Philmont: Registering and Picking an Itinerary

Warning: this is a paperwork and planning post, not an adventure post.

Philmont offers 7-, 9- and 12-day treks of varying difficulty. This post outlines how to choose the appropriate trek for your crew and get through the registration process. This explains how the process works for individual scout units, not council contingents. In summary, the steps are:

1. Identify your crew of 8-12 participants, including 2-4 adult advisors per crew.
2. Figure out what duration of trek you want to take.
3. Pick dates that work.
4. Register in the Philmont lottery in October two years before the trip.
5. December before the trek, pick your itinerary.

Forming your Crew

Crews are 8-10 participants, with the majority being youth. Philmont counts ages 18-21 as a youth. Officially, the limit on adult advisors is 4 per crew. Unofficially, Philmont grants exemptions to crews of 13 with an extra adult or youth if one emails the registrar.

When a troop is meeting to assemble a crew, the organizer should discuss expectations for crew members, particularly adults. Two things make crews succeed or fail: (1) physical fitness and (2) attitude. It is easier for an out-of-shape person to get into shape than for an asshole to learn how to not be an asshole. For this reason, I would be hesitant to allow an overly bossy, argumentative, or controlling adult to join a crew. It is better to have a difficult conversation at the early stage than have acrimony on the trail that ruins the experience for the rest of the crew.

(Note: I have always had great adults on my trips with Troop 33, but I have heard horror stories through the grapevine. Follow the no-asshole rule, and your crew is unlikely to be a horror story.)

When forming a crew, also have a discussion of the costs. Specific costs are listed on the Philmont website. Ballpark, each participant is looking at around $1,500 in program fees + travel + equipment.

Figuring out the trek duration.

Calculate travel time. Understanding the travel time is essential as it affects the total duration of the trip as well as the cost. Philmont is not convenient to get to. Crews drive, take the train to Raton, NM, and then a short shuttle, or fly into Albuquerque, Denver, or Colorado Springs and then take a bus. We elected to fly via Colorado Springs and then take a 3-hour Charter bus because the drive from Austin exceeds the 10-hour BSA driving limit, and our adults were already limited by missing work, so we wanted only one day of travel. Our travel cost was about $600 pp.

Calculating travel and base camp days. Crews sleep at basecamp on the first and last night of the trek, meaning they spend two fewer nights in the backcountry than the official duration (i.e., on a 12-day trek, crews camp ten nights in the backcountry). The first day of the trek involves hours of medical checks, registration, gear checkout, and talks with a Ranger. Speaking with staff, the latest a crew could arrive and still complete everything is mid-morning on Day 1. For most crews, this means either arriving a day early or spending the night somewhere within a few hours of Cimmaron. Crews leave base camp the morning of the day after the trek ends. Thus, those flying or within a 10-hour drive can get home the day after the trek. Other crews take two days to get home. These constraints mean that two or more travel days must be included in calculating the total trip duration. A seven-day itinerary means at least nine (and possibly more) days away from home, work, and family.

Deciding on Duration – The primary time constraint for many crews will be the adult advisors’ ability to miss work. Longer treks have more opportunities for activities. We picked a nine-day trek because we wanted more than five days in the backcountry, but our adults could not afford two weeks away from work. This decision worked out for us. We had many fun activities but were ready to be home after seven days with 14-year-old boys. I think we would have been rushed on a 7-day trek.

Registration

Once your crew decides on a trek duration, you need to enter the Philmont lottery. To do that, a lead adult must create an account on the Philmont Camping Gateway. The lottery opens on October 1, two years before the trek. (i.e., on Oct. 1, 2024, the lottery will open for 2026 treks). In the lottery, you can reserve multiple crews for your unit and select various dates for the trek. The lottery drawing occurs in mid-October, and you will be informed of your trek date. The initial deposit is $150 per person, and the balance payments are made in the fall and spring before the trek.

Selecting your itinerary difficulty.

Philmont releases the descriptions of the coming summer’s trek itineraries in December. It is worth reviewing prior years’ itineraries to get a flavor of the options. Philmont has four classifications of the trek in ascending difficulty: Challenging, Rugged, Strenuous, and Super Strenuous. The tradeoff for doing a more challenging trek is that crews are less likely to be able to participate in programs, even if programs are officially part of an itinerary. This is because program availability at the backcountry staffed camps is first-come-first-served. A crew that arrives at a camp late in the morning or afternoon risks having all the program slots taken by earlier crews. In addition, during the July monsoon season, afternoon programs are often canceled due to thunderstorms. 

Because the programs distinguish Philmont from other backpacking trips, crews should carefully assess fitness and hiking speed and choose a less difficult itinerary. We chose a ” Rugged ” itinerary, and most of our participants found it easy. We had plenty of time for programs, and the boys had plenty of time to play around. I have spoken with many adult leaders on crews who selected ambitious itineraries and who missed many of the unique activities.

At first glance, the itinerary selection process can be overwhelming. The 2024 Itinerary Guidebook is over 200 pages. Fortunately, each year, Sid Covington, a passionate volunteer from Austin, creates Excel tools to assist with itinerary selection. Sid’s spreadsheets include a survey asking the scouts to rank the activities. The spreadsheet then identifies the itineraries that most correspond to the crew’s preferences. We used Sid’s tools to narrow the list to a few itineraries we discussed at a meeting. Once we had a final choice, I entered our list into the Philmont Camping Gateway, which lets you pick up to 4 itineraries.

Enough of paperwork. The following post will discuss how to prepare a crew for the trek.