[From the Philmanac - Baldy Town was a small mining community that existed on and off from 1868 to 1940.  It was the center of a prosperous mining district, with the largest of the mines being the mighty Aztec (which had seven different levels to it.)  Mine tours are now given on Level 2 of the French Henry side of the Aztec Ridge.  At one time, there were over 20 structures that comprised Baldy Town; you can see pictures of the town in its heyday in the Baldy Town Museum.  All that remains today are the foundations of some of the buildings, and the rubble that was once the Aztec Mill (which was destroyed by fire in 1923.)  There are signs of mining activity all around the Baldy area, including dumps from other mines such as the Rebel Chief and the Montezuma.  Baldy Camp was purchased as part of the 10,098 acres donated by Mr. Norton Clapp in 1963, and is now used as the site of a Commissary and Trading Post.  The Commissary is on the site of the old Baldy Town School, and was renovated in the fall of 1995.  The current Trading Post was built in 1982.  The foundation of the old Baldy Town Hotel is located just north of the current Baldy Town Museum.  Baldy Camp also has propane showers.  It is the last source of purified water before the trek over Baldy Mountain (elevation:  12,441 feet.)  Baldy is the highest point in Philmont, and offers tremendous views of Wheeler Peak (the highest point in New Mexico at 13,160 feet), the Moreno Valley and Eagle Nest Lake to the south, and the southern portion of Philmont (including the Tooth of Time.)  Crews climbing the summit should depart Baldy Town by no later than 8:00 am, and should carry rain gear, water and food.  Both sides of Baldy Mountain are difficult climbs; however, the Copper Park side is more steep.]

[From the Philmanac - French Henry is named for Henri Buruel, who obtained mining rights from Lucien Maxwell in the 1860's and operated the French Henry Mine on the ridge above Copper Park.  The remains of his cabin are still in the location.  The French Henry Mine is a 60 foot vertical shaft.  Buruel encountered trouble because there was no mill to work his ore.  Maxwell was too busy at Baldy Town, and the closest other mills were at Denver and El Paso.  This area was purchased for Philmont as part of the Baldy Tract in late 1962.  The first staff member was stationed here in 1964, and the staff camp was opened in 1966.  Mine Tours are given in the second level of the Aztec Mine; there is also gold panning in South Ponil Creek, and Blacksmithing was added in the late 70's.  An environmental program was also run here from 1990 to 1992.  The camp had no radio until 1989, and French Henry  is still considered to be one of the more primitive staff camps at Philmont.  There is no purified water source; the only water is from South Ponil Creek.  The current Museum Cabin was built in 1895 by the Claude Mining and Milling Company (who also built the original mill on the site.)  The mill featured a 2,700 foot bucket tramway to transport ore from the mines on the ridge north of the camp.  The 2 upper cabins at the camp were built around 1938 by Clinton H. Anderson, who made one last effort at making a profit out of the French Henry Mine - only to find that he'd been duped by the previous owners with "spiked" ore, and the truth was that all the easily mined gold had already been removed from the region.  The blacksmith forge in the upper cabin was completed in 1982.  The trail from French Henry to Copper Park is one of the most challenging on the entire Ranch, and is known as "The Wall."  There are mining relics and dumps throughout the entire region.]

