The was our longest and hardest day. We were originally scheduled to stay in Miner's Park, a staff camp, but we traded it for Tooth camp, a dry camp, to get us closer to tent city. This would allow us to do some touring in the Villa Philimonte and at the Saint James Hotel in town. Thus, we were up at 5:00. We hoped to catch the 8:00 rock climbing program at Miner's Park.
We got up in the dark and hiked up to the top of the mesa. As we reached the top, it got lighter and we saw the sun rise and light up the plains. We hiked out the third trail off the mesa. We came to a trail off the jeep road, which our map also showed as a trail, that pointed to Lover's Leap camp. I wasn't clear that this was the trail that we wanted so we stayed on the jeep trail. There were some interesting views along the way including the Tooth of Time at sunrise.
We came to a junction near Lover's Leap camp and realized that we could have taken the trail and maybe have saved a little time. There were several trails merging short distances apart from each other here, and it required several map consultations. We still ended up cutting through Lover's Leap camp site to get to another jeep road that seemed like it was more direct than the trail. The crew really poured on the steam going up the hills to try to reach Miner's Park by 8:00, the first program time for rock climbing.
We arrived at Miner's at 8:30 and had to sign up for the 10:00 rock climbing session. We stopped and ate breakfast here. The staff was very friendly and gave us hot water for our oatmeal so we didn't need to pull out the stoves. They asked about where we were from. After referencing the area to Asbury Park and Bruce Springstein, one of the staff started singing Uptown Girls and said she loved Springstein. Ahhh, I think Billy Joel sang Uptown Girls. We didn't say anything to her though.
We hiked out to the junction where the side trail leaves the main trail and dropped our packs. Rich stayed behind to watch the packs so we wouldn't have to hang the bear bags. (The staff at Beaubien, Uracca, and Miner's all reported that they had seen bears in the area and their droppings could be seen along the way.)
The hike to the rock climbing area was longer and hotter than you might expect, but it was cool by the rocks and there were great views of the other side of Uracca Mesa. There was one kid hanging out under the cool rocks just below the rock climbing area. He was complaining that his father made him come up there and he didn't want to be there because he was afraid of heights. I wonder how he would have done on Mount Phillips? Later I did see him over by the rock climbers where he had said he didn't want to go earlier.
The 8:00 rock climbing group was finishing up when we got there and we had to wait half an hour or so before they could begin with the 10:00 group. There was another crew that also had a long day head of them and really wanted to get through quickly. We decided the fairest thing to do would be to just go as one big group. After first climbing up the rock, you could repell back down the rock near by. John insisted that I get a picture of him climbing. Here it is John.
We finally finished around 12:00. I ran ahead back down the trail to tell Rich to get the pot boiling for lunch because the crew would be there shortly. It turned out that he had had it boiling for 45 minutes and had turned it off when we weren't back. It was back to a boil about the time the rest of the crew returned the side trail junction.
We hiked down to North Fork Urraca Camp and filled all our water bottles up at the creek to carry up to Tooth Ridge where there is no water. It began to rain and thunder as we were filling, but didn't last too long. Two water bottles and part of one filter got dropped into the stream so that had to be purified with Polarpure. Rich went ahead to Shaffers Pass camp because he carried a heavy jug of water. When we finished pumping water, we hiked up and met him at the camp. Rich pointed out where the "bear incident" happened on one of his prior trips.
We hiked up to the path that goes around Shaffers Peak. There were great views looking to the North West where the path reverses direction. Once around Shaffer's the trail took us onto Tooth Ridge. It is very narrow and rugged with many rocks to climb over. These may be the result of the blasting done by Waite Phillips when the trail was created. Here, Crew 1 crossed an all rock section of the trail, and you can see the narrow ridge with awsome views on each side and even ahead.
As we were crossing the ridge, we heard thunder from dark clouds over the adjacent peak. We hurried off the high section of the trail and the activity seemed to stop. The ridge is not the place to be during a thunder storm, and there is a plaque for a leader and a scout that were killed on the ridge by lightning. I never did find this plaque though. They recommend that you descend the ridge on the leeward side if you get caught in a storm as best you can. The last four words are the key words, in many places, that would appear to be a near impossibility. Considering the earlier thunder when we were filling our water jugs, the delay at the rock climbing site worked out well weather wise.
There is a side trail to Tooth peak. We dropped our packs and Rich stayed on bear duty while the rest of the crew hiked up to the peak. Rich said it would take about 15 minutes - he just forgot to tell us that it was nearly straight up and that you had to climb it on all fours. No wonder Rich volunteered himself to stay behind. (Actually, he has done it many times before and didn't want to muck up his knees on the way down.) Based on my ascent, if an advisor is going to have a heart attack, this is where it would probably happen. The hike is only from 8480 feet high at the side trail junction to 9003 feet at Tooth Peak, but it felt like climbing all of Mount Phillips in a span of 15 minutes. As I neared the peak, I was welcomed to the top by a voice that couldn't belong to anyone other than Harvey "No Cheese." Harvey was an adviser from another crew, and he joined Crew 1 on one of its shakedown hikes at Harriman.
Everyone made it to the top including this author. Yes, those are women that you see behind me. Philmont is coed. Also notice the storm in the back. We didn't stay up there too long with sunset coming rapidly and another 15 minutes down, half an hour walk to Tooth Ridge camp site and camp setup required. Several kids at the top from another crew wanted to stay for the sunset. I cannot imagine trying to pick my way down in the dark.
We hiked down, picked up our packs and hiked into Tooth camp. We were tired and it was getting dark, but the tents went up quickly and we ate dinner or rather the lunch that we switched with dinner and hit the sack after a short planning "camp fire" around one of "Doc's" candles. We opted for a 5:00 wakeup. Today was the only day that my feet got hot and it was mostly from all the rocks. The horizontal position felt really good.
Today's quote from Justin: Daylight come and I wanna go home. Tally man, tally me bananas. Same as yesterday's. Actually, I ran out of quotes and Justin really did say this frequently.
