July 30:
We began our adventure early in the morning, with most of our crew waking up at around four in the morning; rushing to get our gear in the car, and heading to San Jose airport before we fell back asleep. We reached the airport at about 5 am, meeting up with the rest of our crew before checking into our flight to Denver, Colorado. After going through security and grabbing a quick bite, we boarded the plane at 7:15am, and crew 1 was a few states closer to Philmont. Our bus ride from Denver International Airport to our hotel was a good four hours long, and unfortunately for those who didn’t get anything to eat at the airport, our search for food along the way was unsuccessful. We did take a pit stop at an Air Force Academy, and got to watch a trailer for the Air Force program in their theater, as well as see some airplane and helicopter statues outside. This was also the first time we heard the loud thunder we would end up hearing every night for the rest of our trip. After what felt like forever, we finally reached Great Wolf Lodge and went up to our rooms to settle in and get used to the place. We hurried to the waterpark for some time before it closed, and had tons of fun on the different waterslides there. After a good hour or two in the waterpark, we headed to our rooms to wash up and get ready for dinner. We ate some food at the buffet offered by the hotel, but many of us also walked to nearby fast food places such as Taco Bell for a “second” dinner. By then, it was getting pretty late, so we headed back to our rooms and hung out with our friends until it was time for bed. Some of us snuck out to the lobby and ran into the moms for a little late night ice cream sundae run, but we went to our rooms and headed to bed soon after, as we had an early morning and a long day coming up.
July 31:
The next morning, we woke up to angry parents banging on our doors to wake up, and we quickly packed up all of our stuff and got ready to leave the hotel. After grabbing a quick breakfast down at the lobby, we loaded up the bus, and were on the way to Philmont along with one other troop. After a long bus ride and a whole lot of napping, we reached basecamp at around 10am, and we were first introduced to Mathew, our beloved ranger and guide for our trek. He showed us around the camp and got started on some technical work needed for Philmont to be done; this included stopping at outfitting to get our gear, and sorting out our meals for the trip. By then, it was extremely hot outside, and no one was in the mood to get any work done, but shoutout to our amazing and responsible SPL, Haasini, for keeping us in check and making sure we got everything done on time! After we were checked in and took care of all the technicalities, we finally headed to the mess hall to have lunch. We wrapped up lunch, and headed to our campsite to unpack and settle into our tents. There was some time for us to explore around basecamp for a bit, but later into the afternoon we had to be back at our campsite for gear checks. When the time came, we brought out our bed cots and laid out all of our gear so Mathew could confirm we had everything we needed, and then packed up our bags/weighed them to make sure they weren’t too heavy. After gear checks were over, we headed to the mess hall for a quick dinner, and then it was time for opening campfire, which was lots of fun! By the time the opening campfire had ended, it was pretty dark outside, and it was time for us all to head back to our campsite and get ready for bed for a full night’s rest… we would definitely be needing it. Tomorrow would be the day we set out on our adventure through Philmont, and the nerves began to settle in as we went to sleep.
August 1:
Today was the day we finally set out on this trip we had spent endless practice hikes and backpacking weekends preparing for. We woke up bright and early, and quickly got ready; if anyone was feeling anxious right now, it was about to get a lot worse in the next few hours. After bringing out our bags and setting them in a pack line, we had a quick breakfast at the mess hall… the last proper meal we would be having for a while. We filled up the last of our water bottles and used the restroom (also the last proper restroom we would be seeing for a while), while waiting for our bus. Once our bus arrived, we loaded our packs on, and were on the way to the start of our trek. At this point, I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say we were all extremely nervous for this trip to start, not really knowing what to expect; everyone, except Mr. Anupindi of course, who was calm and relaxed as always. But we were finally about to begin the trek we had spent months preparing for, at the camp we had spent years talking about. Thankfully, we got a little pep talk from Mathew on the short bus ride over, and before we knew it, we were at the start of our trail. It was still piping hot outside, and no one really felt prepared for this big start… but before we began, Mathew explained the red roofs to us and also went over a little navigation basics. Just as we were ready to take off, a donkey came to visit us! Mr. Anupindi spent a few minutes hitting his hiking pole on the top of his backpack in an attempt to scare it off, but that didn’t really end up working; luckily it didn’t