By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — If the 10 members of Boy Scouts Troop 109 didn’t understand the importance of preparedness before their adventure treks in New Mexico this summer, they know it now.
From setting up and breaking camp to surviving a “popup” lightning storm on top of a mountain — at an elevation above the timber line — the scouts and their six adult advisers had a trip to remember to the Philmont Scout Camp.
Finishing a day’s hike and all but ready to turn in for the night, the boys hadn’t given a lot of thought to the process of setting up their campsite before the trip.
“At the beginning of the trek,” said Eagle Scout member of the troop, Evan Cutlip, “it took us about an hour and a half to set up camp at night. By the end, we had cut that in half, to 45 minutes.”
Different boys had different motivations for making the trip.
“I was in Cub Scouts from about 4th grade on,” said Jackson Hill. “Now I am being home schooled but taking a couple of elective course at Watauga High School, auto tech and welding. I have been in Boy Scouts for about three years. I am mostly in it for the activities. I had never been backpacking before, so Philmont seemed like a really good experience, one of those once in a lifetime things. So, I decided to give it a shot. Before the Philmont trip, we underwent wilderness survival training, which you are required to take.”
New Mexico was very different than the Southern Appalachian Mountains in which he has grown up.
“New Mexico is very dry compared to here,” said Jackson. “Big mountains and beautiful landscapes. It is very red.”
For Oliver Blain, Philmont added to his education because the learning was based on real world experiences rather than more abstract learning from reading a book.
“I’ve been in Scouting since I was 13, about four years,” said Blain. “In our Troop 109, Philmont has always been presented as an opportunity, typically in your older years of Scouting, so you are getting into more high adventure type of activities. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Philmont is life-changing, for me personally, but it was great. At Philmont, was necessary that you learn how to read a map. You have to know your way around and where you are trying to go the next day.”
At Philmont, preparedness is a also a necessity.
“All of us that attended Philmont this year already had a first aid merit badge,” said Blain. “Some of us had Emergency Preparedness merit badges but we were all required to take Wilderness First Aid training and to get certified.”
Wilderness first aid became potentially real for Blain and his fellow Scouts at Philmont.
“We got caught in a lightning storm on top of one of the most famous mountains, Tooth of Time, on our last full day. It is completely bald, just rock, above the timber line. We were split up into two crews. Our crew of five scouts and three advisers was a little bit slower going up. About three and a half hours in, we ran into the other crew, which had stopped about halfway up. There had been a lightning storm with pouring rain. They got to a certain height and decided it was too dangerous to go on.
“As a group, our crew decided to keep going up. We were on top and about 200 yards away a lightning bolt struck a tree. It was as pure white as a light bulb in your room. Mike Reynolds, my stepfather, was one of our advisers. He told us to immediately drop our packs and get to the north side of the mountain. That lightning bolt struck on the southeast side, so we headed to the north.”
Going north was important.
“On the south side, there was a really dense stand of trees. In a lightning storm, you don’t want to be near any trees,” said Blain. Conveniently, on the north side, there were giant boulders. It took us about 30 seconds to leave our packs and go over and down the north side. We helped each other find hiding spots among the boulders and that is where we stayed for about 30 minutes.”
Mike Reynolds, Blain’s stepfather and the Scouts’ advisor, had a little different perspective.
“There were two reasons to go to the north side,” said Reynolds. “First, there was a cliff on the south side and I didn’t want our boys running over the cliff. Plus, all the trees were on the south ridge. On the north slope, there were just those giant boulders they could get under. We didn’t want our guys to be the highest thing around. Also, the storm was coming from the south.”
Reynolds drew on years of experience, influenced by Scouting, but acknowledged that times have changed, too.
“I grew up in Scouting, near Danville, Virginia,” he said. “My father was a longtime scoutmaster. I got highly involved as a youth. Growing up as a Boy Scout, we went backpacking and camping a lot but it was a different time and era. If we wanted to go backpacking, we had parents who would drop us off on the Appalachian Trail on a Friday, without any adults, and pick us up on Sunday. Nowadays, that doesn’t happen. But the Scouting experience was an introduction to kayaking, backpacking, rock climbing, hunting, fishing… all of it. New Mexico is great. It is a wild neck of the woods.”
Just starting at Watauga High School as a freshman, Sam Cooke internalized the Philmont experience, almost academically.
