Philmont Admin

[Twocubdad]

Need some input on handling the administrative end of putting a Philmont trip together. The troop has sent two crews since I've been SM and it's been a terrible experience. The biggest problem has been the drop out rate and trying to keep the trip intact. Three years ago we had to recruit 2 of the 5 Scouts from another troop and the whole trip almost collasped when one of the two leaders had his vacation cancelled. Last time, we started with 12 Scouts and 5 adults. Ultimately all but one adult and two Scouts dropped out. So we spent almost two years scrambling trying to find replacements to keep the crew together. The big issue is that when someone drops, of course they forfeit any payments, but if the trip falls apart, the boys who are still in loose their money too. At one point, one of the families was demanding that the troop reimburse them for their lost fees and airline fares.

 

How do you guys handle this? Do you have any agreements as to how money is handled? How do you protect the troop from having financial responsibility?

 

[mmhardy]

No easy answer here.

 

Put a sheet together that explains just what you outlined. After a certain date you lose your fees. Airline tickets are not refundable. Period. Include information about trip insurance.

 

I put a trip together last year to Seabase for 20. Because of drop outs we had 2 other troops and several individual boys. It all worked but was stressful. Never again will I do a group that large.

[John-in-KC]

Make them have skin in the game.

 

This is one of those times where a strong COR is useful. Let him be your "bad cop," setting policies which protect the Chartered Partner's legitimate business interests in the community.

 

(I've noticed through the years that while churches and VFWs and others are non-profits, they do interact with contractors, grocers, travel agents, electrical firms, etc ... the non-profits like having a good business rep in the community).

 

Lots of travel partners require final payment at -180 days for best discounts. No refunds from them, so no refunds from you. That's exactly what Mr Hardy said.

 

DO HAVE a plan B. Someone will have a family emergency, either direct or indirect. Visit Roundtable, share your success, and invite folks to be on your standby roster. Encourage them to train and shake out with you, so they are better ready for whatever happens.

[GernBlansten]

When making your deposits, only give the minimum amount to secure the reservation. Philmont is 7. Even if you have 12 planning to go. You can always add later. This keeps your monetary exposure minimum. We had two come in at the last minute at NTiers and it was no problem adding them. We just needed to bring a check for the additional fees.

Any deposits should immediately be charged back to the scouts going. If they drop, they need to find their own replacement or forfeit the deposit.

[Eagledad]

Good advice from the others. Good advice from the others. We send a lot of crews to Philmont and found it is inevitable that you will loose scouts and adults because things happen in that length of time, so we recruit alternates as well or a full crew of 14 knowing that not all 14 will get there. We try to get at least 20% of boys and adults alternates and just about every case they got to go. We require they give a deposit like everyone else to show good faith and attend all the training and shake-down outings.

 

If you have to go to other troops to make the numbers, thats OK. Ask the boys to do the recruiting so they get their friends. Do it early enough and everyone bonds before the trip.

 

As for the adults side, 18 year olds count as adults. I like to recruit a couple 18 year olds if I can to go along with a couple of adults 21 and older. The 18 year olds get along well with the youth and still have a lot of fun with adult privileges.

 

The best crew I ever sent the Philmont was our experienced 16 year old crew with two dads who had never backpacked before. The two dads were in the 50s and were the only two adults, but the boys took very good care of them and everyone came back bragging about that wonderful experience. So search out dads who might not likely volunteer and put them with an experienced group of scouts. You have to recruit them early enough to get them trained and comfortable with backpacking.

 

Barry

 

[Mike F]

Good advice.

 

I'd like to echo Barry's recommendation about thinking of your now college-age scouts.

A couple of years ago I was the one who had to drop late in the game. One of our college Eagles, who never had the opportunity to go on any high-adventure trips as a youth, jumped at the chance to go on a half-price trip. It was a perfect match.

 

In addition to the words about having backups working with your crews, I always plan from the beginning to have more adults than the minimum, since they more likely to drop out.

