Philmont Food: weight & size?

[Adam A]

I am wanting to  make some dummy food bags, that replicate Phil food, to load into boys packs  for practice hikes. In reading I’ve seen from 6.5lb’s to 12lb’s and was wondering if people could chime in with their experience with a four day food load, weight wise.

I was thinking a pack of ramen in each (crush meter) and dried beans to make up the weight if they match  weight / volume wise. If not I’ll figure something else to add ballast. There would be five bags for each boy and whatever they packed to eat that day to make up the rest of it.

[Brian H]

Keep in mind that with 3-4 days of food each person will only carry half of that.  It’s easy to break up weight when dividing it up with food buddies.  Here are 9 meals.  Had to sub one dinner for a lunch because that is all I had.  These are meals I bought last summer from Philmont.  I imagine this years meals will be comparable.  9 meals(3 full days) weighs 10.03 lbs.  so figure half of that for each person.  May be justa tad more or less depending what is in the meal.  I took licks and will try to attach. Good luck

[Brian H]

pics.  Not licks

[Bruce Tolley]

@ adam

I am not sure I understand the question. So you are doing practice hikes with personal and group backpacking gear and also want to simulate the Philmont food with stuff that is not food?

If you want to practice your trail cooking with Philmont food you can buy the Philmont packages from Philmont. They have been using MountainHouse, repackaged so you could not cook it in the bags. Not sure what they are using now.This food is usually available for sale post season but they literally had a fire sale last summer and I think it is all gone.

If you are doing day hikes with full packs, and want to simulate the food weight you could just use the rule of thumb of 2 lbs per person per day and put 8 to 10 lbs of dried beans in each person’s pack.

If this question is about room that the Philmont food takes up, Philmont food and the common gear is bulky so with my crew, I wanted to make sure each Scout had about enough room for a large soccer ball in his pack on top of all his own personal gear. Some folks have recommended leaving space for a regulation basketball.

Hope this helps.

[Brad P]

It might be easier to just put a full gallon jug of water in the pack on top of all the other gear and make sure there’s still space left over when prepping with a day hike.  That’s about 8.3 pounds.

[Bruce Tolley]

@ Brad P. That would do it. Although the Scouts might be a little skeptical about carrying 5 or 6 quarts of water (the one gallon plus any drinking water).

 

[Matt Dirksen]

Personally, I witnessed the bulk of the food seemed to be the bigger issue than the weight. The kids need to make sure they have ample space in their packs for the added meals, as well as the capacity to carry the extra weight.

Here’s a link to an earlier thread on trail meals. Scroll down and you’ll see some good pics of the average meals.

(nothing like lugging a box or two of club crackers around…. )

[Brian H]

This is 3 days worth of food. Each person would carry half, or split it based on who might be carrying heavier crew gear.  Good way for them to work together.  Many of them are bulky to pack as previously mentioned.  Especially those with crackers.  These 9 weight just over 10 pounds.

[David Y]

Based on Brian’s sampling each food bag may weigh about 1.11 pounds each.

Depending on the number of days between commissary food pick-ups you may have 3, 4 or 5 days of food.

Every crew regardless of size will have crew size divided by 2 times 3 food bags per day times the number of days.

For a crew of 12 this will be,

3 days = 54 bags = 59.94 lb. = 4.99 lb. each camper regardless of crew size

4 days = 72 bags = 79.92 lb. = 6.66 lb. each camper

5 days = 90 bags = 99.9 lb. = 8.33 lb. each camper

Every day this will be reduced by 18 bags and 19.98 lb. for a crew of 12.

Every morning after the first day of a commissary food pick-up the Crew Leader should re-divide the remaining food bags equally among the Scouts only and adults should not need to be carrying any food until immediately after another commissary pick-up.

Appropriate crew gear should already be assigned to Scouts according to their ability so food can be equally divided each morning.