come too close to us, so we were fine. And just as we were about to finally start hiking, in came a light drizzle. We didn’t think much of it since we had been getting nothing but the hot sun in the time we had already spent at Philmont, and most of us were convinced we wouldn’t be seeing much (or any) rain, thunder, or lightning despite Mr. Anupindi telling us he got pouring rain everyday on his previous trek. In fact, most of us were really happy to see this drizzle after such a hot morning. A small handful of us actually put on our proper rain gear and put rain covers on our backpacks, and the rest of us threw on a light rain jacket just to put Ms. Falari and Ms. Shah at peace… BIG MISTAKE. We finally began our hike for the day, with our wonderful SPL, Haasini, as our navigation lead. Within minutes, the drizzle turned into heavy pouring rain, and the 100 degree weather turned into the freezing cold. Our trail began to look less like a trail, and more like a mini river which was very muddy and slippery, making it 100 times harder to hike. Not to mention all the slipping and falling left us covered in mud, with our shoes and socks completely soaked; to those scouts who were confident we wouldn’t be getting much rain and decided not to put on their rain gear, let’s just say our shoes were not the only thing that got soaked that day. Just as we thought this experience couldn't get any worse, it began to hail… I don’t know how the weather switched up on us that quickly, but it definitely was a memorable experience. At that time, I was still in my hiking shorts as were a few others, and everyone was wearing relatively thin layers, so those little ice pellets falling out of the sky and hitting our bare skin hurt… A LOT. We all agreed when we said it felt like someone was throwing pebbles or marbles at us with full force, and the freezing cold weather was definitely not helping. I think I speak for everyone when I say we were all very shocked to see the amount of rain and hail we got, considering the melting hot sun we had not even 2 hours before; in the coming days, we would learn just how bipolar Philmont weather was. After what felt like forever, but was really only 2.9 miles with an elevation gain of 546 ft. (supposedly our easiest day), we reached Old Abreau! Of course, the minute we reached the staff camp all the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun came back out. We got to regain some body heat and dry off, while eating a regular cold lunch in the cantina. We got to see some chickens at the staff camp, and saw another troop stop by for lunch as well. After we were all mentally prepared to pick up our soaked, heavy backpacks and begin hiking, we began our little hike to our campsite; luckily these campsites were pretty close to the staff camp, so we reached in no time. After reaching the campsite, we got started on setup, and I don’t know what Philmont had against us, but the second we began opening and setting up our tents, the heavy rain came right back. Suhani and I managed to get our tent set up in time, and quickly stuffed our backpacks and ourselves inside to avoid getting even more soaked; although that left the inside of our tent wet and muddy, it was definitely better than the unfortunate situation the rest of our crew was left with once the rain cleared up. While we were in our tent, everyone else raced to hide from the rain under the dining fly, and ended up having to stay there and occasionally hold lightning position for a good hour and a half. This marked the first thunderstorm and lightning sighting of our trek, but it was definitely not the last; this was the last time we saw the dining fly though. Once the rain finally stopped, the rest of our crew crawled out from under the dining fly to see their half-set-up tents completely soaked in water and mud. A few of us got started on trying to make a fire with Mathew and Mr. Anupindi so we could get dinner started, and the rest of our crew did their best to clean out and dry their tents. After quite some time, we were finally able to get a fire going, and tried putting our shoes around the fire pit in an attempt to dry them out (it didn’t really work). We all gathered around the fire pit, and ate dinner, most of us missing the comfort of our warm, and dry, homes. By now, we were all feeling pretty demotivated and were not feeling excited for the rest of this trip. In terms of difficulty, this was supposed to be the easiest part of our trek, starting off with a short and straightforward hike. Just due to the weather, this quickly turned into one of the most mentally exhausting and challenging days of our trek. Although it may have not seemed like it at the time, I am actually glad we started off with such a “bad” day, because this did a good job preparing us for the days to come. Not to mention, starting off like this left us with warped expectations; thinking everyday was going to be this hard made the rest of our trip seem so much easier, and this day left us with our hopes pretty low for this trek, making every other day that followed so much better than expected. We thought to ourselves that it really couldn’t get much worse for us, and luckily we were right about that. But after this long, crazy day, we were all feeling super exhausted, and so we got ready for bed.
