[Philmont]: Trek 11

Our itinerary has been recapped a couple of times already, but if you want
more details, please contact me. A couple of fast notes:

I can't plug top-notch raingear (and pack covers) enough. It rained on us
every day, usually for AT least an hour. We had hail twice. We went 2
days without seeing the sun. We carried damp everything for most of the
trek. We realized we were somewhat spoiled in 2002 in that we only had a
couple of days of rain. Our sister crew (from Abilene, TX), had some REAL
bad raingear on some of their crew. Saw a kid from LA wearing trash sacks
for raingear. Heard several stories at Advisor's coffee about cold, wet
participants and hypothermia. Many crews stopped on the trail after the
rain/hail and heated water to help them heat up. One group ran out of
white gas and borrowed from us to make it to commissary the next day. My
suggestion is for each crew member to stand in the shower in their raingear
and make sure they stay completely dry. I can tell you that the two crew
members who stayed the driest in our trek were using Marmot pre-cip and
pre-cip plus jackets. Not sure about the durability of these jackets, but
they were relatively inexpensive ($100 range), light (under a pound) and
certainly waterproof.

Our favorite staff members were at Apache Springs. Our favorite program
camps were Apache Springs and Cypher's Mine. The youth liked the stomp and
LOVED the singing at Clark's Fork.

We rarely used our Polar Pure, as most camps had purified water. The only
opportunities to shower were on Day 1 and Day 9. Both days were fairly
cool, so we only had 1 person take 1 shower over the entire trek.

I have to echo the concern about cracker-mania being replaced by
gorp-mania. The swap boxes were full of gorp and green beans. Pilot
bisquits were on overload as well. While we tolerated them the first
couple of times, I think we ended up having them 5 or 6 times during the
trek. Our crew decided that they could substitute simple beef or turkey
jerky for the beef/pepperoni/turkey sticks (which were also an overload
item).

Bears were prevalent (in and around our camp at least 3 of the 10 nights)
and the ranger really pounded the mountain lion thing. To the point of
making a few of our youth a bit paranoid.

My plug for Philmont staff. They were still short-handed when we were down
there. If you have good, qualified youth, encourage them to apply next
year. Our ranger told us that if you were an Eagle scout and had been on a
trek, you could have your pick of positions. By and large, we had very
good staff, although we had some "personality deficit disorder" staff as
well.

All in all, an excellent trek, in spite of all the weather thrown at us.

YIS.

Mike Conkey
2004 Advisor, 716D
2002 Advisor, 719A
Associate Advisor, Crew 526, Denver Area Council

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Received on Mon Aug 2 21:03:40 2004