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- Feb 17, 2013
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- 6,168
Back when I went to Philmont for the first time (1967), I was christened "Billygoat" by the rest of the group. I was the smallest person in the group at 5'2" and 122#, so they put me up front with a Scoutmaster behind me, allowing me to set the pace, presumably because of my size. Even with a 65 pound pack (per the scale at the starting camp), I (and the Scoutmaster) were leaving everyone in the dust climbing the mountain trails. Someone commented the second night that I took to mountain trails just like a billy goat. The name stuck.
The 5th night happened to be at a camp that also served as a starting camp. I had noticed that for the last couple of days, my pack seemed harder to wag. I just thought I was tired. For giggles and grins, I hung my pack on the scales there. It weighed in at 98#. I went to the lead Scoutmaster and told him the scales were wrong. He said, "Let's see." and picked up my pack, looked at me a little funny and carried the pack over to the scales and checked my pack. It still weighed 98#. We went back to our camp area and started unpacking my pack. In addition to the stuff I had started with, there was a 10# bundle of spare tent stakes (yes, we used metal stakes back then AND we carried extras for some reason), the dutch oven lid, a hatchet that didn't belong to me and several extra packages of dehydrated food down in the bottom of my pack.
Turned out that a couple of the guys had snuck some things into my pack each morning trying to slow me down. He went to redistribute the items and I told him not to bother, as I hadn't had any problems carry the weight the last 2 days. We ate the food out of my pack for a couple of days and my pack settled out at 89#. When we finished out 129 jaunt through Philmont, I was down to 97# and my uniforms were about to fall off.
What alll the city slickers didn't know about me was that I had been working in my family's feed stores for 6 years, and by that time I was frequently lifting/carrying/stacking 50# and 100# sacks of feed, 70# to 100# drums/cases/canisters of farm chemicals on a daily basis after school and on weekends, and had spent the 3 weeks prior to the trip hauling several thousand 75# bales of hay and alfalfa for 5 cents a bale.
The 5th night happened to be at a camp that also served as a starting camp. I had noticed that for the last couple of days, my pack seemed harder to wag. I just thought I was tired. For giggles and grins, I hung my pack on the scales there. It weighed in at 98#. I went to the lead Scoutmaster and told him the scales were wrong. He said, "Let's see." and picked up my pack, looked at me a little funny and carried the pack over to the scales and checked my pack. It still weighed 98#. We went back to our camp area and started unpacking my pack. In addition to the stuff I had started with, there was a 10# bundle of spare tent stakes (yes, we used metal stakes back then AND we carried extras for some reason), the dutch oven lid, a hatchet that didn't belong to me and several extra packages of dehydrated food down in the bottom of my pack.
Turned out that a couple of the guys had snuck some things into my pack each morning trying to slow me down. He went to redistribute the items and I told him not to bother, as I hadn't had any problems carry the weight the last 2 days. We ate the food out of my pack for a couple of days and my pack settled out at 89#. When we finished out 129 jaunt through Philmont, I was down to 97# and my uniforms were about to fall off.
What alll the city slickers didn't know about me was that I had been working in my family's feed stores for 6 years, and by that time I was frequently lifting/carrying/stacking 50# and 100# sacks of feed, 70# to 100# drums/cases/canisters of farm chemicals on a daily basis after school and on weekends, and had spent the 3 weeks prior to the trip hauling several thousand 75# bales of hay and alfalfa for 5 cents a bale.