August 2:
The next morning, August 2nd, we woke up freezing and weren’t yet used to waking up this early and starting our hiking almost right away, so of course this morning moved pretty slow. Our first breakfast of the trip, similar to every other breakfast during our trek, consisted of mainly energy snacks we could eat throughout our hike until lunch time; so instead of sitting down and eating, we carried our food with us, eating it along the way to Carson’s meadow. After packing up all of our stuff, taking the bear bags down, and refilling our water, we got started on our hike for the day. Our navigation leads for the day were Sahana and Ruhi, with our longest and supposedly hardest hike of the whole trek; not to mention, the hot sun did not help. With 7.4 miles and an elevation gain of 3,300 feet, it was hard to keep the group motivated, but I think we did a pretty good job! Not too long into the hike, we reached Carson’s meadow, where we checked in with the staff so they knew our crew was all good and on track. We did a search & rescue activity there, which consisted of us trying to pull a staff member up to the roof with a rope and rappelling hook, and also played tug of war. There was also a telescope pointed at the Tooth of Time, a huge rock that was very far away, which we would be scaling on the last day of our trek. Seeing through the lens of the telescope and getting an idea of how steep it was definitely intimidated our crew a little bit, and we weren’t too excited about having to hike up that thing. But the view of the mountains and the Tooth of Time from Carson’s meadow was absolutely gorgeous, and unfortunately we had to head out from there, and onto our long and exhausting hike. As we began our hike, the nice chilly cold quickly disappeared, and the hot blazing sun came back out making the hike much less enjoyable. While hiking, we crossed a big rock ledge, and decided to stop and take our lunch break there (as well as take some pictures, of course). The view from the ledge was really starting to show us how high up we were, and the amount of elevation gain to our hike was starting to pay off with some nice views of the mountains and trees. And after what felt like an eternity more of hiking, we finally reached Fish Camp! We were completely wiped out, and didn’t bother finding our campsite for lunch. Instead, we had lunch right at staff camp, and this was also our second time seeing another troop on our trek. While we were hanging out there, we also got our 3-day New Mexico fishing permits, as well as a quick rundown of how to fly fish by one of the staff there. But we only ended up fly fishing for a few minutes due to the fact that we were fishing in a small creek with absolutely no fish, so we got bored pretty quickly, returned our poles, and went to go find our campsite. Luckily, our campsite was very close by, because none of our legs were working properly after that hike. Just as we were setting up our tents and ready to get started on a fire, the rain decided to come out and say hi… talk about bad timing. Unlike yesterday, we didn’t get much rain, and it cleared up within ten minutes. After the rain, we got started on dinner right away while Mathew told us stories about Philmont, and the big challenge he would be setting out on very early next morning: Super Black Death. This trek involved starting at three in the morning, and hiking 27 miles in 24 hours; included summiting Comanche peak (11,303 ft), Mt. Phillips (11,736 ft), Big Red (11,020 ft), Bear Mountain (10,662 ft), Black Mountain (10,889 ft), Schaefers Peak (9,413 ft), and lastly the Tooth of Time (9,003 ft). After saying our goodbyes to Mathew, we got to wrapping up dinner, doing the dishes, and putting up our bear bags for the night. By then, it was pretty late and we were all exhausted from the hike, so we got in our sleeping bags and went to bed.
August 3:
We got up bright and early that day, and woke up to a very cold morning. After quickly packing up all of our gear, we headed to the staff camp to check in before starting our hike for the day. At staff camp, we filled up our water, emptied out our trash, and got ready to go; there was another troop also getting ready to leave Fish Camp, although they weren’t heading in the same direction as us. We began our hike to Lower Bonito, with Suhani and Joshitha as our navigation leads for this hike consisting of 6.4 miles with a 2,406 ft. elevation gain. We began our hike on Webster Pass, consisting of constant switchbacks with a lot of uphill, making it feel like we were hiking a lot, but making no progress. Our legs were about to give out after finishing Webster Pass, so we decided to take a quick break and tried hanging off some tree branches for fun. We then hiked alongside Trail Peak, which led us to bigger, open fields; although the view was pretty, the big open fields unfortunately meant no trees to give us shade from the piping hot sun (we were practically melting at this point). We also saw tons of ground squirrels and walked past where we would be the next morning for our conservation project. We finally reached our campsite, which was this gorgeous big open field of grass surrounded by some trees and lots of cows; I don’t think we’ve ever had a campsite this spacious. We quickly set up camp, and packed smaller daypacks for our day hike up Trail Peak. We ran into a big herd of cows while trying to leave our campsite, and then we were on our way to refill our bottles before our hike. The hike up Trail Peak was a very steep uphill, and had many loose rocks, making it even harder to hike uphill; we had to use our hands and were basically hiking on all fours. Due to a medical emergency, we weren’t able to summit Trail Peak, and see the airplane crash located there, and after about 30-45 mins of trying to get some service and call for medical help, we began our hike back down. We checked in with the medics to make sure everything was okay, and then began our hike back to the campsite. We got started on dinner, and finally got an evening with no rain! There was another troop staying at a campsite very close by, and they even invited us to join their evening campfire. During dinner is when we ran into medical emergency #2, which was a nosebleed lasting all the way from the beginning of dinner to way past sunset. We didn’t end up joining that troop’s campfire, but we did go up and ask their troop guide for advice; we ran into this guide so many times. He gave us great advice, and we were able to get the nosebleed to stop soon after. By then, it was already dark outside, so we put up our bear bags and got ready for bed. Some of our scouts were really tired and decided to go straight to bed, while a few of us noticed how clear the sky was outside, and decided to stargaze. Alongside our adult leaders, we were just lying outside on the cold, wet grass and stargazing, but this was the best decision ever. There were an incredible amount of stars in the sky, and it was surreal seeing shooting stars and satellites pass by; we could even see the Milky Way! We were lying out there for quite some time, with Mr. Anupindi pointing out constellations and satellites to us; it was the most magical night ever, I can’t even find the words to describe how the night sky looked. After about half an hour, we were freezing up and tired, so we all decided to go to bed and rest up before our early morning tomorrow.
