Philmont 2016 - Day 8 - August 10, 2016

We will hike from Camp Dan Beard to Ponil Camp today. It's about a six mile hike. We're all pretty tired from yesterday's long hike, so it will be interesting to see how we hold up. Before we leave camp, however, the boys are going to participate in some challenge activities. The main program at Dan Beard is a series of challenges that the crews have to complete. We had arrived too late in the day yesterday to do anything, so the plan was to do some of these first thing in the morning, and then continue on our way.

One of the challenges the boys faced was a climb over a wall onto a platform. The wall was probably about 12 feet high. They had to figure out how to get everyone on top, using whatever means they could think of. It took a little while, but eventually, they all made it to the top.

After they finished the challenge events, it was time to hit the trail. There were several incentives for us to get to Ponil. First, there were showers at Ponil!!! This would be our first opportunity to take a shower since leaving base camp five days earlier! Second, dinner tonight was a “chuck wagon dinner”, prepared by the Ponil camp staff, with some help from a couple of our crew members. Third, there was a trading post at Ponil, and we had been told that the root beer was really good.

Most of the hiking we had done to this point followed dry river beds and lake beds or crossed large meadows and cattle grazing fields. The trail from Dan Beard was a much more difficult trail, and was more like the trails we were used to hiking in Harriman State Park, with lots of rocks along the trail, and a lot of “ups and downs” as we hiked along one side of the canyon.

It was slow going, but we eventually made it through the canyon and onto easier terrain.

When we arrived at Ponil, we ate lunch and then got ready for our program activity. When we had met with the logistics staff at base camp at the start of our trip, we had to choose between horse back riding and shooting at Ponil. The staff needed to know in advance which we wanted to do, so that they would be prepared accordingly. The boys had chosen the shooting activity. We each had the opportunity to shoot a rifle, a pistol and a shotgun. I'm not really into shooting, but it was fun.

After we finished shooting, we set up our camp and waited for our scheduled time to use the showers.

It felt really good to have a hot shower. After the shower, it was time for us to go down for the chuck wagon dinner. It was beef stew and corn bread, with peach cobbler for dessert. I'm not sure if it would have tasted as good under normal circumstances, but after eating “Phil-food” for the past five nights, it sure did taste good then!!!

After dinner, the Ponil staff put on a cantina show. We all drank some root beer and watched the show.

It was actually a really good show. After the show ended, the staff said they were going to take a short break and then put on an “after show”. Some of the boys decided to head back to our camp site, but some of us decided to stay. The after show was even better than the main show! Afterwards, we headed back to our camp site to get some sleep.

The next day would be an exciting one … one of the program features of our itinerary included “burro packing”. It is what it sounds like … we would be given a burro (or two), that we could pack with some of our gear, and then we would take the burro with us to our next camp.