The perfect Philmont day yesterday got even better when bears started calling in the canyon as I was finishing my journaling.  It sounded like two bears were in the vicinity, one to our north further up the canyon and one to our west on the hill above camp.  Hampton and I warned the boys to stay in their tents and to make lots of noise if a bear came into camp.  I lay awake for a while listening to them then slowly went to sleep.

I woke up at 4:20am to the sounds of the bears calling.  Apparently they had stayed in the vicinity all night.  When I poked my head out of the tent at 4:35am, a bear was close by and seeing my headlamp, growled and ran off through the brush.  I didn’t see him, but he was pretty close by.  We continued hearing the bears as we broke camp and started hiking.  The last call I heard was around 6:00am.

We broke camp, and then ate breakfast early, before beginning our hike, because we thought we would need to cook our dinner for lunch – Wild Horse Camp was supposed to be dry - and we wanted the crew to be hungry at lunch.  We started hiking at 6:30am.  The trail to Buck Creek Camp was a fairly easy up and down over a ridge.  We stopped at Buck Creek Camp for water, and then continued on towards Porcupine Camp.  The trail to Porcupine was also an up and down over a ridge, but this trail was much steeper.  We stopped at the top for a pack break.  When we got down to Porcupine, Glenn realized that he had left his hiking staff back up at the top.  Not to worry.  Trevor, the mountain goat, put on his running shoes and ran back to the top to retrieve the staff.  It was about a mile and a quarter each way and almost 600 feet elevation gain to the top.  It took Trevor only 17 minutes for the round trip, and he didn’t seem to be out of breath when he returned.  VERY IMPRESSIVE. 

We hiked on to Crooked Creek for lunch and their homesteading program, arriving there at 11:00am.  On the way to Crooked Creek, we passed a crew coming from Wild Horse who told me the spring at Wild Horse WAS running, so we decided to eat the lunch at Crooked Creek and cook the dinner at Wild Horse.  The cabin tour was very interesting.  We ate lunch near the cabin, and then began the hike up to Wild Horse at 12:30pm.

The trail to Wild Horse began as a fairly gentle uphill through the Crooked Creek meadow, then into a mixed pine and aspen forest.  Peter was not feeling real well, and spent a lot of time bent over.  It just so happened that once while he was bent over he happened to notice a bear off to our left.  The bear looked to be a juvenile, too young to be alone.  While the crew was looking at the cub, Jan and I were trying our best to spot momma bear.  We were sure she was around, and sure she wouldn’t like us being that close to baby bear.  We told the crew to start making noise, and the cub waddled off (the boys named him Emilio – a weird name for a bear).  From there it was more uphill to a jeep trail.  We took a pack break at the jeep trail, because the next part of the hike was to be very steep with no switchbacks.   The steep section of the trail ran for about one-half mile, then leveled off as we reached Wild Horse Camp.  Once we reached camp, we located the spring, and both crews shared site 8 right next to the spring.  Dinner preparation began at 4:30pm and the KP work was finished by 7:00pm – not bad for really tired crews.

Elmer was not feeling well and had a slight fever.  Peter fought off a stomach bug all day, but felt better before we reached camp.  The crews worked really well through the hike and through the duties at camp.  Everyone was very tired after an all-uphill day, and most everyone went to bed before 8:30pm.  There were no bear sounds to go to sleep to tonight.