We didn’t get any more rain during the night, but it did get pretty cold.  I woke up at 4:48am – the first time I have ever slept through an alarm on a campout (lucky it had a snooze feature).  I got around and got the crew up at 5:00am.  Camp tear down was a little slow, but that was because we were playing the game a man short.  Chad’s spider bite had been getting markedly better over the last couple of days, but apparently was re-injured during the challenge events of yesterday.  When he got out of the tent and called me, his forearm was a swollen mess from his wrist to his elbow, and he looked like he felt really bad.  I immediately consulted with Jan and we decided to get Chad down to the Med Lodge at base camp as soon as possible.  Jan and I had a little discussion, and it was decided that Jan would accompany Chad down instead of me.  We got to the cabin at Urraca at 6:20am, and it took about an hour to get Chad’s situation worked out with base camp over the radios.  I could not believe that once again someone from my crew was going to have to be taken off of the trail.  I began to have all sorts of bad thoughts about the trip ahead.  We said our goodbyes, both to Chad & Jan, and to Sarah, our ranger.

We began hiking at 7:21am. The first part of the hike was back up the switchbacks we had descended yesterday.  They were fairly steep, but the boys did not complain about the climb.  I had planned on eating breakfast on top of the mesa, but the boys wanted to push on down to the trail intersection with the Toothache Springs trail.  While we ate breakfast we had our Thorns, Buds, & Roses for yesterday.  The major thorn was the loss of two of our crewmembers.  After breakfast, we began our next climb towards Crater Lake.  The trail we took reminded me of the new trail up Bear Canyon.  The switchbacks were situated in mixed pine and scrub oak, and allowed wonderful views of Tooth Ridge and the central Philmont peaks.  We took a pack break near the top of this climb, where Glenn and I noticed a “rock puzzle” – a freshly freeze broken boulder that we tried to put back together (a geologist's dream…).

Our second climb of the day led up to Bear Caves Camp, where we got a “little” lost, losing the trail for about 15 minutes.  The sectional map is wrong at Bear Caves.  The trail we needed to take starts out in exactly the opposite direction that it shows, with a switchback located just out of view down the trail.  We learned later in the afternoon that Crew 3 got a “little more” lost than we did here.  We walked all around Bear Caves, and finally decided to try the correct trail.  This trail led to the final climb up to Crater Lake.  We got to the cabin at 12:07pm.  The cabin had not changed since 1989 when my brother, Jason, staffed there.  The view from the cabin was just as beautiful.  We were assigned a camp, back down the hill we had just come up, and hurriedly ate lunch and hung bear bags so we could do the spar pole program at 1:00pm.

Josh was the first one up the pole, remembering how to climb it from 2 years ago.  Glenn, Allen, & I started grinning at each other as the boys climbed, and we finally went to get our long pants and long sleeved shirts so we could climb the pole, too.  We had begun worrying about Crew 3 because they had not arrived yet, but they walked through while we were climbing the pole.  The pole we were climbing had a beautiful view of the Tooth of Time from the top, and I got pictures of almost everyone with the Tooth in the background.  After all of the boys had climbed the pole, I climbed to the top with Allen as my “donkey,” and then Allen and Glenn climbed to the top.  We all shared a kiss with Miss Cari Biner before we came back down.  This was one of the highlights of my trek.  I didn’t climb the pole in 2000 when I had the chance, and had regretted not climbing it ever since.  As I was climbing the pole, Crew 3 came to the spar pole yard for instructions and to begin climbing.  I watched a few of them climb the pole, then went to set up my tent at camp before going back to the spar pole yard to watch the Crew 3 leaders climb the pole.  I got to see Elmer make it to the top of the pole, a very special sight. 

The crew went back to camp and set up their tents after the climbing.  Allen broke one of his tent poles and Josh broke one of his.  Another bad omen (that turned out to mean absolutely nothing).  The boys ran the camp, cooking dinner and cleaning up very efficiently.  We ate dinner at 5:15pm, and all of the camp duties were completed by 7:00pm with absolutely no complaints.  I walked up to advisor’s coffee at 7:30pm, and took a couple of pictures of the Tooth.  The tough man contest began at 8:00pm.  This is a contest where a single contestant from each crew at camp tells the most outrageous or funny “tough man” story and the crowd decides who the toughest man is.  Andrew represented our crew, and did a fine job as a one-armed man who had done battle with forest beasts including the dreaded bear.

After the tough man contest, we walked to the campfire area for another version of the Philmont Story campfire.The staffers played a couple of guitars, a mandolin, and a banjo, and were also very talented.I stuck around for a couple of songs, then headed back to camp to do my journaling before hitting the sack at 9:00pm. The crew would be getting up at 4:00am the next morning for an early hike to Fish Camp.