[Adam A]

I originally told our troop to figure 6.5lb’s for a 4 day food load (our max) 6 bags per person to carry. Which seams to be right. I’ve also told them about leaving room for a full sized pillow (for food) after loading all personal and troop gear. Currently we are doing 2 day treks a month with full packs  in tandem with other physical training, and campouts.  Some listen, others? So to make things as realistic as can be short of buying trail meals which are sold out right now and would be costly for everyone to have, I figured the dummy food bags would ease my mind and they could then take them home and see what works best for them packing wise. Later on we will be doing full on weekend trips with trail cooking and the full nine yards.

Thanks everyone for the links and info some of those threads I had not seen.

[Jamie Barnes]

@moonshine

David – why are you making the scouts carry the adult’s food? That’s not crew gear. Pots, bear ropes/bags, stove, etc. that’s crew gear and shared/used by the entire crew. Food is consumed by individuals/food buddies, and not by the entire crew. As an adult, why should I expect Tommy Tentpeg to carry my nutter butter cookies for 3 days? I don’t’ think that’s fair and what Philmont is all about.

You made this quote on a previous post ““Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine” I’ll bet if you queried the scouts they’d vote not to have to carry the adult’s food. Sounds like an old tradition carried through to today that needs to be changed like OA call out ceremonies, hazing, etc. Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Jamie.

[Brian H]

I would agree with you Jamie Barnes. In our crew, we have food buddies(adult and youth).  Each pairing splits up their food ration and it is usually done so that at every other meal you can get rid of some weight.  If it doesn’t work out that way the pairs can always reshuffle the weight distribution.  I wouldn’t expect the scouts to carry the food that I eat any more than the tent I sleep in.   Just our crew’s perspective.

[David Y]

Have you been to Philmont before or are you speaking hypothetically?

You must think I’m cold, hard, unfeeling or selfish, but I’m just practicing what Philmont has taught me and trying to pass it along to others.

Philmont does not have “food buddies”, only tent buddies, or maybe you don’t do that either.

Philmont emphasizes and practices the BSA’s Patrol Method including cooking. Each day a different Scout prepares and cooks for his crew, service to others along with all the other Duty Roster assignments. A lot of troops have tried to devise ways to get around the Patrol Method of cooking and Philmont has squashed most of them but troops keep trying new ways. I guess you’re one of those.

Food is just like all the other crew gear shared by everyone: bear bags & ropes, dining fly & poles, crew FAK, map & compass, stoves & fuel, cook pot & spoon, etc. Food is too and the Scouts’ responsibility to carry (except right after a big commissary pick-up when there may be too much).

“I bet if you queried the scouts they’d vote” for you to carry their packs too. But this is not a democracy. Proper Philmont’s Rangers stress right up front “this is the Scouts’ adventure and their challenge to complete”. So it is for the Scouts to navigate, pick and set up camp, cook and clean-up, etc., If not for Two Deep Leadership the adults would not be there, only Scouts, so “the adults are on vacation”, all Philmont’s words, not mine.

If you put all the weight on the Scouts, even “the tent you sleep in”, they could still walk off and leave you in the dust (unless you are bringing a bunch novice non-backpackers) the advantage of youth.

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” with proper training and preparation, but not by trying to circumvent (out think) Philmont’s practices and techniques. They have been doing this for 80 years, I’d say they know more than we about how to best camp at Philmont.

[Jamie Barnes]

@moonshine

David,

I’ve been to Philmont three times, the most recent 12-day trek was in 2017. We’ve never had scouts carry the adult’s food nor have we been instructed to by our ranger.

I don’t think anything like that of you. I don’t even know you except from the few posts I’ve read authored by you on this forum. I was merely saying the scouts carrying the adult’s food might be am old tradition rather than a Philmont rule. There are a lot of those in scouts.

