Bear Bags and food

Bear bags are generally woven poly feed sacks (aka "blue poly tarp" material). Think 50 lb feed sacks. Generally 4-6 are issued with the rest of the crew gear at Philmont.

Food carry? On our last trek we had each tent pair carry their food. That way if they liked powdered crackers, it was easy to accomodate. ;) BTW, food is packed for two, eg. each food package will feed two.

Yep, Ed had it right, the bear bags are feed bags that weigh a couple ounces each (they really aren't that weighty) and are approx 18" wide x 3-3.5ft tall. About 4-5 per crew (depends on size of crew though), but if you brought 6 of your own you would have plenty.

I agree, spliting food into tent pairs works well, but work with the kids on going through each bag and taking out what they don't want or trading with others in the crew. Then have them raid the "swap boxes" to find other things they want. This will result in less waste, bulk, and more happiness.

Here is some data from last summer:

Philmont issued bear bags – as already mentioned, most of the Philmont bear bags I saw were re-used grain bags – 4.3 oz each for those that were not cut down because of the edges unraveling. All the bags issued to us were grain bags. (yes, I brought a scale to use in basecamp)

Everyone in our crew brought their own food storage bag anyway so we used those for overnight storage on the bear-bag hangs and skipped the Philmont issued bags for that purpose (because it made the Philmont bag(s) redundant … plus, a benefit of this method is that it eliminated the "sorting out food" exercise in the morning and allowed for faster transitions).
We did use one Philmont issued bag (the only one we brought) for an "Oops" bag to store that day's lunches, dinners and misc for easy access during the day.

The boys were paired up in "food buddies" and split their food accordingly.

Food buddies worked well for our crew, too. That was especially good for breakfast and lunch — find your buddy, find the right bag, eat. No waiting around for all the food bags to be found and divvied up.

do you keep the food in the bear bags to put in pack?
I was also thinking of having each scout get a nylon bag to keep the food in as well as other smellables and then for convenience just clip to a carabiener on the bear rope.
Does this make sense.
If I were to do this what size bag would the scouts need.

Mike,

Yes, food is stored in the pack in the bear bags you or your lads are carrying
(Bag size – 20 L is plenty big enough).
No need to carry a redundant bag – one bag per lad is fine.

Here's a link to the thread that discusses this in greater depth
(bear bags are on the 2nd page):
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=21408&disable_pagination=1

We are planning on each scout to use their own designated stuff sack (20L- 9×19 inches) to hang. Each scout will be responsible to clip on their bag on each night. The duty master will then check to make sure they have 12 bags plus the opps bag.

Thoughts on this process?

and do you think the bags are the right size?

That's our plan too. 20L seems to be the recommended size in several threads.

Should these bags be a plain nylon, coated nylon, sil-nylon, or the ultra sil-nylon.

We used Sea-to-Summit 20L ultra sil dry bags. But more than a particular brand
what features we found useful:

1. bag was waterproof so there was no worry of your stuff getting soaked
by an overnight shower.

2. rolling down the dry bag and clipping it around the bear rope was
more convenient and faster than tying or fiddling with a carbiner.

3. dry bag was better at keeping food smells separate
from everything else in the boy's pack when he stuffed it down
inside his pack in the morning.

Al

We decided to go with 20L REI stuff sacks.
http://m.rei.com/mt/www.rei.com/product/795017/rei-stuff-sack

We considered the pluses of a dry sack that Al points out but found them to be too expensive for our budget. The Philmont food is packaged in plastic bags so even if a little water leaks in the top, it should be OK. We decided on the heavier nylon vs. silnylon because boys are not very careful with their gear and I expect their food bag to get dragged around a bit. Silnylon might get holes in it if not treated with care.

We plan on hanging each crew member's food bag plus the oops bag (same stuff sack, different color) line from a carabiner attached to a loop tied at the mid-point of the rope.

For about $13 per bag on sale, we are going with the Seal Line Cirrus 20L ultralight, silicone-impregnated nylon dry bag.

http://cascadedesigns.com/sealline/dry-sacks/cirrus-sack/product

2.3 ounces for a 20L bag and we got an assortment of colors.