EXOTERIC - Information Worth Sharing: ex·o·ter·ic
-adj
1. Not confined to an inner circle of disciples or initiates.
2. Comprehensible to or suited to the public; popular.
3. Of or relating to the outside; external.

I've lived in Southern California all of my life. The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade has been on my list of local things to experience for a long time. This year we finally got a chance to go and see the parade. We headed up to my in-laws house New Year's Eve and spent the night. They live about 30 minutes away from Pasadena. My sister-in-law, Lisa works as a registrar at the Norton Simon Museum, which is right on the corner of Orange Grove Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard. She was able to get us free tickets and VIP parking at the museum. We sat in the front row right across from the KTLA TV broadcast booth. If you are going to watch the parade, this is the way to do it!

We arrived at around 7am and really didn't get stuck in too much traffic on the way in. Our VIP parking pass got us through a couple of road blocks quickly. The streets were packed with people before the parade started. It took multiple passes by the police on motorcycles to clear out the parade route. The parade officially started at 8am, but the first 15 minutes is an opening show that takes place just around the corner from where we were located. Once the parade started it is a steady stream of equestrians, marching bands and floats. I took lots of pictures. About an hour into the parade the B-2 Bomber made a flyover.

After the parade ended, it took us about an hour to fight our way through the traffic back on to the freeway. We headed back to my in-laws house and watched USC beat Penn State in the Rose Bowl game. Go Trojans! A great way to start off 2009.

Back to work after a nice 2 weeks off for the year end holidays. Since I've been neglectful of this blog I'll bring you up to date. Right before the break we had to take our dog Rocket to the vet. He had been drinking water constantly (and peeing everywhere). He was diagnosed with canine diabetes. We had a rough weekend while we tried to decide what to do with him. Our hectic lifestyle is not very conducive to twice daily insulin injections and regular blood sugar checks. We tearfully put him down on Monday 12/22/08. He was almost 10 years old and we bought him from a neighbor who breeds Bichon Frises', so we had him from when he was weaned.

Rocket with Alex.

Marissa and Rocket.

Our other dog, Dakota, has been really missing his little buddy.

Had a wonderful time in Hawaii! It is so nice there. We had wonderful warm and dry weather. We did a lot of sightseeing. We got to our hotel late Friday night and then spent Saturday just hanging out at the beach. The Kaanapali Beach Hotel was holding their annual hula festival for children called Hula O Na Keiki. Arts and crafts, live music and dancing all day long. We did some snorkeling over at Black Rock and got to see lots of fish and a sea turtle. In the late afternoon we headed down to Lahaina and walked around the shops there. We ended up at the Pioneer Inn bar for Mai Tai's and watched USC beat Cal. Then out to dinner and back to the hotel for an early bedtime.

Sunday we had to get up at 5am to catch the dive boat we took over to Molokini Crater. I did 2 dives and Christine snorkeled. The water is amazingly clear at Molokini. Visibility is over 150 feet. Got to see lots of interesting and rare fish, along with Garden Eels and Sea Turtles.

Pyramid Butterflyfish

Garden Eels

"The Aquarium" had fish everywhere

Green Sea Turtle

Monday we headed over to Hana on the wet side of the island. The road to Hana is very twisty and there are some 65+ one lane bridges. It took us almost 3 hours to drive out there and it rained most of the way. At Hana we had lunch and then visited the small church where Charles Lindbergh is buried. We also walked around the Oheo Pools and stopped at several waterfalls along the way. The weather improved on the way back, so we saw lots of sunshine and several rainbows.

Upper Oheo Pools

Lower Oheo Pools

Tuesday we drove up to Haleakala. The weather up there was cool at over 10,000 feet, but the views were amazing. We could see the Big Island to the south. The top of the volcano was very desolate.
Haleakala Crater

At the summit

On the way back to Kaanapali we stopped and visited the Iao Valley.

Iao Needle

Wednesday we packed up and did some final shopping on the way to the airport. Our flight got back into LAX late and then we had a 2 hour drive home. I'm ready to start planning another trip to Hawaii!

Celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary yesterday. Hard to believe 20 years has gone by so quickly. Christine and I are heading off to Maui tomorrow to celebrate. I haven't been to Maui before and the last time we were in Hawaii was 16 years ago. I'm really looking forward to this vacation! Catching a bit of sun and surf, along with some scuba diving and sightseeing for 5 days will be nice.

