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730 - Day 3, Pueblano Camp - "Viva El Salizar"

Our second morning on the trail dawned. It was cold. As we would come to know, mornings at Philmont typically always started out that way. Temperatures varied throughout the day and throughout the terrain. The strategy was to dress in layers of clothing which could be changed to adjust to the climate. So, we put on a layer of our warmer clothes. Our Ranger, Dennis, had come prepared with a spiffy burgandy sweater. I guess being able to return from the trail every few days has its advantages. Dennis would leave us on our own, and return to Base Camp, after breakfast. Rangers serve as guides to get treks moving on their own feet, and in accordance with Philmont principles. As Dennis, himself, reminds me,

The Ranger was responsible for the crew for the Base Camp - the first night. The second night was spent at a starting camp. In your case Sioux. The bulk of the training was expected to be completed the first day/evening. The third night was spent at the camp for the second night on the trail. In this case Pueblano. The second night was for the Ranger to observe and fine tune any training necessary for the crew to depart.

Then, the Ranger's job is to step aside and let crews find their own way through Philmont. I am not sure if we would see Dennis at the end of the trek, but I do not recall doing so. I would run into him a year later on my second trek, though, at Crater Lake. In any event, it was about this time that the realisation that we were truly on our own began to sink in. "This is it. The balloon's going up," I thought to myself. Unlike regular campouts, we could not turn around if the weather got bad, we could not send a homesick kid home, and could not afford to not get along. In the next two weeks, we would plow deeper and deeper into the back country, and we would be on our own, devoted path.

John uses a spatula to keep an advisor out of our breakfast until it's ready.

Our first trail breakfast was a cooked one. We had the time, and we wanted more than granola bars before doing the conservation project which we were scheduled to do today.

Greg had brought along a supply of extremely hot chili peppers which he claimed would improve the taste of any trail meal. This probably came from eating too much food at Sbisa, Texas A&M's dining hall (where they inexplicably put pepper in everything). I had never been a fan of peppers, but trail food needed any kind of help it could get.

A Ranger eats his words

Dennis would not get away that easily. As a token of appreciation, Greg presented him with one of his prized peppers. But, this was not to go in his food. He suggested Dennis eat the pepper with nothing else. The Ranger from Kansas did not think any pepper could be that hot, and decided to do it. He claimed it was not that bad. However, I'm willing to bet that the tears in his eyes were not just because he was sorry to bid us farewell.

The peppers would find their way insidiously into our food, and I suppose that, diluted, they did improve the taste. But, the peppers would find another use as bear repellent. More on that later.

click for map

We took a Jeep Trail to Pueblano Camp. As we walked through the pine-covered hills, I noticed that the pine trees here at Philmont gave off the odor of vanilla. A park ranger in Texas once showed be that if you sniff the bark of Ponderosa pine trees, it smelled like vanilla ice cream. Intrigued by her claim, I had tried it on several pines at home, and been disappointed in that it was not true for them (I did not realise at the time that they were not Ponderosas). However, they must have been a different species of pine, and I was glad to finally find her words true at least here at Philmont. It was not even necessary to smell the bark. The vanilla scent, released by the summer heat, pervaded the air all around us.

It was beginning to rain, and hiking through this was an ordeal that would soon become mundane to us. Ahead on the switchbacks were white-barked aspen trees. This was the first time I had seen real aspens. I took a picture with a flash, and Greg thought it to be the flash of lightning. And, that would soon become a distinct possibility as clouds were gathering. The rain came, and we actually had to stop on the trail to cover up and just wait for it to subside. We all crouched off on the embankment of the trail, trying very hard to drape our ponchos over both us and our packs. It was my sleeping bag that I was worried about. Though it was stored inside my pack, inside a plastic garbage bag, and though my pack was coated with Scotch-Guard, covered with a rain shell, and protected with my poncho, water seemed to always find a way in. It was uncomfortable trying to keep from sitting directly on the ground, where the water was running down. But, the rain that made it through the trees tapped softly and steadily on my poncho, producing a somewhat mesmerising effect. While sitting, I looked down into the canyon from which we had just come. The lush pine forest was drenched in rain, and steam rose from the thickets below us like smoke from camp fires (To someone who is no longer able to live among such greenery, such memories are almost magical). It was a very strange sight, and at first I actually wondered if lightning had struck and something was on fire in the rain. But, it was simply that the soil and foliage were warm enough to re-evaoprate the rain water. It was a state of equilibrious transition... a zen moment if there ever was one.

