I WANT TO GO BACK TO PHILMONT

Yes, hiking 68 miles in ten days with a forty five pound pack on my back at over 8,500 feet was that fun. And now I'm back in the "comfort" of my home. I guess that there's something to be said about that dry New Mexico air. As you can guess, this is going to be a long post, so I'm going to try to abbreviate as much as I can. I might also edit and change things in this post around in the next week. Then I leave for another seven days to go to MACG, Mid America Guitar Camp.

To get an idea about what I'm talking about, take a look at the pictures that I have put up on Picasa.

So, here's what happened:

I got on an Amtrak train in Kansas City, and stayed on until it got to a town in New Mexico called Ratone. I then got on a bus which drove me and everybody else in my crew to Philmont. We met up with our amazing ranger, Andrew. He went over back country safety and procedure with us, and got us all ready to leave the following afternoon. I'm gonna skip to when we leave now, ok?

A bus picked us up and drove us to this place called Lover's Leap turnaround. We got off the bus, unloaded all our gear, and then Andrew led us over to the Red Roof Inn to talk to us about how to use one. Red Roof Inn, i.e., latrine. Brief tutorial: grab a stick, go to the Red Roof, proceed to the toilet hole, move the stick around the edge to remove any biting spiders (crater bugs), and use it. Don't pee in the Red Roof, it makes it smell bad...

Then we actually go on the trail. The sky proceeded to give us a taste of Philmont weather. We made it to Lover's Leap (refer to photographs) and we climbed on out to the tip . The view was amazing. And it turned out to be only a small taste of what was to come.

Ok, so I don't want to keep writing this like a story. I'm gonna try to now skip to the high lites. I mean all else there is to talk about is hiking with my forty pound pack for hours on end.

So...our day one camp wasn't that eventful since it was a trail camp. We saw cows at the well when we went to get water, but that's about it. Oh yeah, Philmont is a working cattle ranch, request of Waite Phillips. Day two camp was a staff camp at Crater Lake. They have the best camp fire you will ever see, or not see; your choice. That's where we did spar pole climbing, like what the people used to do to work on power lines.

Day three, we left Crater lake and moved on to Black Mountain camp. Other people on my crew will say different, but I think that this was the hardest day. We didn't have that much significant elevation change, but we were hiking along a stream. The sides of this stream were very steep, so we were constantly going up and down the sides of the bank. misery. The program there was good though. They had black smithing and black powder rifle shooting. I blew Doug's hat in the air when I shot it. The triggers on those things are really hard to pull.

The next day we hiked to Beaubien (BOW-be-in) where we had a layover day. That was nice. The campfire was good, and they played one of my favorite songs. Remember Furr, by Blitzen Trapper? On the morning of our second day at Beaubien, we took a side hike to Trail Peak, where a WWII B-24 crashed. It's really interesting to think that if they had been just a bit over in a different direction, they would have missed the mountain. Again refer to the pictures.

Day six we had another trail camp at Porcupine. We could have done something at Crooked Creek, but we decided to have a lazy day in camp, since our next day was the day we climbed up Phillips to the peak, which was some 2,000 feet higher than us.

Phillips, definitely worth the effort of ascent. It was beautiful, and I kinda sorta regret not bringing my camera up for sunset. The camp we had ended up choosing was really nice. It was furnished with rock chairs, which are quite comfortable when built right, like these were.

After Phillips we had a layover at Cimarroncito. This is one of the rock climbing camps. It is quite fun. I didn't get any pictures of the climbing part, but I did get some of the rappelling. I think I'll add some of the pictures of me rock climbing that my dad took. We also took a tour of the hunting lodge that Waite Phillips built. It looked like a really nice place to live. Nice and homey.

Next day was Tooth Ridge. A bit scary if I do say so. We hiked over the ridge while there was a big approaching thunder storm, and we were just about the highest things. We made it into the camp just as an enormous wind storm came up. I don't think that I have ever had a harder time putting up a tent, the wind was that strong. We hiked up to the top of the Tooth a little while later to see the sunset, which was also spectacular, just not as colorful as at Crater Lake. As you can see in the pictures, the view was a bit surreal.

Then into base camp on the "trail of tears". Named that because you can see base camp pretty much the whole was down, and the hike that day is so fricking overly long.

--I might write more later