Principles of Choosing Equipment

Individual Safety  The wrong gear is unsafe to the individual Scout - a scout without proper clothing on a mountain in a thunderstorm is at serious risk of hypothermia.

Group Safety  An unsafe Scout poses a hazard for the entire group, since a group is only as strong as its weakest member.

Enjoyment  The wrong gear means that a Scout will not enjoy his Scouting experience.  It is no fun to shiver with cold in the middle of the night during a camping trip, and it is no fun when you are hiking with a pack that hurts to wear and makes you feel like a pack mule.  In fact, the wrong gear can lead to a Scout hating the outdoors and even hating Scouting.  The right gear means a Scout can accomplish more, and enjoy doing it.

Self-Esteem  The wrong gear can hurt a Scout’s self esteem - this does not mean having the most expensive gear.  All new Scouts want to be able to hike with everyone else, and carry their fair share of group gear.  A Scout with a pack so heavy from inappropriate gear who is in tears climbing the first hill he comes to is going to suffer a huge blow to his self-esteem.  He may not realize, and his friends may not realize, that no one but a trained athlete could reasonably be expected to carry more than half his weight on his back (in a pack that does not even fit).

Skill Development  Learning how to make do without, and how to “jerry rig” gear is a great skill.  But a Scout who is struggling to use poor gear, will spend more time trying to make it work than learning other more important skills.

Group Capabilities  What hurts an individual Scout hurts the entire group.  This goes beyond safety concerns.  A Scout who can’t keep up on a hike or backpacking trek, and who is not enjoying himself, holds back not just himself, but the group as a whole.  A Scout who can only hike a couple of miles with his outrageously heavy pack unfairly keeps everyone else from enjoying a more fulfilling and challenging trip.  When many Scouts lack suitable gear, the Troop leadership must scale down the kinds of activities that the Troop as a whole can engage in.

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Equipment Selection Recommendations

Approximately one third to one half of the Troop's monthly overnight trips are devoted to backpacking.

Troop 323 highly recommends that Scouts primarily purchase gear suitable for backpacking.

Backpacking gear can be used for car camps, but the reverse is not true - most gear suitable for car camping is completely unsuitable for backpacking.

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The Meaning of Lightweight

No person who should carry more than 1/3 of their bodyweight on a backpacking outing.  For an adult weighing 150 lbs that amounts to 50 lbs on your back - for an adult weighing 210 lbs that is 70 lbs.

Try putting 50 - 70 lbs in a pack on your back and see how it feels - it is extremely heavy and quickly uncomfortable.

Weigh your Scout - young Scouts can weigh as little as 70 lbs.  The absolute max they should carry is 23 lbs!

Troop 323 aims to have every person on an outing carrying no more than 20 lbs (excluding water).

There are 2 good reasons to travel lightweight

1. Safety

>  Internal – a healthy spine

>  External – safe travel

2.  Enjoyment

>  Travel further faster

>  Carry a pack that is not painful

>  Have more energy when you arrive in camp

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Conflicting Factors to Balance in Selecting Equipment

There are a number of factors that you must consider when selecting gear for Boy Scout outdoor activities.  

Performance issues to consider:

>  Safety
>  Equipment durability
>  Equipment weight
>  Growth of Scout (change of size)
>  Duration of Scout's commitment to the outdoors and Scouting
>  Types of activities involved

Ultimately your equipment choices will be a balance between your required performance and your budget - this is a personal decision for everyone, so there is no right answer on what to buy.

A Systems Approach to Selecting Equipment

The best way to approach buying equipment is to think in terms of systems. The critical systems, in order of relative priority, are:

          >  Sleeping system
          >  Packing system
          >  Clothing system
          >  Shelter system
          >  Kitchen system
          >  Water system
          >  Clean-up & sanitation system
          >  Repair system (human and gear)
          >  Miscellaneous (tools; "toys"; specialty equipment))

The key to going lightweight is to focus primarily on reducing the weight of the four most important systems: Sleeping, Packing, Clothing & Shelter.

Sleeping System (details to be added)

>  Sleeping bags
>  Sleeping pads
>  Bivvy sacks

Packing System (details to be added)

>  Internal frame vs external frame
>  Size

Clothing Systems (details to be added)

>  Layering
>  Types of fibers
>  Footwear

Shelter System (a single suitable shelter can be shared among the Patrol members to reduce weight further)

>  Tarps vs tents
>  Line and stakes
>  Groundsheets

The next step is to designate group equipment and food to avoid carrying excess load of stuff that can be readily shared among the Patrol members 

Kitchen/Food System

>  Food
>  Stove & lighter
>  Pot & utensils
>  Leather work gloves

Water System 

>  Filter & tablets
>  Tanks

Clean-up & Sanitation System

>  Sinks
>  Dobie pads & washing liquid
>  Trash bags
>  Toilet & fire-pit clear-up trowel

Repair System

>  First aid kit
>  Equipment repair kit

Miscellaneous

>  Headlamp, compass, signal mirror, multi-tool
>  Camera, binoculars, GPS
>  Grill? tongs? fishing gear? etc. etc.

Download system details here:

Backcountry Patrol Gear System (discusses shared equipment including shelter)
Backcountry Kitchen/Food System
Backcountry First Aid Kit
Backcountry Repair Kit
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How To Do it All for Under 20 Lbs...

Click on the following links to get a sample packing list for a group backpacking outing, showing the weights of each item.  The total that this Scout is carrying, including water and food is under 17 lbs!.

                          pdf                        Excel

In addition to his load, our Scout was wearing:

>  Hiking boots/trail shoes
>  Woolen socks
>  Shorts
>  Underwear
>  Nylon (wicking) shirt
>  Hat
>  Sunglasses

and was carrying trekking poles (doubling as supports for the shelter), and had applied sunscreen and his chapstick.

On a colder day he would have been wearing the fleece that he had packed this day plus some gloves and longer pants (or he would have added the lower half of his zip-off pants), and on a rainy day he would have worn the rain jacket and used a plastic trash bag to line his pack to keep the contents dry.

Click here to download an Excel spreadsheet with some examples showing how to equip a 4-man, 6-man and 8-man patrol with shared gear, and how to divide the equipment fairly among the patrol members.

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Recommendations

Click here for some recommendations from Mr Brown Russell on suitable equipment to buy.  

You should make your own assessment of how much to spend vs the performance of each choice.  Also, there are many other good choices (including buying used equipment) that may meet your criteria that are not on the list.

For a list of stores and web sites some of the Troop use, go to the Gear section of the web site.