 

Another thought: About 5 years ago, we shared the trail with a crew at Philmont who were comprised of 2 under-sized groups from different parts of the country. Apparently their numbers dropped to be too small to go alone and Philmont worked to pair them up. I think one had to adjust their trek date, but they made it. I have no idea if this is a common practice or even something they're willing to discuss today. But it's an option to consider if you get caught in a bind.

[boomerscout]

why so many drop-outs? what reasons are they giving?

[Twocubdad]

Overall, I say it's just lack of commitment. In particular, one moved to another troop, one was suspended from the troop for disciplinary reasons and not permitted to go on the trip, one dropped out of Scouts all together, several just changed their minds.

 

All the adults who dropped did so because their son's dropped. Overall, I'd say too much of this turns into a overgrown lad/dad campout. With the current crew, seven of 10 Scouts signed up have their dads signed up as well.

[GernBlansten]

One problem with running Philmont treks is you need commitment pretty far in advance. For our crews going in 2010, I needed a show of hands back in the fall of 2008 to submit our lottery request. We found out in Spring of 2009 how many crews we were awarded. Then the first deposit was due late spring of 2009. Second payment is Oct 1st, 2009. Last is April 2010.

So I needed to get a pretty good idea 18 months in advance to properly budget the slots. As the payment deadlines come, we lose more scouts as other commitments take precedence.

In the 18 months, lots of stuff happens with scouts. Especially over 15 year olds.

Even for myself, I had to cancel my slot (and my son's) because my son got an opportunity to go to Europe next summer and since he's already been to Philmont once, he wants to hike in Europe instead. Can't say as I blame him. Until that trip came up, he was pretty gungho to return to Philmont.

 

I'm disappointed, but gave up my slot to another dad who wanted to go and hasn't been there yet. Now I'm trying to get on his trip to Europe as a chaperone.

[John-in-KC]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't PSR set a limit (below 50%) on the adult-boy ratio??

[GernBlansten]

Max of 4 adults and no more than 50% of the crew.

If you are a venture crew, adults start at 21.

[CRK7376]

My son, 15 last summer, and I went to Philmont with our Troop in June 2009. Our entire crew of 9 boys (6 were 15, 1 was 16, 2 were 18 and headed to college in the fall, 6 were Life Scouts 3 were Eagles) and 3 adults were all first time Philmont Crew members. WE HAD A BLAST! That said we had very little support or guidance from our Council. I was not happy with that part.

 

As a military officer, I am very much into the Attention to Details/mission planning/execution way of thinking. We won a Crew Seat in the COuncil Lottery, then had to do the rest on our own. If we had known this going in, we would have been much better prepared. As it was, the three adults started our really detailed planning in Nov08 with our Trek in launching in the middle of June09. 01Sep08 our first payments were due to hold a seat on the crew, we only got word we had won a seat on the Council Trek in July08 so it was fast planning/what do we do next....Paymnets in Nov, Feb and last one in April were published for all crew members. Our Crew rule was if you drop out, you lose your money, and all knew this going in...If you had to drop put and found a replacement, you got your money back. THis happened with one of our boys, and he found a replacement and got his money back.

 

Nov08 I was beside myself in the planning process, nobody except the 3 leaders seemed to have a clue, naturally the boys were not doing much research or anything to get ready. The leaders, all three of us have extentsive backpacking experience, but of the boys, none had been under a rucksack for more 3-4 days at a time. Fitness hikes and rucking did not occur as we had hoped for. In the end it didn't matter, even to we relatively "flatlanders" from the Piedmont part of NC. We did two trail hikes, neither verylong and the boys and adults did fine out west, even when we summited Baldy. Fitness was not our issue.