“I just started 9th grade at Watauga High School. I want to take an academic path combining math and science, looking at some sort of engineering or biology career. The Philmont trip was amazing, definitely the best I have been on,” said Cooke. “There is the scenery, of course, but with the trek it is this feeling that you have just overcome a challenge. You look back and think, ‘Wow, we just hiked between 65 and 70 miles, total.’
“The lightning storm was crazy,” Cooke added. “We learned not to keep going higher in a lightning storm — even if you want to get to the campsite faster and get out of the rain.”
Cooke appreciated the relationship between adventure and some aspects of science.
“At Philmont, each day we hiked and most days when we stopped there would be a program, like rock climbing, white powder musket loading and shooting, archery, or making arrowheads. There was one day we were hiking to Cypress Mines. It was a slightly longer day, with about 39 creek crossings. The route was uphill on loose rock. I had not balanced my backpack, so the weight wasn’t evenly distributed. It was very painful. I got it adjusted that night and it was better for the rest of the trip,” said Cooke, with a grin. “The trip was so worth it. If you are in scouting, sign up for Philmont.”
Ron Cutlip, one of the adult advisors, was on his second trip to Philmont, but this time coming at it with a much broader depth of experience.
“I went to Philmont previously, when I was 16, in 1977. We were on the northern side of the Philmont camp back then. This time we were on the southern side. The park is large, over a hundred thousand acres,” said Cutlip.
“Philmont is special,” said Cutlip. “It is an opportunity to really get deep inside yourself and see what you can accomplish. We had some incredible hikes up very steep terrain. There were mountain tops as high as 11,000 feet in elevation, or about twice as high as Grandfather Mountain, to put it into perspective. There were snow caps. We were able to see some beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
“We did those kinds of things every day, for 12 days,” Cutlip recalled. “We carried our backpacks with supplies, personal gear, food and water. We hiked a minimum of 10 miles a day with the backpacks, then put in additional mileage after that going to different events or activities. There were talks on Indian lore. Being in nature, away from your cell phone and computer, as well as from the general stresses of life was absolutely incredible.”
For Cutlip, this trip to Philmont was a family adventure.
“I was with my son, Evan, who is now an Eagle Scout. In 1977, I went when I was 16 and now Evan has gone when he is 16. To be able to spend that time with him was very precious and valuable, as a father,” said Cutlip.
While the lightning storm was only two hours of the 12-day trip, it made an impression.
“The lightning storm was actually a hailstorm,” Cutlip recalled. “We knew it was coming. We could see it, miles away, making its way toward us. We prepared ourselves for it. It first came with rain, which became a major hailstorm. There were lightning strikes all around us and we implemented our lightning protocol, not going further up the mountain. We were soaking wet, waiting it out for two hours. We had to take precautions not to get hypothermia. All of us were close to that, so we had to do our best to keep warm. The temperature had dropped, dramatically, from the upper 80s when we started at the bottom, but when the storm hit, it was in the low 50s. We were soaking wet and there was a slight wind, which made it even chillier.”
Adversity comes with lessons and benefits.
“One of the real benefits of Scouting is learning to be a leader. Like with the hailstorm, a leader knows what to do and to reduce the potential dangers in the situation. He is prepared. The boys learned how to lead. They took turns cooking, cleaning up, and putting up bear bags. These are all not just life experiences, but also developing problem-solving skills — being prepared,” said Cutlip.
For Evan Cutlip, the lessons from the Philmont trek will stay with him for a lifetime.
“Sure, it is being outdoors, and in nature,” he said. “But you learn to be less scared of things, of the unknown. You get connected with nature and you learn to be more trustworthy of your camping equipment. But it was also a real opportunity to work on team skills, working with people you never had to work with before, whether it was setting up camp, cooking, or cleaning up. We had a couple of pre-treks, but they were nothing like the real thing.
“It is really interesting to be out there for a bit. People react to situations differently. Tensions can build,” added the younger Cutlip, a junior at Watauga High School planning on maybe playing college tennis before pursuing a career in finance and business management.
The Boy Scout Troop 109 participants in the 2025 Philmont trip were Sam Cooke, Oliver Blain, Jackson Hill, Nathaniel Walker, Evan Cutlip, James Pressly, Burlie Freeman, Daniel Wood, Dillon Miller and Brayden Hughes.
The adult advisors included Mike Reynolds, Ron Cutlip, Will Indicott, Justin Ginn, Tim Walker and Candis Walker.
