David Parmly, Knoxville Tennessee

Know the difference between “PRINCIPLES” and “TECHNIQUES”. Techniques vary by day, by crew, by circumstance; Principles never vary, regardless of the circumstances. "Keeping the group together in the backcountry" is an example of a PRINCIPLE. You never violate this principle. It is needed for safety reasons and to violate it endangers the lives of a lot of people. Keeping a group together is done in the interest of safety, first and foremost. A crewmember who has a medical emergency, or an accident, if he is outside the vision of the entire crew, is more likely to have their condition unnoticed during those first crucial minutes. Crews that hit trail junctions, if they are not together, have a higher likelihood of splitting up. A crew that has a wide disparity in athletic ability or fitness must be aware of this reality and adjust their style to adhere to this Principle.

Each crew is so unique it's virtually impossible to apply one technique that will fit all of their needs/capabilities in every circumstance. Younger crews often will have a wider spread in individual capability. This disparity can show itself on tough sections of trail, like steep hills. A TECHNIQUE that may be used by your crew to maintain the PRINCIPLE of keeping the group together is the caterpillar method. A soccer star crew leader might apply the technique of caterpillaring even though he personally doesn’t need it so his crew could maintain the principle of staying together, advisors included. Know your crew's capabilities.

Another example of a PRINCIPLE is the Bearmuda Triangle (BMT). However, its shape will vary from site to site. Where you set up your personal tents is a TECHNIQUE. The fact that they must be outside of the BMT is a PRINCIPLE. Keep backcountry PRINCIPLES adhered to at all times. Everything else is just a TECHNIQUE.

Philmont doesn’t “Give” you anything: Every day on the trail you will be challenged in some way, shape or form. Any day that looks easy on the map, won’t be. So many factors can arise to challenge you, and you cannot predict them. A short day of hiking turns long because storms have swelled the “creek” until it’s too wide to jump, too deep to cross without filling your boots, too little stuff around to build a bridge, etc., etc. Suddenly, your 2-hour hike has turned into 4 hours and you missed your program, got to camp just in time to get pounded by rain. That long gradual climb you saw on the map that didn’t look so tough turns out to be pretty tough and then just before getting to camp it runs straight up hill for a kilometer before dropping into camp. You didn’t see that on the map? Neither did I, but it happened. Oh, that is the morning you picked up 4 days worth of food so your packs were at their heaviest of the trek. You see what I mean? There are NO EASY DAYS at Philmont. Some will be easier than others yes, more fun than others, yes, but every day you have to wake up with the mindset that you are going to go out and throw a lariat around the galloping bull known as Philmont, then grab it by the horns and drag it down and tie it up. Then get up and do it again the next day.

Rain might dictate what you wear, but should not dictate what you do. And the corollary: Breathable, Waterproof Rain Gear is a 100% necessity: If I hear anyone talk about going to Philmont “on the cheap” with an El Cheapo vinyl rain suit, or a poncho, I’ll say you aren’t ready to go to Philmont. There are plenty of reasonably priced GTX suits or the equivalent that this is do-able for every trekker. Beginning in mid to late July at Philmont, the monsoon season begins. Daily rain, usually around 2:00-4:00 pm., lasting between 1 and 3 hours. A breathable, waterproof rain suit will mean that the rain will change what you wear, not what you do. Case in point: Head of Dean/Day 7: Got to camp, set up before the rain, then rain just at lunch time. The guys could have huddled under trees but chose to go eat on the out-in-the-open picnic tables in front of the cabin. After lunch, the guys played stump ball, played chess, and hung out. All in the rain. Chess? In the rain? Sure. You have the luxury of ignoring the rain if you have a rain suit that keeps you completely dry. Frankly, our youngsters were less bothered by the rain than I was. They seemed to take it in stride just fine, while I was often quite irritated by the daily downpours. The fact of daily rain might dictate some of your schedule, because I recommend setting up camp at a time of day OTHER than during a downpour. But that’s just me.