I've been listening to more and more podcasts on my good old iPod mini during my daily runs. I ran across The Competitors Radio Show and have really been impressed with their weekly shows. Lots of good interviews with a wide variety of endurance athletes. I just got done listening to their interviews with David Walsh, who talks about his writings on the doping scandals in cycling. Quite eye opening stuff on the doping culture. Also some very inspiring stories of challenged athletes. In these days of endlessly depressing economic and political news, these podcasts have become quite a respite during my runs and commute times.

The other podcasts I've been regularly listening to are Science Friday from NPR, and Car Talk with Tom and Ray.

Anyone have any other suggestions for good podcasts?

It's true, I'm now a candidate. My campaign is officially getting news coverage on the internet.

Click here for the story.

Here are some random thoughts about my backpacking equipment after living with it on the trail for 10+ days.

Pack: Kelty Alpine

I bought this at Costco several years back for something like $70. It is an internal frame pack. It came with a camelback that secures to the back of the pack, and the top pocket of the pack can be used as a fanny pack. The hose for the camelback is about a foot too short when the pack is fully loaded. The pack has a built in pack cover that comes out of a zippered pocket in the bottom of the pack and is permanently attached. This rain cover was very useful during our many hours of heavy rain on the trek and it kept the pack and the contents dry.

The main compartment is roomy, and there are 2 side zippers which allow you to get inside without taking off the top pouch that covers it. There is a fairly good sized bottom compartment where I kept my sleeping bag, air mattress, pillow and down vest. One wish for this backpack would be more external pockets! It has 2 mesh pockets for Nalgene bottles on each side and they work OK, but sometimes the heavy water bottles would fall out.

I did make a couple of adjustments to the pack on the trail. The shoulder straps have multiple settings for varying torso lengths. I had it set to the longest setting and that still wasn't comfortable. I had to move it up another notch, even though the velcro holding it was halfway off. That extra inch helped. The sternum strap was also way too high and was hitting my neck. I ripped out some of the stitching on the shoulder pads to allow the strap to ride lower and after that I was pretty comfortable. The real trick was getting the hip belt super tight in order to carry the load on my hips instead of my shoulders. The amount of room in this pack was sufficient for about 5 days worth of food. If I had to carry more food, I would have had to leave behind more clothing. As it turns out, I hit the trail with about 53 pounds (5 days of food and a gallon of water). When I returned it was down to 38 pounds (no more food, empty of water).

Stoves: MSR Whisperlite

The troop has a bunch of these durable and lightweight stoves. We ended up taking 3 of them on the trek, plus an MSR Dragonfly stove. They work reliably, but you have to know what you are doing or they can be dangerous. We had a couple of minor incidents with the stoves on the trek. Both were simply a matter of setting up and lighting the stoves correctly. You screw the pump assembly into the fuel bottle, pump it up to pressurize the fuel, and then connect the stove to the pump. One of our incidents occurred when the hose from the stove was not all the way in and secured with the clip. This allowed fuel to leak (which caught fire). The lighting process starts with filling the small metal cup at the base of the stove with liquid fuel. You have to turn on the fuel, then turn it completely off when the fuel starts coming out. This fuel is then lit and it heats up the burner so that the fuel begins vaporizing inside a small loop of tubing next to the burner. The trick is to turn on the fuel again once the burner starts getting a blue flame. We had an incident where the fuel in the cup had gone out, then the fuel was turned back on too late. This put a lot of fuel on the ground (which caught fire). The stoves are workhorses and can bring water to a boil quickly. The scouts just needed more experience with setting them up and lighting them. It also helps to have your pot of water ready before you fire up the stove to save fuel. We took four 22oz. fuel bottles and used about 75% of that fuel in our 10 days on the trail. We bought some extra fuel along the way, but didn't use it.

Sleeping Bag: Kelty Down 25C

Only disadvantage with a down sleeping bag is just don't get it wet. My bag got a little bit wet after our first really bad thundershower, but it didn't seem to affect the performance. Fortunately, it dried out quickly once the sun was up. I love how small the bag compresses. I was able to put the bag in its stuff sack, and then store it in the bottom compartment of my backpack along with a small camp pillow, down vest and air mattress. When we were camped at higher altitude (above 10,000 feet) the nights were decidedly more cold. I wore my fleece pants and jacket inside the bag and was nice and comfortable. At the warmer, lower elevations no fleece was needed.

