Our human alarm clock (Brockton) got us up at 4:30am. We were on the trail to Mt Baldy around 5:25am hiking in the pre-dawn hours.
The total elevation change was 3,500 ft from 9,000 to 12,500. It was a tough climb the entire way. Once we crossed 10,000 ft a couple of us started experiencing a headache from the altitude. The last 1,000 feet of the climb was insane. Basically, a trail going straight up on nothing but slippery rocks of shale and sandstone.
The first scouts reached the summit around 9:10. The entire crew was on the summit by 9:30am. The view from the top of Mt Baldy was nothing short of breathtaking. You can see mountains about 50 miles into Colorado, along with the surrounding areas of Philmont.
As soon as you summit Mt Baldy, you notice the 20-30 mph winds which makes you quite cool. Everyone carried their cold weather and rain gear to the summit.
We remained on the summit about 30 minutes and then started our descent. The climb down was treacherous since it was difficult to find solid footing. We had several slips and falls but fortunately no injuries.
We returned to our camp at Miranda via Baldy Town, which is where we stopped to re-supply food one last time! After arriving at our camp, I decided to bribe the scouts and offered to cook dinner in exchange for them working on their backpacking merit badge. There were a few grumbles but they accepted the deal. Mr Newton supervised their efforts and made sure they worked on the pertinent tasks. He's their merit badge counselor for both hiking and backpacking and had the final say on whether or not they were successful. Jetta jumped in and helped with dinner and by the time the merit badge work was complete the dinner was ready to go.
The crew finished the evening with a game of mountain ball with a bunch of other scouts who were camping there that night. The scouts get to sleep in a bit tomorrow since we hike to Santa Claus camp tomorrow. It is a trail camp with no program activities, so no real timetable to get there.
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