NOTE: Philmont has published the Philmont Treks 2024 Guidebook. The latest upload was 12/20/2023, 9:54:19 AM — it has numerous errors. Most of these are somewhat trivial and relate to the program/itinerary cross-reference files. Some have minor errors in the Program Features descriptions. I have uploaded the Program Survey forms and Itinerary Selection spreadsheets that are as accurate as possible at the current time. As Philmont updates/corrects the Guidebook, I’ll incorporate those changes.

For your Philmont trek, you will follow an assigned “itinerary.”  This itinerary defines which campsites you will go to each night, the programs you will participate in, where you will pick up food, and where water may be found.  The itinerary will also have side hikes — these are generally nearby peaks you can climb.

For the summer of 2024, there are thirty-four 12-Day itineraries, fifteen 9-Day, sixteen 7-Day, and nineteen Cavalcade itineraries defined by Philmont.

Your crew has to select its itinerary from one of the defined itineraries.  This process begins when the Philmont TREKS 2024 Itinerary Guidebook is posted on Philmont’s website.  This book includes instructions that your crew uses to determine the top choices of itineraries that it wants.  Crews will enter their top six choices on an internet website (instructions are included in the Itinerary Guidebook).  After entering your information and choices, your crew’s itinerary will be assigned by Philmont. 

When selecting your itinerary, it is recommended that you try to best fit the itinerary to your crew’s interests and abilities.  You should accurately judge the capability and experience of your crew and select an itinerary that is not too aggressive for them.  For example, if you have very young, small Scouts in your crew, it is probably not a good idea to pick a “super-strenuous” itinerary. 

You should try to fit the programs to your crew’s interests.  Obviously, with a crew of twelve, there will be widely varying desires and interests, so this is an inexact science at best!  By taking the list of programs available at Philmont and using this to survey the crew members you can find those programs that appeal to the majority of the crewmembers.  If you have mostly crew members who have not been to Philmont, you should emphasize programs and select a lower numbered itinerary that provides the maximum number of and time for programs.  Conversely, if your crew has been to Philmont and has participated in most of the programs, you may want to select either a specialized itinerary (climbing, challenges, etc.), one that climbs a number of the highest peaks at Philmont, or covers a lot of miles. Typically, these more strenuous itineraries have less time for programs.

Surveying the crew’s interests should ideally take place in a meeting of the entire crew. Distribute copies of the Survey Form to each crewmember. Then conduct a quick discussion of each of the programs available to you on your trek (12-day, 9-day, 7-day). When everyone has an understanding of what the programs are, have them fill out the survey forms and turn them into the crewmember that will process them. Discuss the various “Preferences” used in the Selection tool spreadsheet and reach a consensus of a good overall description of the crew’s capability and interests.

When all the survey forms have been completed, the ranking values are entered into the Selection tool spreadsheet. Preferences are set in this spreadsheet that describe the crew’s abilities and desires. Examine the “Results” of the Selection tool (along with the supporting worksheets) to do a sanity check on the itineraries it picked that most closely meet the crew’s interests and rankings. You may wish to experiment with various settings in the “Tables” worksheet to emphasize/de-emphasize different elements. When you’re comfortable with the results, they should be discussed with the crew and the top choices selected. These are the ones entered into the crew gateway as your crew’s choices, Philmont will assign your crew with (very likely) one of these.

There are two parts of the Itinerary Selection toolkit:

1.    Survey Form:  This is a Microsoft Word document that provides descriptions of all the programs available on a trek.  It should be printed and provided to crewmembers.  They should indicate their preference for the programs showing which they would most prefer.  Typically, crewmembers should rank the programs on a scale of 0 (meaning they could care less) to 20 (their life just won’t be the same if they don’t participate in the program).  On this scale, 10 is ambivalent. If they just don’t know, leave the ranking blank. Multiple programs may be given the same ranking value.

2.    Selection Tool:  This is an Excel spreadsheet where the rankings by crewmembers are entered.  Additionally, a set of “preferences” are entered that help describe the crew and its wishes.  When the rankings have been entered and the preferences set, an ordered list of itineraries that most closely reflect these will be created.  There are a number of supporting sheets/reports that may be used along with the rankings.  This spreadsheet is highly customizable to fit particular crew needs.  A worksheet named “Tables” contains factors that are used in calculating the ranking.  These factors may be changed as better fits for the crew are determined.

There are Survey forms and Selection tools for 12-Day, 9-Day, and 7-Day treks and Cavalcades.  All have been updated to reflect the 2024 itineraries as published in the Philmont TREKS 2024 Itinerary Guidebook.

Itinerary Selection Tools

Click on the buttons below to download the Word Survey forms or the Excel Itinerary Selection Spreadsheets

Note: If you get a “SECURITY RISK: Microsoft has blocked macros…” message after downloading a spreadsheet, you may need to use File Explorer and navigate to your Downloads folder. There, select the spreadsheet you downloaded and right-click it. Click on “Show more options” and/or search for “Properties”. Toward the bottom of the “Properties”, check the “Unblock” option then OK. Seems to occur somewhat randomly! If that doesn’t work, click on File/Options/Trust Center/Trust Center Settings and enable macros and VBA code.

Itinerary	Document	Revision	Date	Description
12-Day	Program Survey	n/a	12/30/2023	Original Implementation
12-Day	Itinerary Selection	2024_1-0	12/30/2023	Original Implementation
		2024_1-1	1/6/2024	Correct Tables calculations
		2024_2-0	1/16/2024	Fix Tables Program #’s
		2024_2-1	2/11/2024	Correct Itinerary 35 to SS
9-Day	Program Survey	n/a	1/2/2024	Original Implementation
9-Day	Itinerary Selection	2024_1-0	1/2/2024	Original Implementation
7-Day	Program Survey	n/a	12/31/2023	Original Implementation
7-Day	Itinerary Selection	2024_1-0	12/31/2023	Original Implementation
Cavalcade	Itinerary Selection	2024_1-0	1/7/2024	Original Implementation

Note:  These documents were developed using Office 365 on Windows 11. The spreadsheets will only run in a Windows desktop environment. The Excel spreadsheets make extensive use of macros and VBA code. You may have to enable these in the “Trust Center” to run the spreadsheets. The Word documents may require you to “Enable Editing” to make changes to them.