Think of the Crew First, then the Individual when setting up camp. But “Thinking of the Crew first” can look different on different days. Most websites, guides, etc., state to set up the dining fly and hang the bear bags first when getting to camp and that is generally sound advice…in theory. But Philmont is a place that should also teach you to make your own decisions, not merely follow a checklist. See Item 1 RE “Principles and Techniques”. A crew may roll in to camp accompanied by thunder rumbling. In that case, the crew leader may direct individual tents to go up first then come back and get the bear bags up and dining fly out. It’s not so bad hanging a bear bag in the rain, or even a dining fly. But setting up personal tents in the rain is not a good thing. Note that I am NOT advocating to disregard bear procedures: (PRINCIPLE: Never leave your site without having all smellables up.) However, to leave the packline, covered by the dining fly or with pack covers on near the fire ring for the 20 minutes it takes everyone to get their tents up is not an unforgivable breach of bear protocol. Your tent has got to be 100% dry inside if it is going to be the last, safe haven that it becomes each day.

A different illustration of the same principle is that even when the crew says they want to eat first upon getting to camp, do not listen to them. On Dave Parmly’s Crew 506 trek, on Day’s 1 and 2, the Crew Leader directed the appropriate priorities to take place before eating, even though everyone was saying that they were hungry: Crew Leader said, “No dice”. Bear bags went first, then the dining fly, then the tents, even though the crew complained of being hungry and wanting to eat. On each occasion when this happened, rain hit at a time when we were eating, and after we had done everything needed to have a complete camp site. Do what you HAVE TO DO before you do what you WANT TO DO. It will pay off in the end. After the second time this happened, the crew gave compliments to their leader for his decisions and from then on, whatever he decided, they did without resistance.

“Roses, Thorns, Buds & Devotionals” (RTB&D) MUST BE DONE every day, no matter what. You get back to camp after the program campfire, it’s 9:00 pm and you want to get to bed. Great, but not before doing RTB&D. You want to get to bed early? Then do RTB&D right after dinner before the campfire, but DO NOT SKIP THIS EVEN ONE TIME! We heard the horror stories of crews disintegrating at mid-trek, etc., but it never happened with us primarily due to RTB&D being a part of their routine. Not to say we didn’t have conflict. Whenever I get the silly idea in my head that we did not butt heads from time to time, I remember three words: HEAD OF DEAN where our crew experienced its only meltdown of the trek. The open communication that is fostered by good RTB pays off when, in the event of inevitable conflict, the guys are accustomed to sharing their feelings, listening to the other and coming to a solution quickly rather than carrying around anger or frustration bottled up inside of them. RTB&D is the means by which you resolve conflict before you go to bed. Forgiveness, apology, accountability, appreciation, all get expressed in a good RTB&D. Advisors are full partners in the process, too, but the Crew Leader and the Chaplain are the keys to making it happen.

By the way, it’s nice to try to get away from camp for RTB&D when the circumstances allow it. Find a little spot close by but out where it seems like you are going off to do something special. If pressed for time, don’t waste a lot tromping around, so this is a technique, not a principle, but we found that getting in the open, where one could absorb the majesty of the night sky was a good way to bring about a sense of wonder and awe that is appropriate for devotions.

Get out of camp early and enjoy the trail. Some crews prefer a less-hurried approach to getting out of camp and that is a function of their crew personality. We found early hiking kept us from setting up in the rain, kept us walking in cooler weather, and allowed us to do the programs in the afternoon. It also allowed the guys to enjoy the trail along the way because they knew they were not under a time crunch. Nothing much fun happens between 5:00 and 8:00 am, so why stay there and do nothing? Get up, get going and get where you want to be…on the trail. Early hiking allows for packs-off breaks on Baldy Skyline, for appreciative looks around at green alpine meadows, for map checks that can be educational times rather than pressure packed moments of decision.

We did NOT do a good job of practicing this in our prep hikes, until right at the end of our training. RECOMMENDATION: Start this early in your prep process and make it your normal procedure. By the way, most kids are NOT wired to get up early enough to wake the crew at the appointed time. I’d recommend the job of Crew Alarm Clock as a job for an advisor. One alarm clock saves weight and allows the crew leader to delegate responsibility for wake-ups on someone other than himself and lets him get a little more sleep than if he were doing it himself. My recommendation: 4:30 am wake-up for the alarm clock, 0445 an early “nudge” to the crew leader, and then everyone gets a wake-up call at 5:00 am. We usually hit the trail at 6:45 am, but that’s because our crew chose to eat before getting on the trail, and chose to do a group regimen of stretching, as well as a process called “Yea God” in which we stand in a circle and everyone says one thing they want to thank God for, after which everyone takes a pull of water with a goal to finish or mostly finish, a full Nalgene before hitting the trail. This process adds about 45 minutes to our morning because those Nalgenes needed to be refilled before walking, but the crew enjoyed doing it. Oh and we were mostly “Morning People” when it comes to taking a dump, so a lot of guys would need to purge before hiking and that added time also. Of course, we typically arrived at our next campsite before the crews that left before us. They’d stop to eat, or take long packs-off breaks, etc. In 11 days, we were not passed by a single crew that we did not eventually re-pass and then stay in front of. Not that it was a race, because it wasn’t. We were pretty leisurely in our hiking pace, or it felt that way to us. We stopped to smell the roses along the way, we just tended to do it with packs on, then get going again.

