Saturday, July 27, 2013

Day 1

Monty at the Welcome Center
Our first food pickup at Camping HQ
Info about our conservation project
 Today was a very long day. We checked in and met our ranger. We picked up food and crew gear from Philmont. Our crew leader and lead adviser had to meet in logistics to review our itinerary. We had a gear shakedown, mostly to be sure we weren't missing anything important. We had to turn in replacement food to logistics for all four crew members with allergies. They will get it to the back-country commissaries where we will make our regular food pickups. None of this necessarily in that order, of course. Actually, a good amount of time was spent waiting. The rangers are prepared with card games, etc. Somewhere in there we found time to go to Tooth of Time Traders. It is a black hole that will suck your crew members and your money away. Be warned. I got a baseball cap; I'm not much a fan of hats, but I will wear a baseball cap if necessary.
After chapel that night, there were special meetings for the leadership team: the Crew Leader, the Chaplain's Aide, and the Wilderness Pledge Guia. I'm the Wilderness Guia for my crew, so I attended that meeting. It was pretty straightforward. They just went over the principles of LNT and the requirements for crew members to earn the Wilderness Pledge Award. It is the duty of the Wilderness Guia to make sure that the crew members earn that Award. You also recieve some paperwork and a booklet with the seven trail discussion scenarios for each of the LNT principles.
Later that night is the Opening Campfire, which was really interesting and great. I just happened to be having a migraine the whole time, so I wasn't really enjoying it. After that, I was in bed as soon as possible, trying to sleep the headache off. We had to make our bus sometime around ten the next day, so we weren't in a terrible rush. Tomorrow we hit the trail!

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