Tent: MSR Ventana

I've used this tent on many hikes in the past 5 years, but this is the first time it has really been tested in downpours of epic proportions. The tent body is mesh on the top with a rain fly over the tent. The rain fly generally gives you good coverage over the tent. I never had any problem with water coming in from underneath. The top of the rain fly over most of the tent lays fairly flat. This allowed water to really saturate the top of the fly. Once the nylon got wet it started to seep into the mesh and from there it was basically raining inside the tent. The first rainy night we had was a real bummer. I had to take my rain jacket and pants and use those inside the tent as a cover to keep my sleeping bag dry. The next time we had a big rain storm, the same thing happened. The rain fly was too saturated to keep the rain from sheeting off the fly. I ended up putting a garbage bag under the fly and over the mesh to keep the inside of the tent dry. I need to spray some more water repellent on the fly next time I use the tent in rainy conditions, in addition to using the plastic garbage bag. Once the tent got wet it was a lot harder to set up and take down. The sleeves for the poles tended to grab the poles. I was also using a 2 man tent by myself so I didn't have a buddy to help me put up and take down the tent. The tent also weighs a bit more when wet!

Sleeping Pad: Big Agnes REM

I recently bought this air mattress to alleviate a couple of problems. First, I need more than just a half inch of cushion to be comfortable. This air mattress gives about 2.5 inches of cushion. I never had my hips or shoulders hit the ground with this mattress - very comfortable. It is also 78 inches long. Now my feet and head can stay off the cold ground at the same time! The only disadvantage is having to blow it up. It takes about 25 breathes to fill it. I usually had to add some air to the mattress before bed, just because the temperature of the air inside the mattress had cooled off. I didn't have any leak issues. The nylon covering of the mattress is very slippery and on several occasions my tent was pitched on a slope. I would find myself sliding down the mattress in the night. The big advantage other than comfort is how small this thing packs and how lightweight it is.

Clothing:

I probably should have taken less clothing for the 10 days on the trail. Best advice here is NO COTTON! I had nylon underwear, wool socks, and various other synthetic material shirts, pants, hats, etc. The 2 cotton T-shirts I took never seemed to dry out after they were washed. Some of the kids took cotton socks for in camp use, and not surprisingly they had some blister issues.

I took 3 pairs of wool socks, 2 pairs of nylon underwear, a lightweight fleece jacket, fleece pants, fleece cap, wool hat with brim, 2 long sleeve shirts, 3 t-shirts, a down vest, river shorts, convertible pants with zip off legs, rain jacket and rain pants.

The fleece layer is essential. The down vest was great as an insulating layer under the rain jacket. It got really cold during those afternoon thundershowers. I probably should have left the 2 cotton t-shirts home, but they are the Troop t-shirts, and everybody had to have at least one for appearance sake. I also took some camp shoes, that I only wore twice. My hiking boots are pretty comfortable, so I didn't feel like I needed to take them off after a long hike. Other hikers in our crew were quick to change to camp shoes after hiking. I had no issues with blisters and only used wool socks (without liners). My boots were definitly not waterproof. For hiking in Southern California you need ventilation and rain is rare. My boots got regularly soaked on this trek, but they usually dried quickly, especially sitting by a nice hot campfire.

Miscellaneous:

I took a bunch of extra batteries for my camera and GPS. I didn't really need as many as I took. The batteries in the camera were swapped out on day 6 after 400+ pictures, and they weren't dead yet. The new alkalines in the GPS lasted just as long. My LED headlight is so small and lightweight and the batteries in that seem to last for years. Needless to say, I didn't need the extra batteries I took for that.

I took my Leatherman Wave as a pocket knife. This thing is very heavy, but useful. I really didn't need to use anything but the knife. Next time I'll just take a small pocketknife, or a smaller, lighter multitool.

I also took a paperback book to read. I managed to read over 300 pages relaxing in the tent before bedtime.

The boys had several decks of cards and one night we played 2 deck Hearts with all 9 of us. That was fun, and the cards always provided them with something to do.