Can you educate me please on where Philmont says that food is crew gear? I’ve looked in the current Philmont Guidebook to Adventure and the Council & Unit Planning Guide and can’t find it there. We have a young man in our troop that has worked at Philmont for the past four years, one as a ranger and was going to be a ranger trainer last year. According to him the rangers almost never, his words not mine, recommend the scouts carry the adult’s food. We have an adult that’s been five times and on the last two crews I’ve been on with our troop. He has never had a ranger tell him food is crew gear. The lead adult advisor for our troop’s other 2017 crew said their ranger didn’t tell them that either. I’m trying to figure out who/where at Philmont has stated all the food is crew gear. I just want to make sure we are doing it correctly. If it’s a Philmont rule I’m all for it. I don’t agree with all of their rules but my mantra has been “their ranch, their rules and we’ll do it their way”. I’ve stressed that to all of the crews I’ve been a part of and that’s the way we’ve done it. If the scouts are supposed to carry the food because it’s crew gear maybe we need to reexamine how we’ve been doing things.

We follow the patrol method for everything that’s in the Philmont published info online and what the ranger says in ranger training. We let our scouts make decisions on programs they want for an itinerary, navigation, skipping a program, they cook and clean up, hang bear bags and carry all of what we’ve been told is crew gear (dining fly, stakes, bear bags, bear ropes, sump strainer/spatula, pots, stoves, fuel, trash, green scrubby thing, water treatment tabs, etc.). We have a duty roster for all of those tasks and the adults don’t help. We let the scouts make all of those decisions, sometimes the adults might give them some thoughts about the ramifications of their decision but unless it’s safety related we don’t overrule. So I think we are working the patrol method just fine and we do share tents, BTW.

Our adults train pretty heavily prior to a Philmont trek, in the midst of doing that right now for our 2019 trek. We are jogging/running lifting some weights, core strength training and high intensity interval training. I’m pretty confident we can keep up with our crew, maybe not recover as quickly but we certainly don’t need to rely on the scouts to carry our adult’s food for us so we can keep up.

I suppose it’s up to each crew as to how crew gear and food is distributed. Is it really the crew leader’s choice as to the scouts carrying the adult’s food except for food pickup days or is that a long-standing tradition for your crews and the crew leaders don’t feel like they have a choice?

Jamie.

[Bruce Tolley]

This argument is orthogonal to the Scout spirit.

Who carries your food on a solo hike?

It is a common practice is for each member of the crew is to carry his or her fair share at Philmont, on any other BSA backpack, or in live as general.  David’s crews are free to adopt their own practice.

“The Scouts are learning from us, even when we are not teaching.”

Cheers

[Brad P]

We will have a smaller crew of scouts some are young and small. The bulk of the food alone is enough to have adults carry their food.

With a smaller crew, they’re already not able to split up crew gear as well as a larger crew.  I will teach our crew leader to be aware of who in the crew of scouts is more capable of carrying gear and be prepared to make adjustments.

Food isn’t gear.  HYOH and do what works best within the rules of Philmont.

[Matt Dirksen]

I’m confused. Where does it specifically say that scouts should be carrying the food for Adults?

Or is this simply an “interpretation” by Adults who do not wish to share in the responsibility?

If it’s the latter, I’d recommend allowing the crew members as a whole create their own opinion and arrive at a decision as a group.

While adults are required, they aren’t free loaders.

And for the record: food is widely considered to be a consumable, not gear.

[Terry Hoover]

Could someone please share where Philmont says adults are not part of the crew?  A crew consists of 7-12 individuals.  This clearly includes youth participants and adult advisors.  Our adults are advisor’s, though, and certainly, sit back and let the scout’s lead.  Our adults always carry their share of food <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>and</span> crew gear.  It only makes sense.  I don’t think that adults carrying their share of food and gear detracts from the scout’s experience.

[Terry Hoover]

We generally make up a number of 10L stuff sacks and put about 8 lbs of weight in them to simulate Phil-food.  Everyone needs to be able to fit this into their pack.

 

[Kevin Sweere]

4-5x 2L soda bottles with 2-5 of them filled with water are another way to simulate Phil-food.

This also allows the stronger Scouts to fill them all and the weaker ones to go light…. but still represent max volume.

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