Rain woke me up at 10:45pm last night.  I had gone to sleep with the door to the rain fly open  and had to get up to close it.  Woke up to rain again at 3:30am and dozed on and off till 4:30am.  I did my usual morning things, and got the crew up at 5:00am.  The crew was really moving and camp was down and we were ready to hike at 6:00am. 

We stopped at Abreu to fill up our canteens with their purified water, and then began the climb up to Urraca.  From Abreu, we started out across a relatively easy uphill trail running through pine forests and meadows, and stopped for breakfast in a meadow with rain spitting on us every now  and then.  After breakfast, the climb began in earnest.  We took a jeep road up the western side of the mesa instead of taking the straight trail up the middle of the mesa through the scrub oak forest.  It was very steep in most places, but it was still easier than the other trail (I had walked the other trail in 1981 and remembered how bad it was).  We stopped for a couple of pack breaks on the way up, caterpillaring the rest of the way up.  The jeep trail was muddy and the mud would cake up on the bottom of our boots to 3 inches thick, making our boots weight three or four times their normal weight.

The walk across the top of the mesa was a pretty as I remembered, and the trail down the north side of the mesa to camp was fairly steep but had decent switchbacks.  We reached the Urraca camp cabin at 11:30am, and were left by our pack line to eat lunch and wait for program.  At 1:00pm, I had had enough waiting and wasting time, and asked if we could be shown our camp so we could start drying out our tents and other gear still wet from the morning rain.  The camp director was very helpful and showed us to our campsite, then sent a staffer to wait on us to set up camp then take us to the challenge events program. 

The boys did four of the events, which were very entertaining for us to watch.  They did fairly well, but seemed to suffer from a lack of focus.  After the  events, Sarah took the crew up to Inspiration Point to do our wilderness pledge.  The view was incredible – plains on one side and the Tooth of Time ridge and mountains on the other.  A storm was pushing in from the north, so we hurried back down.  The storm itself turned east, but the wind and the smoke it carried continued on to the camp. 

The boys started dinner when they returned to camp at 4:30pm.  Allen got phone service there, so I called home and talked to Pamela for a few minutes.  It was pretty good – chicken raman with chicken and rice soup.  As the boys started KP, I walked over to crew 3’s camp for a chat.  It began raining while I was there, and was raining in earnest as I walked back to our camp.  The boys did a great job with KP and tearing down all non-essential and non-smellable crew gear.  They were done by 6:30pm. 

It was still raining when Allen and I left for advisor’s  coffee at 6:50pm.  As we stood on the porch, the rain turned into a downpour, causing staff to run out into the meadow dancing and laughing.  It had been dry so long.  Staff changed the location of the Philmont Story campfire from the fire ring to the cabin’s front porch due to the rain, so I walked back to camp to get my stool after the rain ended at 7:45pm.  The staff did the Philmont Story campfire with some songs mixed in.  They had a couple of guitars and a mandolin, and the music was good, but you could tell it was early in the season by the performance.  I got cold, and headed back to camp before 9:00pm.  Some of the boys were already asleep, so Thorns, Buds, & Roses would have to be put off till tomorrow.