Philmont Scout Ranch camps are a group of backpacking camps located in Philmont Scout Ranch, a large property in Colfax County near Cimarron, New Mexico, owned by the Boy Scouts of America and used as a backpacking reservation. Philmont operates from one large Base Camp which includes camping headquarters, the Philmont Training Center and Villa Philmonte, the Seton Museum, fire response facilities, cattle headquarters, and an administration area. As of 2014, there were 76 trail camps and 36 staffed camps. Philmont's camps are generally set no more than a couple of miles apart. Old camps are closed or relocated and new camps are opened every few years. Some camp sites are closed due to changing safety protocols. For example, camps were once located on top of Urraca Mesa and in the Baldy Saddle but these are unlikely to reopen because the locations are at risk for lightning strikes.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Base Camp
Base Camp is the center of all Philmont administration, ingress, and egress. Most of its area is occupied by Camping Headquarters; ancillary facilities include the Seton Museum (devoted to Ernest Thompson Seton's Woodcraft Indians and other works), the Philmont Training Center and Villa Philmonte, the fire response facilities, the cattle headquarters, and the administration area. Its population exceeds that of Cimarron on most nights of the summer, according to the hiker's pamphlet. Mark Anderson is the current head of programs.
The Welcome Center is a large pavilion, which serves as a waiting area for crews arriving or departing from the ranch as well as crews leaving or returning on a trek. The Welcome Center's small office offers check-in instructions and general information. The Camp Administration and Logistical Services manage registration and orchestrate all the ranch's operations.
There are two dining halls, one for campers and one for staff. Services is a large L-shaped building whose facilities include rental and return of gear and issuance of trail food, lockers, in which crews may store gear they do not want to take on the trail, and a post office, which handles mail for staff and crew members.
The infirmary has health officers who communicate with backcountry staff by radio and can dispatch vehicles to retrieve people if necessary. Tooth of Time Traders sells camping and backpacking gear as well as souvenirs. The snack bar is in the same building at the trading post and sells snack foods, ice cream, and beverages.
There are four chapels: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Latter-day Saints. Each chapel holds services every evening for incoming and some outgoing crews.
There are three tent cities: Trailbound, Homebound, and Staff. Each contains several shower houses. The staff tent city's capacity is roughly 900; Trailbound and Homebound each hold between 400 and 500 trekkers.
Western Horseback Riding Camps Video
Staffed camps
There are 34 staffed camps at Philmont, where staff members reside during the summer to run the camp's "program", which consists of a wide variety of activities. Camps often carry a historical or modern theme, such as logging (Crater Lake and Pueblano), mining or blacksmithing (French Henry, Cypher's Mine, and Black Mountain), fur trapping and mountain man life (Miranda, Clear Creek), challenge events (Dan Beard, Head of Dean, and Urraca) or Western Lore (Beaubien, Clarks Fork, or Ponil). The program in a camp is run by staff known as program counselors. These program counselors are supervised by a camp director.
Specific program activities include black-powder rifle loading and shooting, shotgun shooting and reloading, .30-06 rifle shooting, trail rides on horseback, burro packing and racing, rock climbing (on artificial towers as well as natural rock faces at Miner's Park, Cimarroncito and Dean Cow), tomahawk throwing, branding, search and rescue training, mountain bicycling, Mexican homesteading, blacksmithing, gold panning, obstacle courses, archeological sites, spar pole climbing, and a variety of campfires and evening programs.
Most staffed camps contain several campsites of the same sort which appear in trail camps (with the exception of French Henry); however, the primary distinguishing factor is the presence of one or several cabins. There is always a main cabin, where an arriving crew is given a "porch talk" by a staff member. This includes information about available program, location of trash receptacles, and other timely information such as the presence of "problem bears." Camps in the Valle Vidal (Seally Canyon, Ring Place and Whitman Vega) have yurts, large circular semi-permanent tents which allow for bear defense but may be removed in the off-season in the interest of leave no trace camping, rather than cabins.
Most staffed camps have a swap box -- a box in which crews may place unwanted food and take anything they might desire. Predictably, swap boxes tend to fill up with foods that people tend not to like, get too much of, or food few want to carry. Typical finds in swap boxes include sunflower seeds and apple cider mix, however on occasion much more valuable goods can be found, such as peanut butter, ritz crackers, et cetera. Some crews will have an unofficial organization system where one person will eat food the others don't like, cutting down on food waste.
With several exceptions, staffed camps accept garbage (not trash), send and receive mail, and offer purified water. The exceptions are those camps which have no road access or where the camps receive their supply shipments by burro. All staffed camps contain radios, by which staff members can communicate with Logistical Services, the Infirmary, or each other. The radio is used for all manner of communication, including notifications of the movements of the ranch's various vehicles, logistical inquiries between camps and Base, major and minor medical issues, and a nightly itinerary read-out which often includes world news and a weather forecast. The ranch's non-stationary staff are assigned unit numbers, by which they identify themselves on the radio. The ranch also employs a variety of esoteric radio ten-codes for rapid communication.
Current staffed camps
Trail camps
Trail camps do not have permanent staff. Trail camps typically contain several campsites, but are spread out over half a mile of trail or more, to avoid a sense of crowding. Each trail camp is identified by a map, attached to a tree or the side of a latrine at every trail which passes through it. Trail camps do not necessarily have a nearby water source. Camps without a nearby water source referred to as "dry camps".
Individual campsites are marked by a wooden sign nailed to a tree which indicates the campsite number. Signs should not be touched by anyone, to preserve them. Camps have a metal fire ring, which may be used for small fires unless a fire ban is in place, which is often the case, given Philmont's dry climate. A bucket/ pail of water must always be readily available in the case that the fire grows out of control. There is also a sump, an L-shaped plastic pipe, with a partly exposed two-foot vertical section and a ten-foot perforated horizontal section underground. The exposed pipe is capped with a piece of mesh. Sumps are used to dispose dirty dishwater. Dishes and pots must stay around the sump to not attract bears.
Several campsites usually share a bear cable away from the campsite. This is a metal cable strung between two sturdy trees at least ten feet above the ground; it is used to hang bear bags containing items that might attract animals.
Campsites also share a latrine or toilet. Philmont latrines have the possibility of housing spiders below the seat, which is why campers are encouraged to remove possible pests on the underside of the boards with a stick. The latrines come in different configurations, but all of them are for excrement only, and are not to be urinated in, in order to reduce smell. The open-air style latrine with two adjacent seats is affectionately called the "pilot to copilot" design; this results from the joking conversation which often takes place between two campers using the toilet simultaneously. The other open-air configuration latrine, called the "pilot to bombardier", is generally preferred because its two seats are back-to-back and offer somewhat more privacy than the "pilot to copilot". Occasionally a "single pilot" - one open-air seat -- may be found. The enclosed configuration, with walls and a red roof, is known as a Red Roof Inn, in joking reference to the hotel chain. Older Red Roof Inns contain two adjacent seats and no doors ("pilot to copilot"), while newer models have two back-to-back seats ("pilot to bombadier"), with a wall between. Portable toilets ("Time Machines") are rare in the backcountry and only found in places such as French Henry camp.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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