t be too bad) and we’re either doing Philmont or Northern Tier in 2019.

I’m going to enter the Philmont lottery next week. We’re going to do a 12 day trek since the 7 day ones can be tough to get.

How do you decide which one to pick? It looks like you can pick a date, but do you also pick a specific trek?

I suspect our crew would have a number of 15 year olds. We’ve recently lost some of our older scouts.

[Brad P]

Also, is the lottery like buying concert tickets where you need to be in there as soon as it opens and be quick or do they take all entries and later pick the “winners”?

[Bob Shuff]

We tried for 5 years to get a 7 day trek without success.  A few months ago, seeing my 15 year olds chances slip away I took a shot and found some 12 day slots for late July 2018.  After gauging interest we ended up takiing 2 (12) day crew slots that had opened up mid July.

This wasn’t through the lottery, and I’m no expert, but I’ll give you my advice.  Request as many crews as you think you can staff and fill.  Minimum is 7 participants of which 2 must be adults.  Max is 12 participants with at most 4 adults.

We did have this choice, but I hear many like late June or early July to finish before monsoon season.  If you don’t get a slot, keep checking.  We got ours in August of this year, many months after the lottery.

.pay the Initial and subsequent deposits for the minimum crew size.  You can add more later.

 

[Brad P]

I went to weather.com and saw that the later in the summer, the more rain you get. Our school system doesn’t let out until the third week of June, but I’ve told our troop leaders that we should shoot for as early in the summer as possible.

[TAG in AZ]

You don’t need to pick an itinerary until the April before you go to Philmont. The treks book will come out in early March. Once you have the treks book, you can lead your crew through a selection process to identify their top choices. At your assigned date and time, you enter the itinerary choices into the Philmont website.
There are many different ways to choose which itinerary you are interested it. Several of them are discussed at length in this forum. We talked with the crew about their interests (in our case – shooting), length and some of the other aspects of an itinerary — things like days between food pick, number of dry camps, number of trail camps vs staffed camps, etc.

[Brad P]

Thanks. When the lottery opens next week, do I need to be in there at 9am on the dot like buying concert tickets or do they take all entries over a period of time and later randomly pick winners?

[Aubrey W. Bogard]

Brad,

You have between 25 Oct and 15 Nov 2017 to register for the 2019 lottery.  You will need to choose a date when you register, and, if successful, you will have until spring 2019 to work on your priority list for treks.

http://philmontscoutranch.org/trek.aspx

My lesson learned is that if a lottery trek or treks are won, ensure that you have adult advisor commitments (3+ per crew) before financially committing the unit via deposits.  Also, as stated above, when committing financially, pay deposits for the minimum crew size, and Philmont will allow you to add additional crew members at the last moment.  That way, if crew members drop out prior to the trek, your unit is not financially obligated to pay for unused slots in the crew.  Best of luck in your quest.

[Brad P]

Thank you, Aubrey. That gives us a chance to work with the scouts on dates. I think we might try for 2 crews in late June. One crew could try for easier treks and the other more challenging or different activities.

Our troop recently lost several older scouts. Looking at our roster, most of the ones going will be 14 – 15. I mentally removed several who, unless they change a lot over the next 2 years, would be unlikely to be physically capable of this trek.

That leads to another question. What happens if a crew has 2 adult leaders and a scout has to quit due to injury/illness? I’ve read that the infirm can go to a base camp, but does the crew have to send an adult, too? Likewise, what if one of those adults is injured?

[Aubrey W. Bogard]

We met another Crew in the backcountry who had one of their two adults not be able to participate, so Philmont actually sent an adult staffer with them during the entire trek to allow two-deep leadership.  The staff is awesome and equipped to help out for almost any scenario.

[Steve G]

Brad — To answer your previous question — Yes, it’s like camping out for concert tickets — you should be logged into the Trek Selection Site ready to hit “Enter” with your crew’s top choices right when the lottery site opens (you will ample notice before registration opens and you and your crew will have plenty of time to study the trek book and make your picks for top itineraries).  When I registered our crew for our 2016 trek we got instant feedback on our itinerary (we got our second choice which was perfect for us!).

You will read in your trek book that Philmont will not provide a staffer to accompany your crew if you lose adult(s) (adult gets sick or has to accompany a sick or injured Scout).  Great to hear from Aubrey that Philmont helped out a crew in that situation — but best to have 3x adults if you can manage it.

[Brad P]

The specific trek choice is like buying concert tickets, but registering next week for a date is not. Is that correct?

Two crews with 6 adults will be a challenge for a troop of our size. Like many organizations, it’s been tough to get volunteers. We also lost some “middle age scouts’ as I sometimes call them (13-15 years old).

I appreciate the advice that I can pass along to the rest of the troop. We’ll have to get a survey of our eligible scouts to see who’s interested. We can always fall back on putting out available slots to the other troops in the district.

[Steve G]

Speaking of weather — our (mostly) North Country trek was 03-14 July and we had only two very quick storms with lots of wind and minimal rain.  I never needed my rain gear, but I appreciated having it on Baldy.  The crews who were out on the trail the week(s) before us got soaked every day.

I will also say I was amazed how quickly the weather turned on Baldy — the staff isn’t kidding when they get off the summit by noon.  We started down around 1130 and by the time we got down to Copper Ridge you could see the peak getting walloped with strong winds and the storm clouds were bearing down on the summit (while Copper Ridge was all beautiful sunshine).

Have a great time at Philmont — sounds like you are taking the right approach and getting organized early.  You have lots of time to build a solid crew and train!

[ed dzierzak]

Lottery next week (register for a date) has a long window. It doesn’t matter if you regester on day one or day last.

Itinerary selection is like concert tickets – get it in ASAP after the opening.

The Philmont Advisor’s Guide was always a great source of info. http://www.bacphilmont.org/pag.html

[Brad P]

Perfect!  I’m ready to go.  :)

[Gerry H]

This might be salting the wound, but our troop got three 12 person, 12 day crews last fall’s lottery for 2018. One is for our Venture crew. The anecdotes I have heard is that after Bechtel Summit opened it relieved some of the pressure on Philmont.

This was apparently our first time applying on our own and not going with the council contingent. Maybe claiming full crews, on 12 day treks, bumped us up the ladder. Maybe three crews at once helped? I don’t know all the dates we asked for, but I know we got mid July, and the reservation POC seemed pleased.

I can try and ask him if you want more details. In hind-sight I think we should have gone the 7 person minimums, and added to them later. I do know we had to scramble and get a couple of friends outside the troop to fill a couple of our reserved slots.

The BAC Advisors Guide is definitely worth buying.

[Brad P]

I did buy the guide and went through it. Good info.

This morning, I went through the process of registration but stopped at the point of selecting dates. I need some of the other leaders to agree on the dates I think should be our priority. I like the idea of arriving a day early to get acclimated and I also think flying out on Saturday or Sunday might be less stressful. So, I suggested trek start dates on Sunday and Monday.

If you look on their site, there are a bunch of available 12 day treks for 2018, so I think as long as you go for a 12 day and not a 7 day trek, you should be OK. Giving plenty of dates probably helps, too.

Our school system lets out later in June and I’m thinking we shouldn’t go over the Independence Day holiday as that could affect family vacations.

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