 

In Nov08, the leaders met and mapped out a few things we thought were extremely important for our trek, #1 was summitting Baldy, #2 was summitting Tooth of Time, # 3 was rock climbing, and #4 was Black Powder Shooting. After that it was all gravy. This was what the leaders wanted. I Feb09 we held a Crew meeting and showed the boys all the options available. We had them list their top 10 activities but as a Crew they had to include Baldy and Tooth of Time. Once we had each boys top 10 events, we tallied them and showed the boys what they were looking at. Then we matched as close as possible the events to a trek. We had an ambitious crew and ended up selecting Trek #32, over 80miles of trail to ruck. Our plan was to have our request in the mail back to Philmont 24 hours after we had received the various trek options. Our boys ahd their top 4-5 treks identified, so all the adults had to do was match the boys request to what Philmont was offering. we did and we got our first choice of Treks. SO make sure in your planning you get your Trek request out early!

 

March 2009 we finally decided that flying made more sense and was part of the adventure. None of our boys with 2 exceptions had ever flown on a plane. We priced tickets and eventually flew out of Charlotte, NC into Denver for 3 days of acclimation. The worst part of this was having to rent a Suburban and a Minivan to haul our 12 bodies and rucks and then having them sit idle for 12 days at Philmont. That was expensive, but still cheaper and more freedom than one of the charter/bus services, taking the train was a horrible option for us and more expensive than flying. Driving out an d back was not a good option, with adult vacation days maxxed out. We spent two nights camping at the US Air Force Academy, toured the Olympic Training Center, attended Church Services at the AF Academy where the boys got to serve as ushers, hiked and played in the Garden of the Gods and drove up Pikes Peak, lots of snow still on the ground in mid June. Our third night we stayed at Santa Fe Trails Council Scout Ranch on the Colorado/NM line. Next morning we pulled into Philmont and the adventure really took off!

 

Knowing now what we pulled off in with little outside guidance worked out for our crew. The 3 adults was all good in very different areas and made our planning process work. Decide early on the transportation mode, that was the biggest cost for us, and one of later decisions. Back on the summer of 2008 gas was really high priced and that scared us off of driving, plus vacation days were at a premium and the thought of spending 3-4 more days with the crew after 12 days of tough hiking...our thoughts were when it's over, we want to be through. We knew that during the 12 days of the trail, some of us would be tired of others by the end and the drive home would probably result in a visit to the funny farm or jail....So we flew. It was the right choice.

 

Have fun, good luck and enjoy Philmont. As an adult, planning was actully part of the fun. Our Crew was boy lead and we adults stayed out of the decision making process as much as possible, which meant we hiked about 6 miles more than we should have one day when our map/compass man didn't read his map very well. All 9 boys served at least one day as the map/compass man responsible for getting us from one campsite to the next one. After everybody pulled their duty we let those that wanted have a second day on map/compass duty. This worked well for our crew, even the extra miles we hiked one day. It was all part of the adventure.

 

Hope this helps. Enjoy Philmont, wish I could go back. Maybe Northern Tier Canoe Base next go round....

 

[sbemis1]

Son's troop always goes to Philmont through the local contingent, this moves the 'blame' for no refunds removed a level to council.

 

For Philmont 18-21 can be treated as youth or adult regardless of chartered registration. e.g. last year son's crew had 19 yr old adult advisor and 19 yr old youth crew leader. (Troop registration).

 

It appears Philmont is always as accomodating as they can be, so long as you speak with them in ADVANCE.

[Gunny2862]

We did Philmont this year, it was great.

 

We had no dropouts and no scares of dropouts, but we initiated and advertised the trip with the idea that fees would be paid early, and on OUR deadlines, and that once paid they were unrecoverable. That if one did drop they were simply scholar-shipping whoever took their slot.

 

There WAS a waiting list...

[Jeffrey H]

All the adults who dropped did so because their son's dropped. Overall, I'd say too much of this turns into a overgrown lad/dad campout.

I think that comment alone is a major driver of why so many events cancel, especially the "big event" campouts.  If we Dads/Moms would just be willing to stay home and let our scouts go by themselves, then we cut our financial commitment in half and that lessens the chance of backing out.

Our Troop has some old group portraits of past Philmont trips.  Interestingly, there are only 3 adult leaders in the pictures.  Apparently, Moms and Dads stayed home and let the SM and ASM's handle it.