Up at 4:35 - a lot more tolerable versus 3:30 at Miranda!  Mostly cloudy and warmer - 52 degrees.  Feels a little more humid, too, which is not a real good sign - but we're getting an early enough start to avoid the usual mid-day thunderstorms on Baldy (I hope!)  Chris and Brad did the wake-up duties at 4:45, demanding to "see a light" in each tent before moving on.  Hank and I joined them to handle the bear-bags.  Circled up at 5:05 for stretching, and gone by 5:10.  Nice trail from Ewell's Park to the Baldytown/French Henry road, but it seemed to be going in the wrong direction (towards French Henry) for forever, which was certainly disconcerting.  Finally flipped back to generally north and west, and we intercepted the road soon thereafter.  Quick run to Baldytown on the road, with outstanding views down the Ute Creek Valley to our left - even better than those we had seen from the Ute Meadows/Ewell's Park trail the previous afternoon.  Into Baldytown at 5:45, with no-one else around.  Grabbed Breakfast on the concrete slabs, with some of the guys checking the view down the Ute Creek valley with the mounted telescope.  Heard another Crew yelling as they left Baldycamp for Baldy around 6:00.  3 or 4 other Crews all arrived about 10 minutes later, all stopping for breakfast themselves.  We finished eating, refilled all our canteens, stashed our backpacks under the commissary, and hit the trail at 6:10 on the nose.  Guys really moving today, with only an occasional caterpillar to start and no other breaks.  Saw a very large mule deer doe right after leaving Baldytown.  Blew through the Baldycamp Crew at 6:35; they were doing the "sprint and drift" routine.  Their 2 front-runners seemed like they wanted to join us, hanging on the back end on our column `til I reminded them they needed to stay with their Crew (which they reluctantly did.)  Perfect hiking weather today - semi-cold and windy, with partly cloudy skies and plenty of blue.  Finally went into more-or-less continuous caterpillaring, doing two-man caterpillars for water breaks.  Guys verbally pushed hard to go all the way to the summit without a break; I said OK, but reminded everyone that we still had a very long day coming up - so let's not burn out before 8 am, OK?  We saw one very large Western Grouse just before we hit the Alpine meadow, half the size of a turkey; probably the biggest I've personally ever seen up here.  No elk on the meadow, but I did get some shots of an interesting array of 3 different kinds of very delicate alpine flowers, each in vivid colors.  The wind picked up noticeably as we broke out of the treeline, but nowhere near like we experienced in `98 (when it was blowing hurricane-force winds on top.)  [Photo: Steven gave us a heart-stopping show by swinging on two poles near an old mine shaft, giving the illusion that he would swing right off the edge of the mountain at any moment (of course, this wasn't the case.)]  Pushed steadily all the way up the slope, then briefly held 20 feet below the peak to allow everyone to summit together.  On top at 8:08 with an Arkansas River cheer, first up for the day.  Too bad the Fourth of July is tomorrow!  Less than 2 hours from Baldytown - that's approaching "Ranger speed."  It was blowing 50 - 60 mph on the crest, so everyone came back off the crest and over to an overhang on the right to change into long gear, before spreading out on the peak, laughing and yelling.  Mostly sunny skies, but some humidity haze blurring the mountains of Colorado.  No snow on Wheeler Peak this year, or under the north-facing overhangs of the Aztec Ridge either, so it obviously really had been a very dry Winter (or a very hot Spring.)  I walked around snagging guys for some classic "mommie-shots," but held off on the Crew picture, since we could already see 2 more Crews pushing up the last slope from Baldytown.  Grabbed my 9th Baldy rock and gave a quick prayer of thanks for Ron Laubenstine, Frank Cook, and John Polivka (my Advisors in `72 and `73.)  Crew # 2 was from the Pittsburg Area Council, with their first 2 hard-chargers arriving 8:40.  They did us the photo honors, and we returned the favor 15 minutes later, when the rest of their Crew arrived and assembled.  In a personal record for me, I handled 6 separate cameras for this Crew's pictures!  We spent 5 minutes building up the largest wind barrier on the western rise, and headed back down the Copper Park side around 9:05, taking the far (eastern rise) trail down.  My memory was that this trail was the "best" of 3 trails for heading down to Copper Park - but "best" is a relative term, as all 3 trails are extremely steep and tricky.  This one had more dirt than the other 2, but it was a slippery slide nonetheless.  Chris led most of the guys in "slide-hopping" down the scree.  Ran into our buddies from Troop 77 (from the Pike's Peak Cog Railroad) on the way up; they were sprinting and drifting, so we took 2 minutes to show them how to caterpillar.  Passed another Crew from Plano, Texas, about 10 minutes later; they were spread over hundreds of yards, with everyone struggling up at their own pace.  Passed another Crew coming out of the treeline just as we got to the bottom of the scree slope, but I missed asking them where they were from.  The last 50 yards were pretty dicey - basically a mud slide down to the draw between Baldy and the Aztec Ridge.  Most of the guys (including me) "skied" it, but it was hairy.  This led to a false trail going right down the draw (the headwaters of the South Ponil Creek), which was a first for me.  Lots of fallen trees, and close-in plants that were more suited to a marsh versus a high-altitude mountain draw.  