Philmont 2014-Training Edition

Welcome to the first edition of my Philmont update. The last month or so in one word: crazybusy. Work work work. But it's fun work for the most part!

I arrived by train, which has become my preferred method of travel since coming here last year. In the last few hours of the ride, I met other people who were on their way to be a ranger, many of them returning from last year. When the bus arrived in Raton, we unloaded all of our luggage and loaded it into the bus that was waiting for us. We stopped for lunch for an hour and then we were finally off to base camp. Once we got there, the madness started immediately. Registration, medical recheck, tent assignments, uniform pickup, name tag photo, etc. After running around for a few hours, it was time to meet my training crew (TC) and ranger trainer (RT). My crew, named TC 15, consisted of 6 boys plus our trainer and 1 girl other than me. They were the group I did my training with and have basically become my adopted family.

The next day was All Staff Day. It was general training given to all the staff about things like going into the back country on days off. We also took a group photo of all 1000+ staff (which you can find on FaceBook on Philmont's page) and also had a "banquet" which included brisket, baked beans, potato salad, corn, rolls and cheesecake. There was a live band and dance afterword but I was too tired to go to that so my tentmate and I hung out in our tent. I ended up tenting with Genny, a girl I had met on the train. It was a good match because we were instant friends and get along really well. 
The next couple of days were all about base camp procedures and other ranger training. These days were long and started blending together.
On the 31st each TC left on a Training Trek. My crew was bussed to Cito turnaround and stopped at Window Rock to eat lunch with a view. This first picture is a small portion of the panorama underneath it.

We slept at Aspen Springs for the night and hiked to Sawmill the next day where we ate lunch and hung out for the rest of the day.

That night, we slept on the cabin roof of Sawmill so we could have front row seats from the sunrise, bright and early the next morning.

After a nice hike, we arrived at Porcupine, a beautiful camp along the Rayado river.
Day 4 on the trail was Ranger Rendezvous, held at Beaubean. All the rangers gathered to play games for a few hours and then ate lunch. Then it was time to take the RAT (ranger assessment test). That took over an hour but wasn't too hard. It was getting fairly late as we headed out to the campsite we were staying at that night. It was probably 10 or 11 by the time we got to Bear Caves camp. We ate a snack for dinner and then set our sleeping bags in the meadow nearby to sleep under the stars.
In the morning we began hiking towards Lovers Leap. After an hour or so, we were running low on water and wondering if we could make it back to base camp without getting too dehydrated when Mark Anderson, the head camp director, pulled up with a water buffalo full of water on the back of his truck. We gratefully filled up and kept going. We spent quite a bit of time on top of Lovers Leap before we decided it was probably time to get back to base. We were hiking down the road for what seemed forever when the second miracle of the day happened. A chaplain pulled up next to us and asked if we wanted to ride. All 9 of us crammed in the suburban with our full packs. It was a tight squeeze but completely worth it. It would have been about another long hour of hiking without the ride.

 With most of our training done, all the rangers had a day off. Most of us went to Taos, a nearby town. My TC went to breakfast there at a diner with delicious breakfast food. There was an ultimate Frisbee tournament set up for the ranger TC's. One of the guys in my TC, Javan, is a huge ultimate fan so of course we had to compete. The rest of us had little to no experience so we were very surprised when we placed 3rd. After the tournament was over, we went to lunch at a pizza place. The wall outside was cool because you were allowed to color on it. There were a lot of Philmont signatures so I added mine. We devoured our pizza and then explored the town for a few hours.

I liked Taos and all it's quirkiness. It was full of cool places and (what I call) real people. One of my favorite places we went to was a used book store. Even though I'm not a huge reader, I could have spent a lot of time there.

Then we went to the hot springs nearby. We stayed a few hours but I only dipped my feet in. It was getting dark when we left but we still had to stop at walmart to get snacks since we hadn't had dinner. That was the tiniest walmart I've ever been in. After that last stop, we left Toas and got to back to base really late.
The next day was the last day of training which was mostly review. Campers would begin to arrive the next day. But I didn't get a crew for a few days. Instead, I had workdays which were random odd jobs. The first day I built cairns at Chase Ranch, the newest extension of Philmont. The ranch isn't owned by Philmont but it is cared for by Philmont so now participants are aloud to hike on it. The cairns were made to help guide hikers through this new stretch of land.

The next day was more training for anyone who didn't have a crew yet which included search & rescue and stove maintenance. My last workday involved painting benches and moving rocks at Rayado Ridge. Finally, crew 612-Y-2 came into base and I finally had a crew so my job had really started. But all of that is for another post. Which I'll hopefully get to eventually...