The Phil-list Mar_2005: Re: [Philmont]: Any sight of the '05 It

From: doug marquis <dmarquis1@comcast.net>
Date: Tue Mar 08 2005 - 19:32:25 CST

Hey, folks-- Philmont is not half-full during the summer!

Philmont saw about 21,000 campers last summer, and that's actually very
close to 100% of what the place can handle, at least under present
conditions. As others have noted, that has meant an average of about 350
arriving campers or 30-40 crews per day. Those numbers are the bottom line,
and the number of itineraries offered are simply choices available to that
maximum number of people.

The idea of capacity for a place like Philmont can be looked at from many
angles. Base camp facilities are a major factor-- How many arriving and
departing campers can we house and feed every day? Availability of program
and campsites in the backcountry, as well as staffing issues like the number
of rangers available are also issues.

It's not all base camp, though. I'm sure many of the folks on this list
have had experiences such as not being able to sign up for a certain program
like horseback riding when you're trip-planning in Logistics on your arrival
day because all of the available spots are already taken for that day, or
wondering where you're going to be able to camp when you hike into someplace
like Beaubien and there are twenty crews there already. If you happen to be
sitting around a staff cabin some evening this summer when Logistics is
giving the itinerary read out (the next day's crew loads) over the radio,
listen up-- It's highly educational!

To put it another way, if Philmont created another 35 itineraries to add to
the existing ones, there would still be only 32 staffed camps for all of
those itineraries to filter through. ("Only" 32!)

Doug Marquis
staff '84-'86, '03-'05

----- Original Message -----
From: "Perkins, Mark" <mark.perkins@intel.com>
To: "Multiple recipients of list philmont" <philmont@troop47.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 6:47 PM
Subject: RE: [Philmont]: Any sight of the '05 Itinerary Guide

So why is there such a long waitlist of crews trying to get into
Philmont, if the occupancy rate
is only near the 50% level? Does Philmont purposely only fill to the
~50% level or are crews dropping
out to that level? Seems to me that there is a long waitlist of crews
that never get a call from
Philmont to fill vacancies. Of course there are a lot of popular treks,
but if Philmont gave me a call
and told me that my chosen treks were not available, but many others
were, I would jump to the chance
at getting any trek.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-philmont@troop47.com [mailto:owner-philmont@troop47.com] On
Behalf Of Dr. Bob Klein
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 4:25 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list philmont
Subject: Re: [Philmont]: Any sight of the '05 Itinerary Guide

It is my understanding that there are only between 30 and 40 Crews per
day, so with 35 treks and 2 Crews per trek (most years), the average
"occupancy" rate is around 50 percent. Given that about 10 treks are
perpetually popular, I would suspect that there are a number of treks on

the other end of the scale that only seldom see a Crew. Certainly Trek
19 would be at the bottom of my personal list, if I were allowed to vote

on or influence my Crew's selection.

Rice Brewer wrote:
> Following the logic....
>
> Then, in that case, there were two crew spots, per day, that went
> unfilled as 100% capacity is two crews on every trek every day.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-philmont@troop47.com [mailto:owner-philmont@troop47.com]
On
> Behalf Of Brian Gannon
> Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 11:48 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list philmont
> Subject: RE: [Philmont]: Any sight of the '05 Itinerary Guide
>
>
> In the end, it doesn't matter, there is no such thing as a
> *bad* Philmont trek.
>
> While that may be true, take Trek 19 from 2004. According to the
latest
> issue of "High Country" (the Philmont Staff Association magazine), not
a
> single crew took that trek last summer. As a result, it will most
> likely be completely changed for this summer. Out of curiosity, I
> decided to take a look at it, so here it is: Bent...Rich Cabins...Dan
> Beard...Iris Park...Ring Place...Whiteman Vega (2)...Seally
Canyon...Old
> Camp...Indian Writings While I hate to say it, it does not look like a
> great trek as it doesn't climb a single peak (in fact, it doesn't go
> higher than 8500 feet) and it doesn't offer much in the way of
> programming. On the other hand, I'm sure it offers some great
scenery,
> solitude (more than any other trek I'm sure) and a great chance to
> practice low-impact camping. But I guess those aren't the first
things
> folks look at when selecting a trek. Trek 7 from 2004 was fairly
> similar, so it will be interesting to see if that gets changed too.
> Remember, we've been told to expect at least minor changes on about
> two-thirds of the treks this summer.
>
> Brian Gannon
> 628-G1
>

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Received on Tue Mar 8 20:51:03 2005

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