Philmont Treks in
2008
Treks:
We currently have a “penciled in” 12 day trek with the council from July 20 to August 1, 2008. Additionally, we won the lottery and have a 7 day trek in August of 2008. Each trek can have a max of 12 people; 4 adults and 8 scouts or 3&9.
The council trek (July 20-Aug 1) is run by council along with the 3 other council treks. The council has contracted with a tour company that provides all the logistics for the treks including airlines, ground transportation, and hotel accommodations before and after the Philmont trek. Therefore, participants on this 2 week trek will have to abide by the council trek program and payment plan of a $250 deposit with a $1,730 total trek cost. See the details in the attachment from the council web site.
The one week troop trek of August 14-21 will be totally managed by the trek participants. They could elect to contract with the same tour company the council uses or make their own arrangements and touring schedule. For planning purposes, assume the fee of $1,730 as a majority of the fee is travel to and from camp and the actual camp fee may not be that much different from one week to two weeks.
Philmont Registration Time Line:
Currently the council has an active sign-up campaign for the 2008 treks defined in the attachment.
For the Council 2 week trek only: We need to know how many Scouts and adults want to take this trek. If we can fill most of the trek, the troop will place a deposit on the entire 12 trek spots. This puts all 12 trek spots in the troops control and takes them out of council’s control. If we don’t do this, there is no way we can make sure we fill the trek with Scouts from Troop 49. If we run into August and still have spots, we can offer them to selected troops to fill like Mahwah has done for us three times.
For the 1 week trek, Troop 49 is on it’s own to make payments to Philmont independent of the council. I believe Scott has already asked Peter Foley to send in a deposit. The Philmont Scout Reservation portion of the trip is $343 per person.
Fundraising:
One thought is to build the Philmont trek crews and let them sell funnel cakes at the Elks Flea Market in June and again in September. If you let the treks run the entire fundraiser then they build a sense of “team” and get to use the money to defray the expense of the trip.
Next Steps:
These are the next steps for the Philmont process.
1. Registration: The
Scouts and Adults send in a deposit to Troop 49 (not council) along with a
registration form indicating their trek preference. Send the forms to Scott Mendolia at
2. Selection of Treks: We have established a preliminary registration cutoff date of March 30th 2007. All the Scout and Adult registrations received at that time will be reviewed. If there are too many Scouts or Adults interested in one trek, then the Troop Committee will have to devises a selection criteria. After March 30th, registrations will be accepted on a space available basis and a waitlist will be started.
3. Payment schedule: Typically, failure to make timely payments to the published schedule will cause a Scout or Adult to loose their position in the trek. The grace period needs to be agreed upon by the troop committee.