My toiletries were all stuffed into a small ziploc bag. Unfortunately, trying to keep a bar of soap in there along with a toothbrush and contact lense cases ended up being a slimy mess. Next time I'll compartmentalize better. I should have kept the smellables away from the non-smellables.

We were up early again in order to make it to breakfast at 7am. We loaded up the cars and did our final checkout, then hit the road. The weather was heavy overcast and it was very cold in Basecamp. The Tooth of Time was obscured by the low clouds, and I'm sure that at the higher elevations it was mighty cold. I was glad we finished our trek before this weather hit.

Our plan was to head back up to Cimarron, then head east to pick up I-25. I had just over a quarter of a tank of gas and I was pretty sure we could make it to Las Vegas, NM. When we got to the first exit in Las Vegas, Bill ran out of gas! He managed to coast off the freeway and make it to the first gas station. That was cutting it a bit too close for comfort.

From there we continued on to Albuquerque, where we stopped at a grocery store and bought some steaks to grill for dinner. The entire way on I-40 across New Mexico and Arizona was dry but there were huge thunderstorms to the north and south of us. When we approached Flagstaff, the skies over us turned black and the rain really started coming down. Great! We were going to be camping one last night and this was not a good sign.

We made it to our campground for the night. We had the same sites that we had on our way out to Philmont. We managed to get the charcoal lit and dinner cooked even though it was raining hard. The scouts set up their tents in the rain and we had a really nice dinner. I ended up sleeping in the car to stay dry.

The next morning we packed up and headed into Sedona for breakfast. We found a place that had an all you can eat breakfast buffet. Alex went through 5 plates of food. We left there very satisfied!

From there we headed to Phoenix for a gas stop, and then Bill, his 2 sons and brother David continued on the I-10 to Riverside to drop David off. The rest of us in my car headed down to the I-8 towards San Diego. We stopped in Yuma at an In-N-Out Burger for lunch and were home by 4:30pm.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

We got up before dawn and were hitting the trail by 6am. This was our earliest wake up call, and our last day on the trail. Our plan for today was to hike up to Schaefer's Pass, then along Tooth Ridge to the Tooth of Time, and finally down to Basecamp.

The hike up to the pass was tiring, but not too hard. Once we got up past Schaefer's Peak the trail became very rocky. This makes the going very hard. You have to really concentrate on every step so you don't break an ankle. I was really glad to have a hiking pole in sections like these. It gives you much better balance and relieves some of the pressures on your joints.

We ended up taking frequent breaks and enjoyed the views from Tooth Ridge. Slowly but surely we were getting closer and closer to the Tooth of Time.

We finally arrived at the trail junction for the Tooth of Time. There is a small spur trail that takes you up to the summit. We dropped off our packs, grabbed our lunches and scrambled up the 500 feet to the Tooth. This is a very hard climb and it is just bouldering your way to the top. There isn't really any trail. We took some pictures, ate some food and then got back down to our packs. There were lots of other crews there, and this was the most crowded spot we encountered on the trail in 10 days.

The hike down Tooth Ridge to the Basecamp was very long and the switchbacks seemed to go on and on forever. We could see Basecamp getting closer and closer. On the way down we got rained on, but it just kept us cooled off.

We came in to Basecamp and took some pictures at the "You Made It" sign. We had hiked almost 14 miles today, and we did over 75 miles for the entire trek. Our original itinerary had us doing 59 miles. My GPS kept really good track of our daily progress, and I only went through 2 sets of batteries. My pack started the trek at 53 pounds and it was 38 pounds at the end (no more food and empty of water).

Once we got back to the Welcome Center we had to check in and get everything signed off and returned. We got assigned to some tents in the Homebound tent city, then we returned all of our borrowed gear - pots, pans, dining fly, bear bags, ropes, etc. We picked up our Philmont Arrow patches and finally got showered and changed into clean clothes.

We had planned on doing a tour of the Villa Philmonte at 4pm, but we didn't get back to basecamp until 3pm. We had to get all of the check in stuff done by 5pm and it took that long. David did head over there and got to take the tour. I was bummed that I didn't get to do the tour, but I was too tired to care at the time.

We had dinner in the dining hall and did some last minute shopping at the trading post. We had some more rain that afternoon and saw a beautiful double rainbow. That night we attended the campfire program, then went straight to bed. What a great adventure the last 10 days have been!