August 4
The next morning we were up extra early for our conservation project, and ate breakfast on the mini hike to where we would be doing our project. A ranger explained to us what we would be doing and how it would benefit the environment, so we started our conservation project alongside one other troop. We basically dug a bunch of holes, each three feet deep, and put these long wooden poles in them, which would later be used to make a fence. This fence would prevent cows from coming into that area, because their weight became destructive to the wetlands, destroying the habitats of certain animals living there. After finishing up our conservation project, we headed back up to our campsite to pack up all our gear, refill our water supply, and head out for Miner’s Park. Our navigation leads for the day were Padma and Anya, leading us through our 4.7 mile hike with a 556 ft. elevation gain. About halfway through our hike, we made a pit stop at Crater Lake (tiniest lake ever) for lunch and to check in with the staff; that is when they told us that the commissary and showers would close at 5pm. We already had a pretty late start due to our conservation project, and were now in a very big rush to get there on time. We were afraid that if we were late, we wouldn’t get our food for the next few days, and even worse, we wouldn’t get to shower (we had been looking forward to these showers for a long time, especially Joshitha). We hurriedly hiked to Miner’s Park just to find out that the showers did not close at 5pm, and the commissary was open all the time. While at staff camp, we got our time slot for the showers and also picked up our food for the rest of our trek. After setting up camp, we headed down to go take our long awaited showers; and these were some pretty fancy showers too, with the water nice and hot and the showerheads even having some lights on them. It felt amazing to finally be clean and take a nice relaxing shower after our long and tiring days full of hiking. After finishing up our showers, we headed back to our campsite to go ahead and get started on dinner. While walking through Miner’s Park on the way back from our showers, some of us ran into a big rattlesnake just hanging out on the floor. We were all pretty exhausted and ended up skipping our climbing/rappelling activity for the night. After eating dinner and hanging up our bear bags, we all headed to bed as we had an extra early morning the next day; we were practicing waking up and being packed by sunrise as a trial run for the next morning when we would be setting out to summit the Tooth of Time.
August 5:
We were up bright and early, and very happy to have clean running water to properly brush our teeth and wash our faces that morning. After making breakfast and packing our gear and tents up, we headed to the common area to set up our pack line and fill up our water for the day. Our morning definitely moved much slower than what we had hoped, considering this was supposed to be our trial run for the next morning, when we would be waking up very early to set out on our hike up the Tooth of Time. We signed out of Miner’s Park and began our hike to Stockade Ridge with our navigation leads, Tanvi R. and Dhaeshna; little did we know, it was going to be a very long day. We were done with most of our hike before the day started going downhill. We ended up getting lost a few times and asked a passing ranger for directions, but he ended up sending us the wrong way. It was a very hot day and everyone was exhausted, but we continued hiking trying to find our way to camp. We ended up getting lost again and asked another ranger for help, but unfortunately we were sent the wrong way again. The crew collectively came together and tried our best to find the way and figure out this navigation, but we were still left confused. After being lost for a long time, no one had the motivation to keep going, and so we decided to stop and eat lunch. We also found a creek and filled up our bottles since we were all running low on water. After seeing how exhausted our crew was looking after this long and hot day, I went over to Mr. Anupindi to look over the map, and we tried figuring out the navigation. We pulled out our emergency map, which had clearer trail lines due to it being in a backpack all of the trek, and using a camera lens to zoom in on the section of the trails where we kept on getting lost, we finally saw where we had been going wrong all day. There was a tiny trail near a dried up creek which we were supposed to take, but had missed and ended up hiking past it. We retraced our steps, taking the correct trail this time, and we soon reached our campsite. The campsite itself was pretty small, covered with trees, and on the side of a mountain, but worst of all, it had a lot of mosquitoes everywhere. On the bright side, we were so high up that we ended up getting signal, and a few of us made some calls back home to talk to family. This is also when we had medical emergency #3, which was just a nosebleed probably due to the high altitude. By now the sun was already beginning to set, so after setting up camp, some of us headed with Mr. Anupindi to refill water, while the others got started on dinner. While eating dinner, we went in a circle going over the roses and thorns of the day, and also went over how to improve on getting ready quickly in the morning so we would actually be on time tomorrow morning. We quickly washed up and put up bear bags since it was already dark, and went straight to bed since we would have to be up in a few hours.
