| The Fourth of July dawned
clear and warm after the brief thunderstorm the night before.
The Brumbys arose early and made pretty quick work of retrieving
the bear bags, breaking camp, having breakfast, and packing
up.
Not far up the trail, a somewhat obscure
junction called for a quick map check. Were we at the turnoff
to go up and over Hart Peak? Nope. The junction was still
ahead. |
 |
 |
The hiking was easy as we continued up the North Ponil Creek
valley through open grassy meadows to Indian Writings Camp.
We passed a covered archaeological dig and stopped to check
it out. No staff were around so we didn't get the full story. |
 |
 |
At Indian Writings we asked for and received
permission to fill our water bottles from the camp spigot.
Even though it came from a tap, we still had to treat it with
Polar Pure. We took a modest break among a clump of trees
just up the trail from the turnoff to Hart Peak to build our
reserves for the 900-foot climb to the summit. |
| Hart Peak was our first climb in the Philmont
heat and high elevation. We kept the pace modest, and less
than an hour later were on top. We got a bit confused about
where we actually were because of a new fire road that wiped
out part of the trail. The map showed a sort spur trail to
the south leading to the actual peak, so we headed that way |
 |
 |
We found interesting exposed rocks shaded by
towering Ponderosa Pines and with a distant view of Baldy.
It was too early for lunch, but we took a long break for water,
snacks, and to rest our feet. Because of the new fire road,
which led to a large burn to the north, we had trouble finding
where the trail took off down the other side of the mountain
toward Ponil. It took us almost an hour to find it. |
The trail down the west side of Hart Peak to Ponil
was steeper and shorter than we had come up. It was also rocky
and sunny. |
 |
 |
Ponil is a big staffed camp. In the early days
of Philmont, it was the base camp. We found it to be dry,
dusty, hot, and not particularly hospitable. We were supposed
to have a horseback ride, but all the wranglers were out to
the rodeo in Cimarron for the holiday. The crew did impress
the staffer who accepted our compressed garbage -- he couldn't
believe this was our second night on the trail. |
| Every Philmont crew is expected to perform
three hours of conservation or trail work some time during
their trek. Daniel had arranged for us to do ours at Ponil,
so after a very quick lunch we met the conservation staffers.
They had us spend the afternoon building a low rock wall
blocking a road to one of the wrangler's cabins. We had
to quarry the rocks from the adjacent hillside and cart
them to the site by wheelbarrow or rolling. Some of the
crew had the great idea to use a giant boulder, but it proved
to be too big even for them to move. Nick came down with
heat exhaustion in the 100° heat and had to be treated
in the shade. We got our wall built, and it didn't look
too bad. |
 |
| We then had to rush to set up camp, seemingly
at the far end of the valley, and get our cooks to the chuckwagon
dinner where they were to help make beef stew and peach cobbler.
The cobbler never happened, so we and the rest of the crews
at Ponil that night had stew and canned peaches. At least
we didn't have to cook it. After dinner there was time to
visit the cantina for a root beer. |
 |
As dusk descended we gathered around Ranger
Doug for a final evening of reflection together. The next
morning Doug would catch a bus back to base and prepare to
meet another crew. The Brumbys were confident, capable, and
working well as a team. We were sorry to see Doug leave, but
sure of our ability to complete our trek and have a lot of
fun along the way. |
| Bear bags were part of our daily routine. We
had many of these large, tough bags in which to hang our food
and other "smellables" every night and every time
we left camp unattended. Tossing the rope was sometimes challenging,
and always a sport. The bags were heavy and required teamwork
to hang and retrieve. |
 |
