From: Dr. Bob Klein (drbob@troop111.org)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 21:08:01 CDT
I believe Doug Palmer was THE man in charge of trek renovations a few
years back, so he's the one to ask.
I suspect you are reading the tea leaves too hard. It has always been
my understanding that rated trek difficulty was based pretty much just
on total mileage and total combined elevation gain and loss, with a
"fudge factor" for borderline classifications based on the number of dry
camps. But like all the other subjective issues in Scouting, this too
is a topic for endless debate.
Rich Wenneker wrote:
> I am interested in hearing people's opinions on what constitutes the
> difficulty ratings assigned to each trek in the TREKS 2002 publication.
>
> There were four crews in our contingent, 625-C. The crews selected and
> ultimately completed treks 26, 14, 12, and 13. Trek 26 (mine) is rated
> strenuous and the others are rated typical. All four return to base camp
> over the Tooth Ridge but with different day 11 camps. Two had two-day
> layovers and two did not (13 & 26). Three of the four go over Mt. Phillips
> from the west side (26, 14, and 13). The lengths were from 56 to 71 miles
> with the strenuous trek (26) being the shortest. Only one has PLANNED dry
> camps and that was 26 with 2 (Commanche Peak and Tooth Ridge.) Trek 13 has
> 5 trail camps of 10.
>
> The criteria I came up with is 1) altitude gained while porting water to a
> dry camp, 2) difficult trails (example:26 climbed the South side of Uracca
> Mesa and the 54 stream crossings from Miners Park to Black Mountain,
> possibly trails with steeper grades), and 3) longer/tougher days at the
> beginning of the trek rather than at the end. Trek 13 did most of what trek
> 26 does, except it is longer (long days over low grade changes), long days
> are at the end, but 26 has the planned dry camps.
>
> It looks like to me trek 13 might be rugged, not typical.
>
> Let me know what you think the rating system criteria is.
>
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