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

Our itinerary had us heading to Clark's Fork for the last night on the trail. We were supposed to take the high trail from Red Hills up to Big Red, over Comanche Pass to Black Mountain, then down to Schaefer's Pass and descend down to Clark's Fork. This trail was entirely dry, so we would have to take lots of water with us. It was also very high elevation most of the way. The staff at Clear Creek had recommended that instead we detour slightly north and hit the staff camp at Cypher's Mine, then follow the Cimarroncito River down to Clark's Fork. This looked like a better plan.

From Red Hills we had to climb back up and over a ridge to get on the right trail down to Cypher's Mine. There were several trails we could take, and we ended up taking the shortest, which was a jeep trail. The jeep trail was the most direct route and it had the fewest number of switchbacks. The jeep trail was downhill all the way, so shorter was better. This was going to be a very long hiking day. We ended up hiking over 10 miles.

We got to Cypher's Mine by 10am and were first given a tour of the Contention Mine. The mine is basically a tunnel that goes into the mountain about 400 feet and dead ends. We donned our helmets and took our flash lights. When we got to the end, the tour guide told us all about how if there was a mine collapse, we would have to find our way out without lights (wouldn't want to use up the oxygen if we were using lanterns). We made a human chain and shuffled our way out. That was pretty fun, if you aren't afraid of the dark or claustrophobic.

After the mine tour, we headed over to the Blacksmith's shop where we made a J-hook. Everyone got a chance to work the steel and this was pretty interesting. Just don't hit the anvil with the hammer or you'll have to apologize to "Betty" for hitting her in the face.

From there we ate our lunch and hit the trail. We had a long way to go to get to Clark's Fork. The trail from Cypher's Mine followed the North Fork of the Cimarroncito Creek through a very narrow and scenic gorge. We must have crossed the creek over 60 times on either narrow log bridges or big rocks.

Our next stop was at the Phillips' Hunting Lodge. This is another cabin similar to the Fish Camp we saw earlier. Lots of hunting trophies adorned the walls. We got a quick tour of the cabin from the staff and had some trail snacks.

The trail to Clark's Fork went through a Demonstration Forest. This forest had lots of sign boards along the trail that explained the different ways that Philmont manages the forest and logging activities. We saw a good size rattlesnake along this trail.

Clark's Fork is a cowboy camp and they offer a chuckwagon dinner. Wow, real food! We were looking forward to this meal. We set up camp and got to take showers. After 6 days without a shower we were all smelling pretty ripe. We also did some boot branding. I had my scout hat branded with the Philmont cattle brand, the Bar P crazy S.

The chuckwagon dinner was beef stew and biscuits, with peach cobbler for dessert. We were all stuffed. It rained briefly during the dinner, but the skies cleared up and it was dry quickly. Clark's Fork puts on a campfire show, so we headed over to the campfire after playing some horseshoes. We went to bed after that in anticipation of an extra early departure in the morning. This was our longest hiking day so far and tomorrow was going to be even longer. My feet had held up well so far, but the bottoms of my feet were feeling like they were being beat on by a hammer.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

We got another early start in anticipation of our hike today up to Mt. Phillips. This is one of the highest peaks in Philmont at 11,711 feet. You don't want to be up there in a lightning storm.

The trail from Clear Creek is just over 2 miles to the summit, but it climbs over 1,500 feet. The trail is very rugged and in some places you are climbing at a 45 degree angle. We took it slow (we put the adults in the lead) and were able to make it up in just about 2 hours.

The views from Mt. Phillips were amazing. Looking to the west you could see Angel Fire and the ski resorts nearby. From here the hike should be mostly downhill. We took lots of pictures and some of the scouts made phone calls. This was the first cellphone coverage we were able to get in the backcountry.

We started down to our camp site for the night, Red Hills. This was a pretty remote camp site and for the first time on the trek we had a camping area all to ourselves. I don't think this camping area is used on many treks. We set up camp early and I ended up in the tent laying down and reading for several hours. The scouts were bored so David made a teeter-totter from a couple of logs that straddled the creek. The scouts (and adults) had a blast messing around on the teeter-totter for over an hour.

The skies stayed clear, although we did hear some thunder and lightning during the afternoon. It was much cooler today.

