Day Two: Base Camp

Spectacular achievements are always preceded by unspectacular preparation

~ Roger Staubach

Morning seemed to come quickly, but since we were actually two hours behind the east coast, 0500 seemed much later on our time-zone-challenged bodies. The adult's biggest worries centered around whether or not the boys would get up easily to make our departures on time. We were pleasantly surprised that everyone was up, ready and packed to go without any undo prodding. Sure hope it continues!

Breakfast was a dash through the Marriott buffet line, and then onto the tour bus for the three hour ride north. Another beautiful day broke as we pulled out of the parking lot at 0630 sharp. The city confines of Albuquerque quickly slipped behind us as we headed across the open expanses of the high New Mexico desert. A break in the scenery came as we zoomed through Sante Fe and Las Vegas, but other than those two pieces of civilization, it was wide open spaces with desert scrub and solitary buttes sprinkling the distant horizons.

We pulled into Base Camp just before 1000, in the midst of what we later learned was the typical controlled chaos of the intersecting paths of arriving, departing, incoming and outgoing trek groups. I checked in at the arrival office, and then herded our group to a shaded picnic area where we waited for our "Ranger" to arrive and lead us through the in-processing maze.

Our Ranger, Greg (a Junior at the University of Kentucky), arrived after a short wait, and quickly immersed us in all the things we had to do to get into the Philmont "system." I went to the Registrar's office and settled our billing account, filled out paperwork, picked up meal tickets for our meals at base camp (both before and after our trek), and filled out security forms, including obtaining two lockers to store our extraneous equipment and gear that we weren't taking out on the trail.

Jack Cravener, our youth leader, had briefings of his own, finally meeting up with me at Logistics where we were given an overview of our route, and important info like which camps had water, which ones didn't, where bears had been sighted, and where we would reprovision along our journey.

Our first meal at Philmont was lunch. We gathered in a courtyard around a large bell, with all the other arriving treks, and watched as the Rangers, dressed in their red shirts, gathered at the center, climbed up into human Pyramid, yelled a Philmont chant, and then fell back into arms of waiting safety spotters. Pretty cool opening.

When they announced our Trek's name (708-M: departing on the trail July 8th. M for our council name, Moraine Trails) we met at the door, paused to say a quick "Grace" and then entered for replenishment! Corndogs were the main entree, with salad and a small helping of fries. All in all, not too bad. Perhaps a bit spartan, but in retrospect it was ample. The boys went back for seconds, some a couple of times, so no one starved.

After lunch we made our way to the Quartermaster area where we went through equipment issue (cooking equipment, tents, dining fly, etc.) then over to the Commissary where we picked up four days of food. I thought going four days before a resupply was a bit much, but those were the cards we were delt with the trek we picked. The meals were packaged so that each one fed two people. As we were paired up with our tent partners, we each took six packages apiece. Dinners would be cooked as a group meal, but breakfast and lunches were up to each pair to determine which meal you ate when. My partner was another Dad, and we vowed to eat the heaviest meals first, thus making our packs as light as possible as fast as possible. I'm pretty sure most other pairs did the same.

Our final stop of the processing was the medical shack to go through one more physical check by the camp medical staff. Before we left home we all had to get fresh physicals and get our doctors to sign off that they were satisfied we could hack the trek. Philmont has pretty stringent weight restrictions and blood pressure limits geared to hopefully keep the oldsters safe. I had a clean bill of health from my Doc, but as a guy who has to get flight physicals every year to stay on flying status, I can tell you that it is always a nerve wracking experience to have a medical guy poke and prod you looking for little things that aren't quite right. As it turned out, I passed with flying colors. A couple of the other adults had some elevated blood pressures, but the only caution they got was, "Drink lots of water!"

We found our tents and dropped off our equipment. The tents were canvased platform jobs with actual mattresses on spring frames. They had nice zippered closures, which came in handy a bit later when we got hit with high winds and rain.

Scouts are reverent, so at 1900, after a hearty dinner, everything shut down so we could all attend "Vespers," religious services. Philmont actually has 4 or 5 chapels spread throughout it's campus, open air ampitheaters for Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and LDS services. There may be a Buddhist option someplace, but I didn't see it. The Catholic service was presided over by a Bishop from Chicago who was actually spending the summer at Philmont! I thought it was hilarious that with such a shortage of priests, the Boy Scouts rated a Bishop, but then with 20-25,000 boys and adults transiting through the camp each summer, it is actually pretty effective staffing.

The final event of the night was a Welcome campfire where members of the staff performed skits, told really bad jokes, sang songs off key, and related a bit of Philmont history; all geared to get the trekkers psyched for the next day's start. It was a fitting end in to a long, exciting, yet tiring day.

Tomorrow brings the trail... and the start of the grand adventure!