Scout trek

Scaling this geologic formation was a high point of the journey. From left, standing: Scott Stegink, Jackson Gray, Will Partridge. Seated, middle row: Christian Kelly, Alex Lee, Mitchell Krall, Daniel Krall. Seated, foreground: John Kelly and Christopher Gray.

The Philmont Ranch, a vast wilderness near Cimarron, New Mexico, is the Boy Scouts of America’s premier high-adventure camp, and has been singled out by Backpacker Magazine for its “high mountain splendor.”

“They may meet only one other group of Scouts on the trail in an entire day of hiking,” according to the magazine. “Even in the most crowded destinations, each Scout group camps in isolation, out of sight and sound of all other groups.”

It’s a landscape that commands respect and caution. A flash flood this summer swept four Scouts into the river, taking the life of 13-year-old Alden Brock of Sacramento, Calif. Troop 46, which calls its base St. Luke’s Methodist Church of River Oaks, weathered that storm in a camp just down the trail from the tragedy, but didn’t learn of it until later.

For Christopher Gray, assistant scoutmaster of Troop 46 in the River Oaks area, the survival training he and other leaders had had as young men helped them weather the storm. Accompanying Christopher and his son, Bellaire High School student Jackson, on this epic journey were Assistant Scoutmaster Daniel Krall and son Mitchell, a former HSPVA student; Assistant Scoutmaster John Kelly and son Christian Kelly, also of Bellaire; Alex Lee of St. Thomas High School; Scott Stegink of Lamar; and Will Partridge, who has since moved to Colorado.

The group prepared for the 12-day trip in true Boy Scout style – with exercise, gearing up, medical checks and planning. The boys, from 14 to 16, were experienced hikers who had done smaller trips; they knew how to cook on camp stoves, purify water and build a fire. “The kids were in charge; the adults are just the chaperones,” said Gray. “They read the maps, they figure out the route, they navigate, they organize cooking and setting up the tents.”

They set off for Philmont on Friday, June 19, and by Monday they were on the mountain with their big packs, hiking up to Deans Cutoff Camp.  On the third night they hiked up to Pueblano Ruins, where the boys roped a sawhorse and used a cattle brand to brand their hats. Day Four they made their way up to Baldy Town, a once-bustling gold-mining town, now a staffed base camp with a commissary at 10,000 feet located at the base of Baldy Mountain, the ranch’s highest peak. They explored the nearby French Henry Camp, allegedly the site of an ancient Aztec mine, and got to pan for gold; then they left their packs and tents in Baldy Town and, newly lightened of their loads, continued on up, summiting Baldy Mountain at 12,441 feet.

“Some of us were struggling with altitude issues,” said Gray. “We got hailstones, and it was white everywhere you could see with hail.”

The boys took it in stride and set up camp that night in Baldy Town. The next day, Day Six, they hiked to the Head of Dean Camp, and that’s the night it rained so hard that it flooded the entire camp. They awoke to a watery world and found that the hike they’d planned was no longer possible because the bridges were washed out. Little did they know that just down the trail, another group of Scouts had endured a night of horror that would make their own pale in comparison. Those boys were swept into the floodwaters of North Ponil Canyon around 4:30 a.m.; three were rescued by members of the camp staff, but they couldn’t get to Alden in time. A memorial service in Sacramento for the fallen Scout, who was remembered as a courageous, skillful and highly beloved lad, was attended by 800.

In the next six days the Houston Scouts’ re-routed hike would take them rock climbing, trail building and hiking up on Urraca Mesa, a wind-whipped highland redolent of spooky legends dating to indigenous inhabitants and Mexican vaqueros. They swapped ghost stories around the campfire. They camped at the foot of a towering formation called the Tooth of Time and in the morning, scaled it and had breakfast on top, surveying the green forests.

The boys made it home and declared the expedition a great success. The high point for Christopher was “seeing the kids work together as a group – cooking meals, pitching tents, organizing how things would get done. I learned the boys were capable of planning and organizing and taking the lead in these sorts of events, and the boys learned they could do it, as well.”

Grateful to be home safe, all took home a lesson they will not soon forget: one of the fragility of life in the face of nature’s fury.

Editor’s Note: Tracy L. Barnett’s Travel Buzz account of an ambitious father-daughter mountain trek.