Philmont 2016: July 5 - Day 9 - Cypher's Mine to Clarks Fork

North Fork Trail

Today we hiked to Clark's Fork. There were a couple of trail options but we choose the North Fork Creek option. Coming to Philmont, I was a little worried about creek crossings. However, once I saw the average width was about 15 feet and most were only a foot or so deep, with a ton of rocks to hop across, I grew to like the creek crossings. Well, North Fork Creek was a creek crossing paradise. I would guess that we crossed that creek at least 50 times that day. The night before at the stomp they fore-warned that one of the creeks had a lot of crossings.

Demonstration Forest

On the trail as we neared Clark's Fork, we came across the experimental forest area. Here conservationist talked with us about conservation and the work they were doing at Philmont. During the lecture they gave us a very good root beer candy. They also showed where the night before a bear tried to get into one of their supply boxes. You could see the footprints on the box. They showed us two tree slices from a Ponderosa Pine. These trees were only a couple of feet in diameter but were over 500 years old. They said these trees were only a mile apart but evidence showed they survived fires sometimes in the same year but other times in different years. They explained how the prevention of forest fires have put trees at risk because of all of the undergrowth that would have naturally burned off by the occasional fire.

Clark's Fork

We arrived at Clark's Fork and listened to the porch talk. Tonight's program would be a chuck-wagon dinner and the Cowboy Campfire.

I had just enough time to get an unbelievable warm shower and had a chance to wash my clothes.


Chuck Wagon

Chuck Wagon

At the chuck-wagon dinner, we had stew and dutch over biscuits. For dessert we had dutch over peach cobbler. This we a very good dinner. I sat at the advisors table and had some good conversation with advisors from Pennsylvania and Washington state.

Anytime talking with other groups you asked questions like what day are you on. Where were you last night? Where are you going tomorrow? Have you been to this camp? How many in your crew? How was your training program?

Cowboy Campfire

A little after dinner we headed up a steep hill to the Cowboy Campfire. The view at this spot was spectacular. The campfire consist of music and stories. The stories focused how the period characters found themselves in the Philmont area and how much they enjoyed it.

After the campfire, we were invited to the porch for more music. This porch was the biggest one that we had seen. It looked like a porch to two different porch extensions.

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