That evening we had the dreaded Vegetarian Chili for dinner. We were warned by other crews about this dinner. It tasted OK, but it brought instant gastric flatulence in the extreme to everyone. We made a campfire and played a game of hearts with all 9 of us (double deck of cards). That evening we thought we heard thunder coming again, but it was a pair of B-1 bombers that were flying down the valley at tree top level. That was really cool to see.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

We packed up our still wet tents and gear and continued our hike up the Rayado Creek to our destination for today, Clear Creek and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. This was an easy day of hiking and we only had a few miles to go, but the elevation was getting much higher at over 10,000 feet. The day was nice and sunny and we hoped that it would stay that way.

We arrived at Clear Creek and got our briefing from the staff. The activities here were numerous. Black powder rifle shooting, beaver trapping and tomahawk throwing. We found a campsite and set up our tents and equipment to dry out. It is amazing what a few minutes in the sun will do to dry stuff out. I put up my tent and got all of my saturated rain gear out in the sun and it was completely dried in about 30 minutes.

Our first activity was the black powder rifle shooting. You had to bring your own target. We ended up shooting hats, and various bits of paper. Alex shot a hole in his old camp shoes and ended up getting a direct hit that took his laces right through the hole. Ian put a nice big hole in his scout cap. I shot at my bandana and thankfully missed. I didn't really want a 50 caliber hole in it.

After lunch we relaxed in the nice weather and did some tomahawk throwing target practice in anticipation of the big contest between crews that evening. We also watched a demonstration of how they trapped beavers - simulated, of course. The Clear Creek crew also provided various services such as haircuts and knife sharpening. We saw a couple of kids from other crews getting mohawks.

The other contest that evening was to create a trash animal. Each crew had to create an animal from their garbage. Mario worked on this with David and they made a very nice elephant. That evening the advisor's coffee was where the animals were taken and judged. We won first place (some extra squeeze cheese). Then after that we competed in the tomahawk throwing contest. Each crew picked their top 2 during the day. Each person got to throw 3 hawks. Travis managed to stick one and advance to the next round. The contest went on and on with no one able to stick another hawk. Finally in sudden death overtime, Travis nailed one and won a nice hand made trophy stick.

Thankfully it was a dry day and it stayed dry that night. Clear Creek was one of our favorite stops on our trek.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

We managed get on the trail early. Things were starting to dry out again. Our hike today was going to be our longest yet. We hiked out of Apache Springs and over past where we did our conservation project. We took the new trail there and it went up and over and up and over a couple of ridges past Bear Canyon and Buck Creek. Our first destination was the Phillips Junction Commissary where we needed to pick up food for our final days on the trail.

We got to the commissary around 11:30am. Thomas got all of the food for our crew, and we ate our lunches. The commissary also had a small store where you could buy various supplies. I bought a long sleeve T-shirt, and we also topped off our fuel supply.

It was starting to rain as we left Phillips Junction, but it was short lived. The skies continued to look threatening as we hiked further up the Rayado Creek.

We made it to our campsite just as the skies really opened up. First was hail and then hard rain. We stood around and waited out the rain and then decided we at least needed to set up the dining fly. I was only wearing a sweat soaked T-shirt under my rain jacket and I started getting the shivers. Hypothermia is not something you want to mess around with, so I changed shirts, put on fleece and my down vest under the rain jacket. After that I was fine. We got camp set up and made an early dinner.

The rain was short lived. We started a camp fire to help dry everything out. Comanche camp was on a sloped hillside up and away from the creek. My tent ended up being pitched on an area that was less than level. All night I kept gradually sliding down my air mattress.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

We took a bit longer to pack up camp after all of the rain, but we managed to hit the trail by 8:30am. Packing up soaking wet tents is not very fun. We headed up and over Webster Pass on our way to Fish Camp.

Fish Camp is a nice log cabin where the Phillips' would spend time fishing out of the Rayado River. It is at the junction of the Agua Fria and Rayado Creeks. We arrived there about 10:30 and got a tour of the cabin. The program activities there were fly tying and fishing. We did the fly tying, but didn't have enough time to hang out and fish. The fishing was catch and release around the cabin and you needed to be farther away if you wanted to keep the fish. You also needed to purchase a fishing license in order to fish. For the scouts it was only $2.50, but a one day license for adults was $17.50!

