The first official hike of our training hikes to prepare for Philmont was to the Swift Run Gap area of the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Now members of the crew had already unofficially been training with several troop hikes and of course personal training. For this first official hike, it was wet and cold and turned out to be a very miserable trip, that I didn’t get to complete, not due to any of my medical issues, but one of the boys was done and wanted to go home and my son and I were the two that were going to take him back home. We hiked for about 2.5 miles until we stopped for the night, we got lucky and the thorough hiking shelter was available so we decided to stay there for the night. That was about the time the one boy wanted to go back home.

We had hiked several miles to the shelter, which was a nice lean-to-style shelter, just for my son and me and one other to turn around and hike back to the truck so we could take the one boy home. I know that my son and I really looking forward to spending the night there. But it was the official start of our Philmont training.

April was our next training hike and this time we went to Brown’s Gap again in the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This was a two-night trip to a really cool camping site. The boys were in for a little rock scramble and then a nice long hike of around 5 miles up and down the mountainside to a nice little campsite near a really cool stream that had some really nice rock formations. The crew had to use bear bags as well. They were making great progress towards Philmont. For many of the boys, this would be their first real “wilderness” campsite.

My son and I also had a personal day trip in April. We hiked 7 miles with day packs near one of the local Civil War battlefields.

Next week I will continue to talk about our training hikes.