Back from a Philmont Pointcrawl

Just before sunrise while ascending the Tooth of Time, a Philmont landmark

Earlier this week, I returned from the most challenging physical activity of my life so far: a 12-day backpacking trek in Philmont, the historic scout camp located in the Southern Rockies of north-central New Mexico. I was one of the advisors joining a crew of Scouts, including my son, that successfully traversed more than 66 miles over 11 days of hiking, at altitudes ranging from 6,700 feet at base camp to over 11,000 feet at the peak of Mount Phillips. 

Throughout the trek, each member of the crew, including advisors, packed 30 to 40 pounds of equipment, including clothes, camping gear, 4 to 5 liters of water, and distributed food (2 to 3 days worth at a time) and cooking gear, giving me a new appreciation for the oft-ignored rules for Encumbrance.

In D&D terms it was a pointcrawl from camp to camp, which were either unstaffed trail camps, or staffed camps having activities for the Scouts such as fly fishing or blacksmithing. This map, from our crew t-shirt design, shows the location of each as we circled the southern portion of the ranch in a clockwise direction: 

And this chart shows the altitude at each of these camps. On day five, we topped 9,000 feet and I started to feel effects of lessened oxygen, chiefly being more quickly winded when exerting myself.

In addition to the weight, distance and altitude, challenges for the Scouts during their trek included navigation, which meant finding the best trail to each camp and staying on it; setting up a campsite each afternoon or evening and cooking dinner; dealing with the weather, which varied from hot and sunny to cold and wet; planning ahead for dry camps lacking a water source; and avoiding wildlife, such as the black bears that circled our campsite one morning, and ravenous mini-bears (chipmunks) trying to steal food. Despite a few setbacks, the crew did a great job overcoming these challenges and completing their trek, and I could not be more proud of them.

One day even included some "dungeon delving" when we went about a thousand feet into the Contention, a former gold mine. The trek also included a bit of gaming: one of the other advisors brought a reprint of a classic Choose Your Own Adventure book, House of Danger, and on two occasions when we had time after dinner, he read it to the Scouts, letting them take turns picking the path through the story, which was quite fun. 

Prepping for this trip consumed a lot of my free time over the last few months, so hopefully now that it is complete I will have more time for writing. In particular, I'd like to complete the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave adventure series on this blog, and write up the Expedition to Skull Stack Crater, a scenario I ran at the last Gary Con.