Do your Conservation Project early on in the trek. This is one of those techniques that will vary with each crew, but if you can work the schedule to do this early in the trek, you take the pressure off from doing it at the last opportunity. We realized that if we had been a lot faster getting on the trail on Day 2, when the hike distances are usually very short, we could have knocked out “cons” and still been able to get to the afternoon program at Indian Writings. Day 2 was our slowest day, but we figured we’ll do cons later. We ended up being forced to the wall, to get them done at our last opportunity on a day when we really would have benefited from a relaxed day in trail camp.

Stuff happens. Don’t get uptight. Things will happen on the trail that will really make you mad, will really test your mettle as an outdoorsman and as a Scout. You’ll be the victim of backcountry staff misinformation (“The cons site is just down the trail from the Y. You can’t miss it.”) Rain will cancel your most-eagerly-anticipated program. You will lose your floppy hat somewhere on a staff cabin porch. The Crew in front of you at the showers on Day 7 will appear to believe they are the only crew on the trail at Philmont and you will run out of hot water. You will get disoriented on the trail on a day you REALLY want to get to your next site. Someone will need to stop to eat a snack before pushing on the last mile on that “long hike day” and everyone else will get mad about this.

When these things happen, do not get upset. That is a part of the Philmont experience. The finest steel is forged in a hot fire and we are all being tempered by the events on the trail, both the breathtakingly beautiful and the bone-crushingly frustrating. The youth will react the same way as they see their advisors behave. We are creatures of habit who consistently seem to be looking for “whose fault” something is, or who can we blame for something. Try very hard to get out of that mode on the trail at Philmont. The advisors can feed off the kids emotional outbursts.

Or everyone can commit to two things: 1.) Not sweating the small stuff and 2.) Not getting upset with a crewmember who reminds you “Not to sweat the small stuff”. The thought that a bad day on the trail at Philmont beats a good day anywhere else is really quite true…if you remember. And sometimes, things will turn around. Be cool with the staffer who tells you he just cancelled that anticipated program. Tell him your kids sure hoped to do it and to let you know if you decide to open it up again. You just might find that staffer running to your site to tell you to be down at the activity in 20 minutes…”We’re opening it up again”. Ask yourself: Would he have run up here to tell me that if you had chewed him out for making an arbitrary decision that disappointed kids who paid thousands of dollars to come all this way so you could stand on a porch just because it’s raining and you don’t want to get WET!!?? I’ll betcha he would not have. Neither would you, if you were him.

Don’t compare your trek to anyone else’s. There is an unfortunate tendency for Philmont Vets to try to play the old “up-manship” game, where we try to see that our experience sucked worse than anyone else’s on the Ranch.. It’s like asking “Which is better: An apple or an orange?” The question is ridiculous because there is no better or worse: They are simply different. One crew hikes in over the Tooth and tells crews that bus in that they haven’t REALLY done Philmont unless you come in on foot. Another crew sneers at kids who didn’t go up Baldy.

Another group says that “typical” treks are for wussies. Or “We got out of camp an hour before that crew…they must suck!” You might even hear guys in your own crew either saying these things, or worse, listening to other people say them. STOP! Each crew, each trek, is a unique experience. They are all roughly the same as far as when challenging things happen, (or else the “Eagles Soaring High” booklet devotionals wouldn’t make sense for the 40+-treks like they do for the single digit treks.) You will have plenty of company along the trail and in camp each night. They are having a unique experience, just as you are. The adventure our crew experienced in their team-effort to get to the 8:00 am bus for our Day-11 pick-up was just as memorable to us, probably, as the experience of the crew that hiked in over the Tooth. In any case, that was our adventure, and theirs was their own.