[Philmont]: RE: Pace of Backpacking

I commend the participants in this thread. This is the kind of sharing
of experience that makes this site so valuable.

Crew 506 had a widely-varying array of athletic abilities and hiking
speed capabilities in Summer 2004. (It seems like yesterday.)

I believe our experience most closely matches Don Roberts when he
observed that they had a method / madness to the first 3 in the order.
We did the exact same in that we put a moderate to slow fellow at #1, a
faster fellow at #2 and an advisor at #3 in the file. The guys
developed this methodology a year out from Philmont during a 5-day
Appalachian Trail trek. We actually found putting a peer "ramrod" right
behind the #1 man helped him go at a faster rate than he normally might
have while the adult monitored to be sure he wasn't pushed too hard.
We rotated #1 slot around so that it wasn't always the "slow" guy up
front and sometimes put the slower guy at #2 to restrain his jack-rabbit
buddy. Also got more people to play the Navi-guesser role. Again, the
adult can be near the front in the event of navi-guessing sessions or to
"suggest" a break, change of pace man, etc.

Of course, we employed the Caterpillar on most tough uphill grades which
also keeps everyone together in the setting in which it's most likely to
have a break in contact.

Philmont / Backcountry Principle #1 should be : "Everyone stays together
the whole time on the trail." We saw plenty of 2 man crews, followed a
few minutes later by a 6 man crew, then even later, by a 4-man crew.
Unsafe at any speed, my friends. Use the prep hikes to work on these
things and it will make the trail much smoother out west.

Dave Parmly
Knoxville, TN

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Received on Thu Jan 12 14:14:49 2006