The Path to Purgatory
Sunday, June 12th, 2005The Path to Purgatory: There and back again, a backpacker’s tale. My second Philmont shake down was this weekend… For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a Boy Scout for about eight years… During these eight years, I have spent approximately 268 days camping. ( 73.4% of a standard Gregorian year: 365.2425 days ). Of all those camp outs, the Philmont shakedown this weekend was the absolute worst.
From their damp vantage points under the hemlock trees, they watched us slowly disembark from our vehicles and walk the trail to Group site A. It was when we stepped into our site that they decided to launch their attack. Millions of blood thirsty mosquitoes came flying towards us from all directions. Resistance was futile, and our fate was thus clear: we would all contract West Nile Virus and die before reaching the summit. Although insanely outnumbered, we foolishly believed that we had the upper hand in this situation. After all, we’re human; we have such marvelous inventions as insect repellent. Ahh… What fools we were. The bugs were not, as had been hoped, afraid of insect repellent, but rather, seemed to have an attraction to it. It would clearly be a long, long, long weekend, during which we would be bitten many times, unless we could possibly keep moving, which is rather impossible when trying to cook.
The first of three Philmont crew meetings was on Friday night. “The Philmont Area” just happened to be in the most mosquito-infested area of the campsite… The bright light of the lantern attracted an abundance of bugs, which made a fine addition to the millions of mosquitoes. With Mr. Benoit leading the meeting, we covered everything in great detail ( he is very detail oriented. ). I was “unanimously nominated” to be crew leader, but being retired, I decided to yield the position to Chris ( B-G ), who agreed to take the position if he had to. ( he actually wanted me to do it ) Immediately after being unanimously elected to hold the position of Crew leader, Chris appointed me his second in command, which was no great surprise. No one ever wants to step up and lead these days, and being the highest ranking, most highly trained and experienced scout, I am usually stuck being in charge.
We awoke at the agreed time, 0700, on Saturday morning. The whole crew was soon prepared for departure, however, we didn’t leave until 0845. As is customary, we put the slowest scout in front. Theoretically, the ‘all day pace’ set by the slowest crew member will help to pace the rest of the crew. I found this ‘all day pace’, which averaged 1/2 mile per hour to be more of an all millennium pace, and was once given a ‘performance penalty’ for running ahead. At our extremely slow pace, we reached the summit in about 4 hours. As soon as we reached the peak, I whipped out my sleeping pad and took a nap. Before leaving, I checked my camelbak; the three liters of water I had stared out with was then down to half a liter—nowhere near enough to survive the descent. ( Actually, at my pace, I think I could have made it up and down before lunch and returned with plenty of water. ) Halfway into the descent, my pack weighed only 37 pounds—five pounds fewer than when I started out. My water was gone, and about 4 hours of rough hiking down steep, rocky hills stood between me and water. Naturally, I became rather irritated on the way down. It was then that I engineered most of this post. Many possible titles came to mind, but “The path to Purgatory” inevitably won. The white arrow trail, which we took most of the way down, was like an enormous staircase to hell. Lots of rocks are not good for someone wearing an extra 25% of his body weight on his back. All the jumping from rock to rock made my feet sore :’(. When alas we neared the end of the “Path to Purgatory”, the map bearer, and all of his minions had no idea where we were. ( had they walked 50 paces further, they would have reached a trail intersection ) We took a twenty minute pack-off-break. I kept on telling them not to bother with the map. We were trying to get to the bottom of the mountain; it seemed quite logical to me that we just continue walking down. Even with a topographical map ( complete with contour lines ), the map bearer decided to take “Thoreau Trail”, which is named after Henry David Thoreau whose favorite mountain was Mt. Monadnock. After three hours of walking down hill, we spent an hour walking up Thoreau’s trail. I had visions of reaching the summit again and became quite angered. What kind of idiot would walk up to get to the bottom of a mountain??? After that hellish half hour, we continued going down. Brian and I eventually gave up on the rest of the crew and sped ahead.
The mosquitoes had been plaguing us all day, and they weren’t any better when we arrived back at camp. We were given a half hour of ‘free time’, during which Brian and I decided to take a shower. One problem: I didn’t have any change. Solution: Send Brian off to find some… While Brian was off on his quest for quarters, some lady came and asked me If I was waiting to use the shower. I replied “yes, but i don’t have any change.” She then lent me a quarter… It was the happiest moment of my life. Brian returned shortly, and upon talking to this lady, learned that she was a native of Burrillville. When alas all of our showering was over, we returned to camp, late by twenty minutes. ( oops.. ) It was time for more skill instruction… We even learned how to open oatmeal-type packets. ( shake all the contents to the bottom so nothing spills… lmfao ) I think most of the crew would rather have taken refuge in their tents than have dinner, but there was no escaping the crew ad visor. Although it was extremely hot, some of us had resorted to wearing rain gear as mosquito protection. It was past nine before we were allowed to retire for the night.
Everything went very well this morning. The crew awoke at 0700, cooked breakfast, and was ready to leave by 0800. ( probably our fastest strike-down ever. ) The mosquitoes didn’t bother me today. I used Mr. Benoit’s insect repellent, and it had the magical effect of repelling insects. ( really… ) We stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way home. I was careful to order my coffee black, for reasons described in this post. I just happend to be scrolling through posts, and I found this post… I find it funny that I said some of the same things in this post.
