2

The birds still sang, the wind still swished through the fir trees, but I heard nothing but the pounding of my heart. The woods around and the mountain ranges glimpsed through the trees were still there to look at and enjoy, but all I saw was the next rock to step on and an infinity of such rocks leading up the steep slope. Every 100 yards or so I would call out, "Wait!" and stand there gasping for a couple of minutes until my heart rate dropped. After three such pauses, the young bucks at the front of the line were getting impatient with the pace, and Nate decided to try a different strategy. The call came back the line, "Caterpillar!"

The caterpillar technique is perhaps a Philmont invention, certainly I had not heard of it before we began getting ready to come out here. It is a way of approaching uphill climbs that are too steep for continuous hiking. To start the caterpillar, the lead hiker steps off of and faces the trail so that the rest of the group can pass him while he rests. After taking five steps, the new front man steps off the trail in the same way, and this process continues. When the last climbing man passes the first scout to start standing, the resting scout falls in behind and continues his march up the hill until he is once more at the front of the line and can rest again. The idea is that half the scouts are resting and half are climbing at any one time, and though this slows the pace considerably, it does allow continuous progress to be made toward the top of a steep hill. On our training hikes, over steep but smooth trails in Pennsylvania, we had had good luck with the technique. Here, it was a disaster.

For starters, there were few places to get off and stand on this rugged mountain trail, and so the line got more and more stretched out. Then too, I went more slowly than the others over the rocky terrain, and when I finally reached the front of the line, the scouts were bunched up behind me and came streaming by at a great rate to compensate. In no time at all, still panting and sweating, I had to force myself to start climbing again, or the whole caterpillar would grind to a halt.

I wasn't the only one with problems. Sometimes the resting scouts could not get off the trail entirely, and others had problems passing them. Sometimes the faster scouts crowded the slower ones and urged them to "hurry up!" After half an hour of this all good feelings amongst us were at an end, and the crewmembers were snappish and ready to be somewhere else. At 10,000 feet the agony ended, and we stepped out of the woods onto a long, open ridge, but our sense of unity was gone and that was a worrisome thing on day 3 of an 11-day trek.

We rested for a half-hour then, but we made a sorry spectacle in the midst of the magnificent fir-covered mountain scenery. The boys were clumped up by personality type. Some played cards, or keep away with a stolen hat, or pitched rocks down the steep slope. Other talked quietly about the computer games they would write or play when they got home. Some just lay there near exhaustion, tending to blistered feet. I re-powdered my own feet and was pleased that they were still in good shape, then felt the need to get away from this bunch for a few minutes. I told Nate I would be about five minutes up the trail, and walked off alone feeling played out and dispirited.

As I walked along, I saw some sort of hawk or falcon kiting on the breeze in the valley below. I noted many plants that were new to me, and came upon a tree that sent a huge puff of pollen into the air when you twitched any of its branches. I slowly forgot the troubles with the crew and rejoiced at my novel surroundings. Maybe this was the way to survive the trek. Maybe I would just stay a little ahead of them and enjoy a more solitary walk through the mountains. Of course that was not the way it was supposed to be, but I wasn't here at Philmont to lead the crew. I was "on vacation", as I had been frequently told during training. So, if the boys were not going to pull together, that was Nate's problem, and I sure wasn't going to deprive him of the opportunity of solving it or failing to do so.