Philmont Trek 803-I 1997

Part of Troop 104's 1997 Philmont Trek

August 3, Day 1
Arrival at Philmont

Trains aren't the best places for sleeping. Our car and the one in front of us are full of scouts heading for Philmont. The lights went off at 10, but there was a rather noisy bunch in the front of the car that were still going until at least 11:30. I would have liked have gone to sleep earlier.

It was hard to find a comfortable position to sleep. I woke up about every hour to shift to allow some part of my body to wake back up.

I got up at 6:35 and went to the dining car for breakfast. I was able to sit right down. The service was rather brusque, but the food was good, the accommodations were pleasant (white tablecloths, fresh flowers, scenery going by), and the prices not outrageous. I was glad I got there when I did. Later on people had a two-hour wait to be seated.

There are crews from Naperville, IL, Racine, WI, Mason City, IA, Hales Corner, WI and Northwest Ohio (at least) on the train.

It rained quite a bit last night as we went through Kansas. There were many flooded areas, and rivers were high. But it cleared up, and by the time we got to Colorado the sky had only a few high clouds.

As we got into Colorado, we started seeing some impressive anvil-topped thunderheads to the west. They were nice to look at from the distance, but we hoped that they weren't near where we are going.

We arrived in Ratón right on time. Thank you Amtrak. We unloaded our packs as fast as we could and loaded the busses. The drivers took us to a place where we could grab fast food, then we headed for Philmont. It was a bouncy ride in a Ratón School bus, and I'm glad it didn't last much longer than 45 minutes.

We got to the Philmont base camp (6700 ft) at about 2 pm and started the usual hurry-up-and-wait. We actually got through things relatively quickly. We were late enough that most other crews were through, so there were no lines. We got through the orientations and picked up our equipment and food. We'll do our shakedown with our ranger, Justin Baker, tomorrow. We advisors also went to Logistics to double check water supply points and trail changes.

Our tent assignments were in two different areas, not all together. That contributed to our tardiness at breakfast; Colin and Dustin weren't woken up on time. There were lots of empty tents together, though, so we didn't understand why we were separated.

The "trailbound" campfire on Philmont history was fun and informative. The sky, which had been threatening all afternoon, cleared up as the campfire ended, and we sang the Philmont Hymn:

Silver on the sage 
Star-lit skies above 
Aspen covered hills 
Country that I love. 		 Wind in whisp'ring pines 
Eagles soaring high 
Purple mountains rise 
Against an azure sky. 
    Philmont, here's to thee 
    Scouting Paradise 
    Out in God's country-tonight. 

    John Westfall, 1947 
I met some members of the departing Prairielands Council crew in camp. By chance, their last night in base camp is the same as our first. They took a very similar trek to ours. They started farther north than we will, then followed much the same route. They didn't hike in over the Tooth Ridge, though. After talking to them, I'm looking forward even more to the trek. 
 
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