I knew this wasn't the right trail (that was up the slope to the left a bit), but it clearly was a fairly heavily used trail - and there's only one direction that matters - down the draw - so we continued on.  Heard another Crew on the actual trail about 10 minutes later, about 50 yards or so up the slope to our left, heading up to Baldy, but we just continued slogging on, finally rejoining the main trail about 250 yards above Copper Park.  Surprisingly few Crews set up in Copper Park - this was in sharp contrast to `98, when it seemed every campsite was full.  As best as I could tell, everyone was already gone to Baldy by this point.  Emerged at last into the meadow, and had everyone turn right and look up to the northeastern peak of Baldy - a unique perspective, and (always) an impressive neck crane!  Headed down the very steep trail (nicknamed "The Wall") to French Henry (very happy to not be going the other way!), cutting right to the Aztec Mine as we approached the camp.  No-one at the mine, so Chris and Steven headed down to grab a Staff member while the rest of us relaxed.  Of note, some highly motivated staffers had taken the initiative to set up about 40 feet of the ore railroad, and (most impressively) had "unfrozen" and greased the wheels on the ore cart that had been sitting out in front of the mine for decades.  Thus, you could run the cart up and down the rails, and get a better feel for the amount of work the muckers had to put in to move a load of rock out of the tunnel.  Had to be quite an effort there; I'm impressed!  Judging from how much fun the guys had pushing each other up and down the rails, they were impressed too.  Chris and Steven returned after about 30 minutes, followed by a puffing staffer (Jason Kate) about 3 minutes later.  Jason had literally just arrived from Basecamp, so he was still getting re-acclimated to the altitude.  Chris and Steven had run into Crew 1 down at the main camp, doing the Blacksmithing and Gold Panning programs; they agreed to wait for us for lunch.  Jason gave the usual introduction to mining in the area - this was an extremely rich gold mining area for nearly 50 years, and they took many millions of dollars worth of gold before the high-quality ore ran out.  The entrance we were at wasn't really part of the actual gold mine, but rather a so-called "blowout" shaft from one of the primary tunnels, which saved the miners from having to cart tons of rubble all the way back to the main entrance.  Since there were 35 miles of tunnels honeycombing this ridge, on 7 different levels, this was not a trivial issue!   Following the orientation, we donned our hard-hats and headed in - lucky we brought our flashlights, as most of the helmet lights weren't working (gee, there's a surprise.)  Jason spent time discussing how the holes were drilled out for blasting, along with some of the bits used in the work.  Tough work done by guys working by the light of a single candle.  He also talked about some of the areas beyond the barricades - of note, there is apparently a very large room further in where many of the miners jackhammered their names and the dates into the walls.  First I have ever heard this piece of information; that must be a pretty neat place from a historical viewpoint.  Unfortunately, the support timbers beyond the barricades are now completely rotted, so heading back to that section would be extremely hazardous (and is illegal anyway.)  Even the fairly new timbers in the inspected and maintained shaft were soft, so we could easily imagine the condition of the 60 year old beams further in (can you say "Death Wish?")  The tour was terminated in the usual, spine-chilling fashion (details intentionally omitted for our website readers!), and we headed back out.  Unfortunately, we were no longer allowed to leave "by feel" in the dark; I had thought this was only enforced when female trekkers were present, but apparently the New Mexico mine safety experts had strongly counseled against the "conga-line escape" in this shaft.  A real shame, because that was always an excellent Crew-building exercise, as well as being a lot of fun.  Exited back out to brilliant sunshine, everyone blinking like owls.  Surprisingly, no other Crews were waiting on us, so Jason locked up for lunch, and he and I headed down to French Henry together, trailing the Crew.  10 More minutes of steep downhill to the camp, joining up with Crew 1.  They were just starting lunch, with Michael, Matt G. and Stefan still engrossed in gold panning.  Everyone seemed happy to see us, and were all highly positive about their trek so far.  Lunch degenerated into a squeeze-cheese and cracker gross-out session - Chris managed to eat a 7 cracker/squeeze-cheese "sandwich" without hurling, so Steven went ahead and topped that with a 9 cracker sandwich.  Yucch.  Charles impressed one and all by devouring one cracker with an entire packet of jalapeno squeeze cheese on top.  Flame on, baby!  Out of play-food at last, we headed up for our blacksmithing session while Crew 1 started getting their stuff together and hyperventilating in preparation for tackling the first part of "The Wall."  I spent a few minutes chatting with Rick before rejoining our guys.  By the time I got to the forge, "Dan" the blacksmith was already into making a J-hook with the Crew, and I started taking photos immediately.  For some reason, the smoke off this year's blacksmithing forge was really acrid, and almost drove me out of the hut `til it calmed down a little.  Every Scout got a chance to work the forge and also do some pounding, so a "complete" experience for everyone.  