Philmont Preparation

**Even though I worked at Philmont for several years, this is just my opinion, not to be taken as Philmont policy.  I do still think I make some good points.**

Having tried helping some Philmont crews in their preparation for their summer trek, I found myself quite frustrated in the end.  I had been asked to help out and give advice, but I felt that my advice was being completely ignored.  It turns out that most participants at Philmont have a different idea of what preparation is needed when compared to the thoughts of a Philmont Ranger.

One part of their preparation was a big focus on backpacking 'skills'.  These are things like cooking, cleaning, bear bags, etc.  With some of the things, I was asked to teach/explain the specific Philmont policy.  With some of the others, one of the adults would decide to teach his preferred method of doing it.  The latter can be a problem when the method is forbidden by Philmont policy, but the big issue here is that 'skills' preparation is not absolutely required.  Especially because participants may not know the Philmont policy for certain things and will end up being taught the skill again once they get out to the Ranch.  I'm not saying that this was a complete waste of time.  If the participants have a good backpacking background, it certainly eases the teaching workload on their Ranger.  But their are groups that come out with little or no backpacking experience, so being taught all those skills at the Ranch definitely happens.  (Groups like crews that have gotten grants to send kids to Philmont, or kids on Mountain Treks, who all generally have much less experience than the average crew)

Surprisingly they never really went over navigation skills.  If anything, that's the preferred skill to practice before coming out to the Ranch.  But then again, I still maintain that it is very difficult to get truly lost at Philmont.  Groups may take the occasional wrong turn (I love when my crews did that), but it only really results in a longer hike.  Granted, it may be a whole lot longer, but they will generally eventually make it to their destination.  The trails at Philmont are awesome (Great job Cons Dept) and if you stay on the trail, you'll make it to some camp, and then you'll know exactly where you are on the map.

The other big part of their preparation was physical conditioning.  This is something that I completely agree with.  Especially with the adults, physical conditioning needs to start months, if not years, before the trek.  Being physically able to hike for hours while carrying all your gear is absolutely necessary and it's not something people can cobble together the week before their trek.

That pretty much sums up their preparation, in my opinion.  But what I feel us a very important part of Philmont preparation was greatly neglected.  The group dynamics and other 'soft skills'.

If anyone has seen the Philmont Movie (Which I highly recommend [http://www.philmontmovie.com/]) you may recall Heidi describing the job of the Ranger as teaching the 'hard skills' and the 'soft skills' that they will need on their trek.  The 'hard skills' are the backpacking skills that I mentioned above.  The 'soft skills' are quite a different matter, and in my opinion, the Ranger can only do so much with 'soft skill' development during their three days with the crew, and a lot of that depends on the willingness of the crew.

One of the key things of a Philmont crew (And Boy Scouting in general) is that the youth are in charge, not the adults.  So the Crew Leader and the other youth need to be the ones making all the decisions during the trek.  The adults are there to sit back, relax, enjoy a little vacation, and only need to step up for matters of health and safety.  This is a hard thing for almost every adult.  When the crew decides to take a wrong turn on the trail, the adults shouldn't step up and correct them.  Some adults realize that they shouldn't be so active, but instead do things like drop their pack at the intersection, or start walking really slowly - trying to passively get the youths' attention.  I don't agree with that approach either.  If it's only going to be a relatively short detour or if they will shortly run into a camp that's not on their planned route, I say just shut up, go with it, and keep hiking.  But if it is going to be a long detour, ask general, leading questions - 'How far until [destination]?' [Youth stop and pull out the map] 'About 3 miles.' [Casually walk up to map] 'So that means we're .... [look at map]' - the goal should be to let the youth stumble onto the issue on their own.

The point is that adults need to learn to step back.  While the Ranger can do their best to keep the adults back, telling them that the Crew Leader is the final decision maker and not them, if the crew has been practicing with the adults being too involved, it's easy for the crew to revert back to that once the Ranger leaves.  Tying this back into my Philmont crews from the first paragraph; I think that two of the crews are going to have real problems with the adults stepping on the Crew Leader.

The other big 'soft skill' thing in my opinion is simple group dynamics - does everybody get along and work well together?  You improve this by spending time working with each other.  This is the biggest reason for practice treks, in my opinion.  If you do a bunch of them before coming out to the Ranch, you've spent lots of time working together in a backpacking environment.  All of the potholes of learning to work together happened on the practice treks, so the crew is a well oiled machine when they get to Philmont.

The thing is, you can get through Philmont even with over-involved adults and some group dynamic issues.  You can even have a great time even with those problems.  But getting rid of the over-involved adults issue makes the trek into a greater learning and leadership experience for the youth.  Over time, on the trail, group dynamics will congeal and improve.  Even if you had a great time with bad dynamics, if there were good dynamics, the experience would be even more amazing, even though you didn't feel like you were missing something before.

I was disappointed in the group's preparation, but it's not something that will ruin their trip and make everything unbearable.  They're still going to come back and say they had a great time.  But it could have been better, and they won't realize that.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011