We stopped at 6:40 am for breakfast on a hillside with a great view of Mt. Baldy -- our first glimpse of it from the trail. This was the spot where David Arneberg would say goodbye and end his duties as our Crew Ranger. He asked us to all sit for ten minutes of complete silence and then describe what we saw and heard and smelled. It was very inspiring!

We arrived at the Dan Beard staffed camp (elev. 7920) at 8:00, where the crew participated in several challenge events. The highlight was Elias finally making it over the wall! We left Dan Beard at 11:00 and hiked up some switchbacks, then along a dry creek bed.

After climbing a steep path to Sioux Camp at 1:45, we set up our tents and hung the bear bags. Then we ate a quick lunch and high-tailed it a mile to Ponil -- the largest staffed camp in all of Philmont. There we immensely enjoyed the hot showers, the cold (!) root beer, laundry sinks, the commissary, and the cantina show, the best musical show at Philmont. Afterward, we sang our fancy barbershop harmony tag to the Philmont Hymn to the staff -- our first "public" performance.

We hiked back to our campsite by headlamp and slept under a blanket of magnificent stars that night. It was the last time we'd see David, who had to sneak out very early the next morning. (He "just happened to find us" to spend another day with us after his official ranger duties were over...nice way to spend his day off!) Final distance for today was 10.12 miles at an average pace of 24:00 min/mile.

Here are a some photos I took with my new Canon 70D camera.

- Tom Arneberg (toma@arneberg.com)        

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