We continued on, rain subsided, to our second camp, Pueblano. This was our first day of real hiking, and I was adjusting to the bounce of the trail. Each step jostled something in my pack. I was carrying loose cooking utensils in a pot inside the pack, and with every hard step I heard the clanging of metal on metal. This would have to be corrected at the next stopping point. But, my attention was soon drawn away from this. I saw another flash of light appear on the trees. But, this time it was not from a camera. We recognised this as lightning. The rain was not over. Next came the hurried clomping of boots on the trail as we found ourselves breaking out of the switchbacks in order to get off the ridge quickly. Lightning tends to strike objects closest to the sky -- and that would be us on a ridge. This was one case where breaking the rules of the trail was justified. A bit later, we encountered several dead trees which had been struck by lightning at some time in the past. Many of them were still standing, twisted, with the bark was gone. Greg explained that when the lightning travelled through the tree, it took the path of greatest electrical conductivity -- the water-filled xylem and phloem tubes in the cambium tissue just underneath the bark. Apparently, the electricity caused the moisture to become heated in an instant, flashing to vapour and thereby blowing the bark off with explosive force. Whatever the cause, the dead, white trunks stood as a silent warning to hikers.

On the way into camp, we passed a crew of rather scraggly looking folks with bandanas tied into kerchiefs around their heads. They reminded me of the quintessential pirate image. This was a "trail crew". A trail crew is a group of relatively experienced Philmont trekkers on an itinerary whose primary activity is that of trail construction or maintenance. There was a kind of mystique about them, not unlike that of a Rayado crew.

Crossing a small foot bridge, we were finally on the outskirts of Pueblano Camp, and other crews could be seen milling around their camp sites, preparing meals, drying out soaked clothing, etc.

Pueblano Camp is the site of Continental Tie Company. The lumber processing programme consisted of a lecture on the old timber operations in the Philmont area. We would do a little lumber processing later in the day, but first it was time to do spar pole climbing.

Greg whips the belt up the pole -- disregarding the suggestions of the staff and the cold air -- in shorts.

Spar pole climbing is that feat of friction that telephone workers once had to do. Dull, 2-inch-long spikes are fastened to the insides of your shoes. Actually, these are attached to brackets which are strapped to your legs. Careful not to step on your own feet, you jam these spikes into the sides of the splintery pole. Participants are advised to do this in long pants. A friction belt is loosely strapped around your waist and the pole. You can (should) lean back a bit into it as the purpose is merely to keep you vertical while stepping your way up the pole. As you gouge your way up the pole, you must quickly pull youself towards it and then whip the strap of the belt up a few inches. This results in the pole, and you, undulating wildly back and forth up in the air (this is why the picture of me is not shown. It was blurred). You are also attached to a belay line just in case you lose the grip. The line runs to the top of the pole and is connected at a pulley. The pulley is in turn connected to the pole's eye bolt by a carabiner ("Miss Carey Beaner", as the staffers who run the activity call it). Our staffer told us to yell "Viva El Salizar!" from the top of the pole -- perhaps a bit of rivalry with the other camp, Crater Lake, at which they do spar pole climbing. "Daylight on the Swamp" was the yell there. It seems that the yell changes with each particular year and each particular group of staffers.

Derek's turn: Derek seems to have been the favourite subject of each photographer... at least, he seems to have gotten into more pictures than anyone else, including me.

We all took our share of falls on the poles. If you were lucky, you fell about half-way before your belay-person noticed, and jerks you to a halt. Actually, once you reach the top, you come down by removing the belt which holds you to the pole and just fall back. It is your belay-person's responsibility to let you down easy. In the picture to the left, belay-person's legs are those which are seen in the upper right corner. He seems to be wearing my boots. Since Derek was the lightest of our crew, it did not hurt that much when he hit the ground. At least I didn't feel anything.

Squaring a Log: As John draws the blade toward him, he is on the verge of learning why it is called a "womanizer".

The other half of the Pueblano programme is lumber processing. We were shown how the logs were cut and squared into railroad ties. We were even allowed pair up and try our hands at the long, cross-cut saws. The staff demonstrated how to square the logs: a single person straddled the log, struck a short planing blade called a "womanizer" against its top, and drew the blade towards him.

I suppose this was a traditional manner of cutting, but I remember thinking how it went against the Scouting doctrine of always cutting away from you. The staff joked that the blade was called a "womanizer" because of what might happen if you were not careful when squaring. I never did get a satisfactory answer of the real etymology of the word. I've asked people in the lumber industry about this term, and they say they are unfamiliar with it. So, I suspect that it was a name used only by the staff at Pueblano.

Viva el salizar.

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