We had lunch at Fish Camp and it started to rain. Thankfully, it was a very light rain and we were able to continue our hike to Apache Springs. The hike up the Agua Fria Creek was spectacular with all sorts of wild flowers in bloom. The farther into Philmont we hiked, the better and better the scenery got.

Apache Springs is a staffed camp, and we were going to have a layover day there. The program activities there were Apache Indian Life, archery, sweat lodge, and we were also able to do our conservation project there.

We had our first food pickup there, and we were able to score some real tortillas and make chicken, rice and bean burritos for dinner. That night we got hit again by rain showers. We are actually getting used to being soaked every day.

The next morning we got up and walked about half a mile to where the conservation project area was. We did 3 hours of trail work. There was a new trail built recently and we were decommissioning the old trail by burying logs across it to stop erosion and allow plants to fill in over top.

After lunch we did some laundry at the staff cabin wash basin, and then did the sweat lodge. Sweat lodge was interesting. There is a big bonfire where the staff heats up buckets of rocks. You fill up several buckets of water and take them over to a small hut which is covered in canvas. We had 5 scouts in one hut, and 4 adults in the other. It was very wet, muddy and cramped. Then in comes the bucket of hot rocks and a bucket of water. The door is covered up and it gets very dark inside. You sprinkle the water on the hot rocks and get an instant sauna. The temperature inside was soon up to 150F and we were all just pouring out the sweat. We stayed in the hut for about 20 minutes and were just about ready to pass out from the intense heat. When you come out of the hut, you douse your whole body with a bucket of cold water. This closes up your pores and cools you off nicely. It was the best shower we had on the whole trip! I felt amazingly clean after this, even though we didn't use any soap.

Things in camp were just starting to dry out completely when we had another huge afternoon thundershower hit us. This unfortunately forced the cancellation of the archery activity that afternoon. It was nice having a day off of hiking, now we just need a day off of rain.

Photo album for the entire trip is here (click on the arrows at the top of each page to navigate).

This day started out with us heading back up to the rock climbing area. Clear skies had us soon getting our climbing gear on. There were two climbing lines set up on a very large rock face on the mountain. Hard and harder, take your pick.

The scouts had a good time and everyone made it up one or both of the lines. I decided to also give it a try and had no problem getting up the rock face. The rappeling back down was very fun. That was the first time for me.

We got back to the staff cabin, picked up our packs and headed to our next stop, Crater Lake. Crater Lake is a staffed camp and home to the Continental Tie and Lumber Co. The activity there was spar pole climbing and lumberjacking. We got there at 11:30am and were told that the next opportunity for spar pole climbing would be at 1pm. We sat down in the shade and ate our lunches. By noon, the skies were threatening. Thirty minutes later we were in a full scale thundershower and getting drenched. We ended up hanging out in one of the out buildings for about 2 hours waiting for the storm to quiet down. We were unable to do the spar pole climbing due to the rain.

Eventually the rain quieted down a bit and we decided to hit the trail to our camp for the night, Lower Bonito. We hiked up and over Fowler Pass and then got on the wrong trail. It turns out that we followed a bit of a short cut down to the meadow at Lower Bonito. It started off looking like a trail, but it just disappeared when it hit the meadow (which was full of cows and lots of cow pies). Our crew leader, Thomas, did some expert map reading and got everyone pointed in the right direction, even though my GPS was leading us in the opposite direction to what must have been an older waypoint for the campsite. The map was way more current than the waypoints in the GPS database. The GPS confirmed exactly where we were on the map.

We found a campsite and were just getting everything set up when the skies really opened up. We got totally soaked and the heavy rain lasted for several hours. The temperatures started dropping and we were lucky to get a roaring fire started. Once the fire was going we at least had some heat. A lot of our clothing was already wet from doing laundry at Miner's Park. My tent's rain fly was just saturated and I ended up getting a bit wet inside the tent. Drip, drip, drip all night inside the tent. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.

This was probably our most challenging day yet, but we were able to manage to deal with the tremendous rain. This was our least favorite camp site on the whole trek. Cow pies everywhere, and everything got completely soaked and muddy from the rain. Everyone was looking forward to drying conditions in the night, but we ended up getting more heavy showers.

Photo album for the entire trip is here.