Glossary

Camp

Camps on this website are generally places at Philmont where you stay overnight. However, this website also includes turnarounds – trailheads where you start or end your trek with a bus ride – and points of interest under the label "camp". Camps define the endpoints of routes. Camps at Philmont are staffed or unstaffed. Staffed camps have guided activities, purified water and, sometimes, showers. Unstaffed camps are synonymous with trail camps. Unless otherwise specified, trail camps have water (usually requiring purification) nearby. Trail camps without nearby water are specified as "dry".

Expedition

Trek and expedition are synonymous – the combination of your specific crew (7 to 12 scouts and adults) with your assigned itinerary and the routes you choose between camps. Every day during the season, two crews are likely to depart on your assigned itinerary, but only your crew departs on your assigned day and follows your route choices: your trek or expedition.

Hiking Time

An estimate for how long the average crew will take to cover the itinerary or route. The estimate is based on Naismith's Rule. (Find out more information from the backpacking merit badge book.) It provides an estimate on how long a particular hike should take based on hiking speed, distance covered, and elevation gained and lost. Your actual hiking time may vary, but the estimate is useful both for planning your day and to compare the difficulty of one route to another. This website assumes a 2 mph hiking speed and a climbing rate of 2,000 feet per hour – including all stops.

Itinerary

An itinerary is the blueprint that defines your experience at Philmont. It specifies the camps you need to stay on each of your 12 nights at the Ranch. The route, or path, you follow between each camp is largely up to you.

Philmont defines 35 different itineraries each year. Most years, the "new" itineraries are quite similar to the "old" itineraries from the prior year – changing one or two of the camps, changing the numbers, perhaps introducing an entirely new itinerary. That means you can get a good idea of what itinerary features you may wish to choose by reviewing last year's itineraries before this year's are released (in March).

Itineraries are classified by Philmont as Challenging, Rugged, Strenuous, or Super Strenuous. The classifications roughly correspond to increasing difficulty or more hiking time and less program time. This site adds "hiking time" to the information about each itinerary as another proxy for difficulty. More hiking time generally means harder itineraries. See hiking time for more information.

Route

A route is the path you take between two camps. In many cases, there is only one practical route between two camps. Sometimes, however, there are two or more practical routes. For every pair of camps, this website provides a recommended route, and, if practical, alternatives. When multiple routes are practical, we tell you why we recommend one other the other(s) – it may be a matter of difficulty or particular features or scenery on the recommended route. The itinerary links will give you basic information, the routes links will give you more detail.