Day 11:

We woke up at 5:00 again, and were on the trail by 6:10. Our hike today is down Dean Canyon to Dean Cow Camp. We had some trouble finding the trail out of Head of Dean because the trail signs did not agree with the map. We stopped for breakfast at 7:15 at Upper Dean Camp, and were moving again by 7:50. The hike quickly grew hot and dry. When we were hiking though New Dean we saw a wild turkey. We arrived at Dean Cow around 10:30, and were escorted to our campsite. Today’s site is very small, and we are a long way from water.

We ate lunch and went to the rock climbing program at 1:00. DJ tried, but only hurt his knee worse.Because of the crowds on the easier face, I got talked into climbing the difficult rock face, which was not that bad after I got done flailing around on the bottom part. After we got to the top, we repelled down. The strangest sensation was going over the edge of the overhang. Will, Jon, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Hughes decided to sit out on the rock climbing program. When we went down from the program area, we were able to take showers at 4:00. After showers, we went back, cooked dinner, and went to sleep around 7:30.

Day 12: Sunday, July 12

We woke up at 5:00 again and were on the trail at 6:00. Since our sister crew lost two people form acute mountain sickness (AMS), Mr. Hughes will be hiking with them, since they go slower and it is wiser to have the crew with two advisors in the rear as a safety issue. Our climb started by going up the wall of Dean Canyon, and we got some really good views of where we had come from the day before, and Tooth Ridge, where we are going on the last day, in the future. We ate breakfast at the top of the ridge. We then dropped down into Turkey Creek Canyon, which is when the day began to grow very hot and dry again. When the canyon opened up, we crossed under 64, which runs through the middle of Philmont, and then over the Cimarron River. At that point, we were on the Vaca Trail, which was the OA Trail Crew’s 1995-1997 project. It was a nice trail with good views, but made less enjoyable because of the extreme heat. We finally reached Harlan at 11:30. We had trouble finding our campsite which was on the top of a mountain and very rocky with little flat ground for pitching tents.

After a quick and small lunch, we went down to the staff area, where we loaded the charge, wad, and birdshot into three shotgun casings. At two, we went down to the shotgun range, where we got to shoot at five skeets, with our three loaded rounds and two factory loads. That lasted until 3:00, after which we went back up to camp, relaxed some, and made dinner.

After dinner, Will did a religious service. At 7:00, we went down to Burro Racing, which was a lot morefun than I thought it would be. There were five burros to race. Each team consisted of a person pulling the burro with all their might and another hitting and yelling from behind to add persuasion. The burrows ran faster than we had thought, and the course was quite long- by the time a person reached the end, he was dead tired. I raced four times, two in each position. After the race, we went back up the campsite, where some went to sleep and a few of us stayed up to watch an amazing thunderstorm over Cimarron.

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