Philmont Day 3

by Hank Hufnagel

We stood on the cool mountain at 5 o'clock in the morning, gazing east at the sun as it inched over the horizon. The black silhouette of the land lightened and brightened to slowly reveal wave after dark wave of mountains, stretching away nearly to Texas. The inky spotting of clouds above had by now changed to fizzy oranges and yellows that every moment shaded toward puffy white. Brian stood next to me and we talked quietly about the sky changes and about the trek ahead. I was a little in awe of both -- hard to believe that he was that morning going to set us loose in these New Mexico mountains.

Thirty scouts shared the mountainside with us, no doubt equally impressed by this fine sunrise. Cameras flashed and fingers pointed at every new scenic revelation. Then a scout came over and joined us. He listened politely to our happy conversation for a minute, then grew exasperated and, from the depths of his poetic soul, said, "Can we get out of here now?"

We walked back up to the campsite, pausing on the way to drop the bear bags and retrieve our food and other "smellables" from the bear-safe cable high overhead. Then, Nate, our crew leader, distributed the 30 bags of food to the other 9 scouts and we made ready to depart. Brian, our Philmont Ranger, gathered us together and sat rocking in his portable chair, folding and unfolding his arms and occasionally rubbing his head as he once again reviewed the Philmont way of doing things. He had been with us since we stepped off the bus three days earlier at Base Camp, first shepherding us through the check-in process, and then training us in the field for two days. Every crew gets a ranger, of course, but not every ranger hits it off with his crew as Brian had with us. We were by now good friends with the man and as he sat there nattering on about bear attacks, I thought how much we would miss this 13th member of the crew. Still, baby chicks must learn to fly, and so with many handshakes and pats on the back, we left him behind and started on the upward road that led out of Sawmill Camp toward the south and adventure.

We followed the four-wheel drive road up and up for the next hour, until Alan, our chief navigator, spotted the trail for Thunder Ridge branching off to the right. We stopped then and broke out the breakfast bags. Each bag held a meal for four trekkers, and so our crew of 12 surrounded the contents of three bags at each sitting. This morning the bags were labeled Breakfast Number 8.

Al, Pete, Clay and I were by now always eating from the same bags. This time we drank over-concentrated orange drink mixed in a canteen that we passed around as we ate --- very sanitary. A small box of Frosted Wheaties, Strawberry Pop-Tarts, and beef jerky sticks completed Breakfast Number 8. It was excellent after the last hour's uphill climb, and soon I could feel the sugar entering my bloodstream and my energy level start to surge.

We started up the trail for Thunder Ridge and for the first five minutes this wended pleasantly along the mountainside. The forest was of house-high firs with little ground cover to hide the rocky terrain. The sun filtered though the trees and the morning was cool and pleasant. The scouts marched along at a great pace and were seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, except when I would call a halt to take a picture or catch my breath. Then the way turned uphill and to the left and we were presented with an awful prospect.

How this little bit of hell was created is anyone's guess. Perhaps it was just an overzealous attempt to prevent erosion on the part of some wild-eyed conservationist on the Philmont staff. Or maybe this was some remnant of what all Philmont trails used to look like. Whatever the reason, we were presented with a path that went straight up the mountainside and was covered with rocks ranging in size from tennis balls to wash tubs. It cut a wide swath through the trees that let the sun in to bake the ground and make the huff up more miserable. And, it never seemed to end, but went on and on, up and up.