August 6:
We were up very early today, just a bit before the sun came out, and quickly brushed our teeth, cleaned up camp, and ate breakfast on our hike to the Tooth of Time. Along our hike, we had the gorgeous view of the sunrise over Urraca Mesa, the biggest lightning magnet in all of Philmont. We reached the base of the tooth within no time, and were able to do the first section with our backpacks; it was quite rocky, but not too bad. After reaching the section where the actual rock part of the tooth was starting, we had a place to remove our backpacks, and began our way up. This part of the hike was very steep and rocky, we were basically climbing with our hands and feet at this point. Despite the lack of an actual trail, we made it up the rock pretty quickly, and before we knew it, we had submitted the Tooth of Time. After reaching the top, we chilled out for some time and took pictures, although most of our view was blocked by fog. We didn’t stay for too long though, since we still had quite the hike back to basecamp, and got started on our way back down. After hiking down, there was a little tree branch where some of us tried doing some pull-ups, but then we picked up our backpacks and were on our way. During the hike we reached a part on the side of a mountain where we could actually see basecamp, which led us to thinking that we were really close and would be back soon; this was not the case at all. It felt like we were circling around the same few mountains over and over again for hours, and not to mention, it was a super hot part of the day, and everyone was feeling pretty demotivated and tired. All we wanted was to reach basecamp, but it honestly felt like we were getting further away from it. We finally made it down and off those never-ending mountains, and after some more hiking we finally saw the welcome back sign! We took some crew pictures under the sign, and finished the mini hike back from the sign to basecamp. We were all feeling so dead at this point, but we headed straight to commissary to check in and drop off our Philmont gear, and this is also where we saw crew 2 after our week of being separated. After making sure all our gear was checked back in and talking for a bit, we got assigned our campsite; we were finally on the side of basecamp for hikers done with their trek! We dropped our bags off in our tents and immediately made our way to the showers. After getting all cleaned up, we headed back to our campsite for some fun crew bonding. We played card games while waiting for everyone else to get ready for dinner and closing campfire. We first stopped at the dining hall for dinner, and it was so nice having “real” food after our week of backpacking meals. Afterwards, we made a pit stop at our campsite to get changed into our scout uniforms, and then took a quick hike to the closing campfire, where we did some fun post-Philmont trek traditions and acknowledged our SPL, Haasini, for being such a great leader. There was also lots of thunder and lighting through the ceremony, but thank god it didn't end up raining. We walked back to basecamp after cloning campfire ended, and made a stop at the trading post where Mr. Anupindi bought us all ice cream! We enjoyed our ice cream while hanging around basecamp, and eventually headed back to our campsite to get ready for bed. Although we were all exhausted from our 5 am morning and long hike, most of us ended up going to sleep a lot later than expected; we just had to stay up in our tents, talking about how amazing this past week has been. But, within an hour we were all very tired and were so ready to get a full night's rest on the comfy bed cots in our tents, and so we headed to bed.
Post-Philmont:
The next two days were filled with fun at basecamp before it was time to hop on a plane back home. We all enjoyed a crew 1 lunch together with pizza from the commissary, headed to the trading post to buy matching t-shirts, had a little sunset photoshoot, saw other troops heading in for their opening campfire, talked and played cards games, went to the Philmont museum, and ended with us all signing Haasini’s slippers which were then thrown up on the Philmont sign as part of the post-trek tradition of throwing your backpacking boots up on the sign (too expensive to be getting rid of, so Haasin’s slippers had to do). And before we knew it, our time at Philmont had come to an end, and the trek we had spent so many years talking about, and so many months prepping for, was finally over. We got on a bus to the airport, leaving Philmont with the most bittersweet feeling. Although our trip was unfortunately over, we had an endless amount of memories to remember it by, and this was truly such a life-changing experience with the most incredible people ever.
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