Today was not much of a recovery day from summiting Baldy, as it was the first of three pretty tough days of hiking. We were all awake by 4:00 am in 50F temps, and were on the trail by 5:18, hiking by headlamp in the dark once again because it was so fun yesterday.

After some steep climbs, we were eating breakfast at Head of Dean by 6:40 am. Some of the staff there were still sleeping when we already hiked 2.93 miles! When they were all awake, we did an encore front-porch performance of the Philmont Hymn with some new parts added.

We left there at 8:51 and were at New Dean by 10:55, where we took a packs-off break and ate lunch. We rolled into Black Jack's, one of Philmont's remotest campsites, at 1:00 pm. The campsite was pretty far from the road, and took some detective work to find.

After setting up our tents, some of the boys went back to the road to relax in the shade of a huge water-collection system they had set up there -- two huge pieces of sheet metal channel rain water into a center trough, and store it in a large cistern with a spigot. Some of us washed up our bodies and clothes in the afternoon.

We enjoyed magnificent sunset views of the valley below during our chapel service, near the Toilet With A View, then we all went to bed around 9:00 p.m. Tomorrow would be an even longer day, when we cross over into Philmont's south country. (Total distance: 10.40 miles at avg pace of 24:06)

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

- Tom Arneberg (toma@arneberg.com)        

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