Day 4 (Thursday)
We got up kind of late, meaning it wasn’t dark. We did the normal breakfast thing, some of us heated water and had hot chocolate or tea or coffee. Mike was pretty much the king of heated breakfast drink the whole trip. Before we left on our adventure there was a leader meeting at base camp and at the end they offered us up coffee, tea, cocoa and all the fixings to include in our backpacks. I took some, but ditched most of it during the get rid of everything phase of the shakedown. Mike on the other hand brought some and I know the adults really appreciated the hot drink each morning.Â
It was a very routine morning of getting bear bags down which was all all taken care of by the Scouts. Konrad stayed in his tent and slept in until we were ready to go. We rousted him and got him to follow us down to the meadow for a final picture. He pointed us in the right direction and told us it was only a ranger mile to our next camp. We were off on our own. The boys were in charge and leading us to our next camp.Â
The night before we had talked about what route to take and Konrad again suggested we take the high road. Instead of taking Dean Canyon all the way to our next camp, we would take Dean Canyon to Spring Canyon up to Elkhorn camp and then across a ridge to Head of Dean, which was a staff camp and our next destination. This route was a few miles longer and more climbing, but it had a better view.
The hike up Dean Canyon to New Dean camp was pretty uneventful. According to our map it looked like it was about 6 kilometers. We pulled into the New Dean camp ground. It’s not a staff camp and it didn’t look like anyone was staying there. We had learned to watch for the signs that are placed at the start of each camp. It lays out the trails in much more detail than can be found on the sectional map we had.Â
The adults let the boys study the camp map and figure out where to go and what we needed to do. It was a bit warm and we needed to fill our bottles. Since this was our first un-staffed camp with no treated water we would need to use the water purification tablets for the first time. We found the water. It was basically an above ground pool that was about 3 feet high and maybe 20 feet across and full of green stuff. The water comes from an pump out a pipe and drips into the “pool”. Instead of skimming water from the pool, everyone fills from the pipe and drops in the tablets and waits, then most put in Gatorade or something to make the water not taste so bad.
By now most of us had worked out that we use one bottle for Gatorade and the rest for holding water, because Gatorade bottles had to go in the bear bags, while water bottles could be left out in the campfire ring overnight.  Â
Once we were done getting water is was time to find the trail to Spring Canyon. It wasn’t clear where the path to Spring Canyon actually was. We all studied the maps a bit and finally found what looked like nothing more than game trail, that we thought might be the right way. We hiked for few hundred yards then ran into a sign pointing us to Spring Canyon. The Spring Canyon trail was not well traveled. Our scout leaders were doing a great job on the trail. In one lightly traveled spot there was a snake crossing the trail. They gave it a wide berth. We could see it in the bushes. It was hard to tell if it was rattle snake or something else. Regardless, we left it alone. We also saw a big buck and a flock of wild turkeys or grouse or snipe on the trail.
We hiked until just before noon and before we got to Elkhorn, the boys decided to stop and have lunch in the middle of the trail in the middle of nowhere. Konrad had pointed us to a spot on the map for us to have lunch and some of were looking forward to the nice view. We asked for a crew vote thinking that if the adults voted as a block and we got one kid to side with us, we’d keep hiking, but, that was just wishful thinking. Our fearless crew leader reminded us that that trip was “boy lead” and that the he had decided that we would be breaking for lunch right here, right now. The adults fought every urge they had to overrule our “leaders” and continue on.Â
Earlier in the trip Konrad had asked each adult to participate in the Philmont Ponderosa Experiment. What this meant was that when we had the urge to become the crew leader, we would seek out a Ponderosa Pine and smell it, then report back to the crew if it smells like Vanilla or Butterscotch. By the time that happens the issue is usually resolved.Â
Needless, to say a few adults sought out nearby Ponderosa Pines and sat down and had lunch. Just before we left Konrad said we would go through the team building phases of Form, Storming, Norming and Performing. This was probably as close as we ever got to Storming. As a matter fact, I think the team went pretty much straight to performing. The Scouts all drew on the previous experiences and just made it work. We got positive comments from the staff during the whole trip.Â
Once we started lunch, it was actually very relaxing and I took a little nap. Carly took advantage of my condition and woke me up by scaring the cr4p out me since it was time to go again. We all got a good laugh out of that. We had stopped only a short distance from our next stopping point which was Elkhorn Camp. We filled up our water bottles and kept going. Elkhorn was another deserted non-staffed camp. It had another green pool for water and not much else. Once we got past Elkhorn we got up on the ridge, we could see Baldy and Tooth of Time and lots of other peaks. According to our map it was another 3 or 4 kilometers to our next camp. We were setting a pretty good pace and it didn’t take long until we got to the maps for the Head of Dean camp ground.
Our crew leader had been well trained and he approached the staff camp in the proper manner and we got our porch talk and scheduled our activities for the day, which would be a low cope course. The staff also assigned us a camp spot and we all went off to get set up. By now getting the site set up and the bear bags us didn’t take much time at all.Â
We headed off to the low cope course. There were a number of team challenges that we all did. One was to keep a ball on a napkin that was stretched out and walk a course. Everyone participated in that. Another was to get all the youth on a small pedestal where they could not all put both feet down. It was quite a challenge, as hard as it was for the Scouts it was even harder for the adults. I had to go smell the Ponderosa trees more than once.
After these challenges we went to big platform that was essentially a teeter-totter that we had to walk around on and keep it in balance. Both Scouts and Adults got to participate. We figured it out pretty easy but the adults once again had to smell the trees. Then the Scouts had to climb over a obstacle course style wall. They decided to not let the adults participate, and do it only with Scouts. That turned out to be a thorn for at least one adult that thought it looked like fun. Ok, that was me. I’m still a little bitter about that…..
We completed the challenge course and headed back to camp for dinner. We decided to skip the evening activity and get up early the next day. Everything had gone great. We were all set for coming days and our anticipated hike up Baldy. Then our first real crisis hit. Nathan wasn’t feeling well. He in fact looked terrible. He was just sitting there with his head down, not hungry and feeling pretty bad. Even some Orange M&Ms that Dr Laura gave him to make him feel better weren’t working. We were all a bit worried.Â
Dr Laura and I headed back to the staff camp to ask them the protocol for a sick crew member. They said if he wasn’t better in the morning they would pull him off the trail and we would continue without him. Wow! We weren’t expecting this. We were all worried for Nathan and hoping it was something temporary. Nathan crawled into his tent and we did too, all wondering how he was going to be feeling and what was going to happen to our trip.