We had planned to sleep until 5:45 this morning, but the people in the row of tents across from us woke us up at 5:25. I repacked some gear and we went to breakfast at 6:30. After breakfast we had a pack shakedown, which lasted until 8:30. Then we carried our gear to the welcome center, and walked to the villa. We had an hour and a half tour of it. The Villa Philmont has been maintained as Waite Phillips had it, and was a really neat house to tour. Then we went back and put our carryons and extra gear into secure storage. We went and bought more ice cream from the snack bar because it was our last chance before we would hit the trail. Lunch, the last meal prepared for us, was at 11:30. After lunch we made the final preparations and weighed our packs. Mine was 47 pounds. Our bus for our starting point, Ponil Turnaround, left at one.

We passed through Cimarron, and the rangers on the bus pointed out landmarks. We got to the turnaround at about 1:30, and left after more training at about 2:15. While we had been there, a horse had stepped on our bear rope. To get the horse to move off of it, Mr. Hughes hit it. Instead of the horse moving a few feet as hoped, the horse ran with the rope caught on its leg. We had to cut the last few feet of rope. Along the way to our campsite, we stopped at Ponil for the cantina, and "famous" (within Philmont) root beer, at 2:50. The root beer was very good. We left at 3:25. DJ led us down the wrong trail, turning the day’s planned two mile hike into nearly eight miles. We finally got into the trail camp, Sioux, close to 7:00. We had additional ranger training as we set up camp. Dinner was chicken and noodles. By the time we got done with dinner, desert (pound cake with apple filling, courtesy of the ranger), bear bags, and discussing the day, it was 11:00.

Day 6: Monday, July 6

We woke up at 5:00 today. We got packed and left just after 6:30. I was trailblazer for the day. We got into Bent Camp for breakfast. While water was being filled, Brian and I went looking for the trail out of camp, which was turned out to be further from the camp than shown on the map. We are quickly learning that the Philmont sectionals are far from completely accurate. After finding several dead trails and speaking to a ranger from another crew, we found the correct trail. It was a steep climb up to the top up Wilson Mesa, but we had a comfortable breeze and wonderful views, including of the Valle Vidal to the north. We took a 15 minute break where it leveled off. We then climbed a little higher before reaching a place where it leveled off for good. While we rested in another meadow, two F-16s flew low over us, very near to the speed of sound, at 10:31. We continued on and arrived at our lunch spot at about 11:45. We had a really nice spot, with a view across a pond towards Mount Baldy.

We left there at about 12:35, and reached Pueblano Staff Camp after a steep and fast decent at 12:54, just in time for the 1:00 spar climbing program. Unfortunately, it rained for hours, canceling the program, so we walked 45 minutes up the trail to our unstaffed camp at Pueblano Ruins. We set up and cooked dinner, which consisted of beef stroganoff and last night's pudding (we had the pound cake instead, remember) with tonight’s Oreos crushed in. That was Mark’s idea.

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