Nice job by Dan (especially since he was about half-sick, and was noticeably hurting.)  Once we were done, we headed back down to the stream where (amazingly) just about the whole Crew really got into gold-panning, spending about 45 minutes trying their luck.  Best we could come up with were a few possible flakes.  Finally bagged out around 3:00, and headed back to Baldytown.  Pretty hot by now, under nearly clear blue skies; fortunately for all the late-starting Crews, no signs of any thunderstorms today.  Passed the sign for Ewell's Park, and retraced our route of 10 hours earlier, again enjoying spectacular views down to Miranda on the left, and up to Baldy on the right.  Pulled into Baldytown just before 3:30.  Surprisingly, even though at least half a dozen Crews were hanging out, the showerhouse was nearly deserted, so I "strongly" urged everyone not involved in the food pickup to grab their showers and wash their clothes immediately.  Chris, Brad, Hank and I headed down to the commissary to get in line for our food pickup, but everything was on hold waiting for a commissary truck that had just arrived to unload.  As usual, everyone was sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, so I "loudly" invited Chris, Brad, and Hank to help unload the truck with me.  With that hanging on the air, several other Advisors and Scouts joined us, and we spent almost 45 minutes transferring over 200 boxes from the truck into the commissary.  Some of the boxes weighed around 40 pounds each, maybe more, so it was quite a workout, and we all worked up a pretty good sweat.  Got a large package of cookies for our labors, along with the profuse thanks of the truck driver - but more importantly, we got the commissary rolling again.  The Crew in front of us was done by 4:30, and we finally got our pickup underway, doing a fast meal-strip on each bag as the meals got checked off.  This all under the rather puzzled gaze of several other Crews (although no-one was bold enough to ask what we were doing.)  We also did a quick clean-out of the swap-box, and made some nice substitutions for some of our weaker dinners.  Hank grabbed some fuel and a few candy-bars at the Trading Post.  By this point it was heading on towards 5:00, and the rest of the Crew had exhausted their interest in the Trading Post and Museum, so we sent them back with some of the full backpacks, with instructions to start making a bunch of purified water for dinner.  The rest of us headed for the showerhouse, since we were all just about as "smellable" with food dust as we could get.  Unfortunately, the last Crews of the day had inconsiderately decided to wash all their clothes in hot water, leaving nothing for us.  Another comment for the evaluation form - a single sign at each showerhouse would go a long way towards conserving resources and maintaining at least a chance for "warm" showers for the latecomers.  Well, after gritting our teeth, we got a "highly refreshing" wash; we certainly didn't linger!  Finally hit the road around 5:20, maybe half an hour behind the preliminary group.  Quickly caught and passed another group all in maroon shirts, who were taking a leisurely but animated stroll back to camp.  We had seen these guys once or twice before, and they turned out to be one of our brother Crews, from Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  Not the speediest group I had ever seen (in fact, they were one of the slowest), but they seemed highly determined to have a good time, and did a lot of joking around and talking while hiking.  A "different" way to do Philmont, with its own positive attributes.  Into camp around 6:00, and I was pleased to find Cooper Wright set up alongside us.  His Crew was also doing Trek 30, but they were one day behind us.  Coop came striding across the meadow with a big grin on his face, and we chatted for a few minutes about how things had been going.  Of course, it was already pretty late, so we headed back to our respective Crews within a few minutes, promising to get together again sometime after dinner.  Right into dinner prep for us - Chicken Noodle Stew, Cream of Chicken Soup, Chocolate Pudding and (but of course) most of the Commissary Cookies!  Cleanup was followed by a camp breakdown/packup and bear-bags.  I headed over to talk to Coop and his Crew Chief, who were plotting out their ascent on Baldy, and we talked for about 15 minutes on what we had done on our first 4 days, to which Coop commented:  "Yeah, but you guys are maniacs!"  Coming from Cooper Wright, I'll call that high praise indeed.  Ended with a discussion of the next-to-last day, and whether or not we would do "Black Death" (Black Mountain) on our way to Shaefers Pass, or rather take the North Fork of Urraca Creek, and head up to the Pass from the south.  We both figured we'd wait til we got to Clark's Fork to get some better info on the water situation at Shaefers.  Back at our site, we circled up for another session of Roses, Thorns, and Buds (a good day for it), after which we discussed the agenda for the next day.  Everyone agreed to push hard to Head of Dean to try and catch the 8:00 am Conservation Project - no-one wanted to work in the heat of the afternoon.  That meant another early reveille, since we had to be at Head of Dean by 7:30 in order to do the morning session.  Great sunset as we finished up our packup.  Coop's group headed en masse to a spot in the meadow for their own Crew meeting - probably discussing Baldy (same as we had done the previous evening.)  Bed at 8:30, 54 degrees, with clearing skies.  A super day!