dedkad

Philmont recommends two-person tents instead of singles to reduce footprint and I read elsewhere on this forum that tenting with your son is discouraged at Philmont. I need help on how best to plan for this "requirement" so we aren't forced into a last minute change of plans when we arrive at Philmont.

We have 11 people going: Three male adults, one female adult (all adults have a son going on trip, no adults are related), one male "youth" who will be 18 (parent not going), and six male youth under 18.

Here are my questions:

1. 18-year olds can attend Philmont as a youth or adult. As we already had four adults going (the max allowed), we registered him as a youth for Philmont. He is also registered as a youth in the troop since he just turned 18 this year. Can he share a tent with a 16 or 17 year old or will he need to tent alone since he is technically adult-aged?

2. If we are faced with the situation of odd numbers of youth and adults, would Philmont allow one-person tents for a scout and an adult or would they force a scout to sleep with his parent to keep as many people in two-person tents as possible?

3. If scout actually wants to sleep with parent, would they allow that?

OPTION 1:

One-person tents: female adult, male adult, 18-year old "youth" = 3 total

Two-person tents: two male adults, three pairs of scouts = 4 total

OPTION 2:

One-person tents: one adult = 1 total

Two-person tents: two male adults, one female or male adult with son, one 18-year old with a 16 or 17-year old, two pairs of scouts = 4 total

There are other possible options I can  think of depending on what the answers are to my questions above, but I'll leave it at this for now.

Major email exchange going on in our troop right now about the age restriction (I prefer to call it a recommendation) because we have a new leader in charge of our backpacking program who is concerned about running afoul of the BSA guidelines. In the past we've always left it to the leader to decide if the scout is capable of going on a particular trip, regardless of age. I think that flexibility is going to remain.

I hate backpacking on trails where horses are allowed. They chew up the trails so they are really dusty. You get stuck behind them on the trail and you're eating more dust. You get to your destination and finally find the perfect campsite only to find horse manure all over the nice flat area where you want to set up your tents. Worst of all, though, is the amount of gear that people put on those horses that they would never think to bring on their own into the wilderness. At one lake we had a horse group camping nearby with boom boxes and ice chests full of beer. Really took away from the backcountry experience.

I saw it in Cub Scouts.

If your troop is car camping, you could invest in a propane campfire.

I believe the neckerchief slide is where you can express your individuality.

If people don't want to lock down their privacy settings so that others can't see that they paid BSA Troop xxx money for something, I kind of see that as free advertising for scouts. "Hey, I noticed when I was spying on you on your Venmo app, that you paid some money to Scouts for your son to go on a camping trip. I didn't know your son was a Scout. Tell me more about it because I have a child who might be interested in joining."

I stopped counting my kids ages in months when they turned from 23 months old to 2 years old.

7 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

https://www.apnews.com/e1ccae7cfce749169db80adf83a267cb

Attorney Tim Kosnoff, a veteran of major sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church, said Tuesday that he and his team have signed up 186 clients from dozens of states in just the past few weeks who want to be part of litigation against the Boy Scouts. Kosnoff said 166 of them identified alleged abusers who have not been named in any of the Boy Scout files made public in past years.

Both the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church say they now have policies in place to sharply curtail abuse that abounded in past decades. In the Boy Scouts ′ case, the steps included requiring criminal background checks for all staff and volunteers, and requiring two or more adult leaders be present with youth at all times during scouting activities.

Two or more adult leaders be present at all times? Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention when I watched the new training videos, but isn't there still a difference between two-deep leadership and no one-on-one contact?

Interesting about all the desserts people are talking about. None of the summer camps my son has been to in California allow food in the campsites because of the critters.

14 hours ago, HelpfulTracks said:

Take something as simple as bathhouses. Many (most I have visited) share bathhouses between 2 or more camp sites. Parents of both boy and girl campers have raised concerns over sharing bathhouse facilities. So if you have a couple of girl troops that barely fill half a camp site, but effectively block 2-3 campsites, does that make sense financially? No, it is a huge drain. Does it make sense to turn away 30-40 boy campers each session even though there are empty camp sites? That is tens of thousands of dollars lost over a Summer. Does it make sense to raise every campers fee by $25 to make up for those that were turned away? Or does it make more sense to funnel girl troops into 2 or 3 weeks of the Summer until there is a critical mass of girls troops? 

 

Many camps have been dealing with this for years when it comes to adults and scouts having to share a bathhouse. Problem is easily solved with a few portapotties and designated shower times for female adults, male adults, male scouts, and female scouts. And let's be real. My son barely changes his clothes when he's at camp, let alone take a shower. This is not a valid reason to keep girl troops from attending all weeks of camp.

Anybody use Venmo to receive payments for scouting activities? We've had a request from a parent for our troop to consider this. Might not be a bad idea. I can't tell you how many times I try to chase down people for payment only to be told they don't have their checkbook on them. Just wondering what the pros and cons are for using Venmo.

Sounds like summer camp for the Montessori crowd.

I talked to the Committee Chair tonight. Apparently, the paper I saw with the two names on it that they were discussing was not the result of the election. Odd that they would have those names on there when they didn't really represent anything, but I have no reason to doubt him. That will teach me to stick my nose where it doesn't belong! Never hurts to verify, though.

1 hour ago, SSScout said:

"A Scout is Trustworthy".

What Qwarzse  said. 

After the deed is done, you can't undo the Tapout , but you could bring the "other" Scout to the next tapout.

Did this happen in North Carolina?   Just askin'.....

Not North Carolina.

I am a Committee member for a Scout troop. I happened to be in the room at the end of the meeting where we had our OA elections. The OA rep and the Committee Chair spent a fair amount of time going over the votes, so I'm confident the count was done correctly. After the meeting the OA rep  was discussing the results with the Scoutmaster. I happened to see the results and only two of the three boys nominated were selected. The one who wasn't chosen was the SPL, and this was clearly troubling to the SM and the OA rep. I left while they were still talking about it. Fast forward a week to Camporee where they announce those who were selected to OA. I find out from my son that the SPL got in and one of the other boys (a younger scout) didn't. Somebody basically did a swap. I'm dumbfounded. I see from reading other threads in this forum that the SM has some control over who is on the ballot, but I couldn't find anything that said the SM can override the vote of the scouts. I sent an email to the OA rep asking what happened, but haven't heard back yet. I guess I don't have a problem that the SPL got in even though there may have been a reason why the scouts did not vote for him, but I am particularly upset that one of the other scouts who was voted in, didn't get in. I think they need to make things right by that scout. What should I do?

We're going in 2020 and looking over these itineraries is really getting me excited. Does anyone know if we can rent stoves at Philmont? Our troop now only uses Jet Boils and those aren't big enough for an 8 quart pot.

"Please know that these matters continue to have the full attention of the highest levels of our organization, and we will communicate transparently as there are developments or updates to share."

From the vague letter they emailed me this afternoon, if this is their idea of transparency, we are in trouble.

Our troop from California got a 12-day slot for July 2 to July 14, 2020. I think I'm more excited than the Scouts.

One thing, though. I have been frustrated with the lack of information or conflicting information available on their website and hope it gets better now that we have a slot and should be getting regular emails. One thing that was frustrating was a quote I pulled directly from their website that said scouts needed to be 17 years old or younger on the first day. We have a scout who will be 18, and since all the adult slots were filled, I told him he couldn't go. The scout's mother got upset and said that one of the adults should step down and make room for her son. That didn't go over very well. Then I came across some other information that said a scout 18 to 21 could register as either a youth or an adult, so I guess he is able to go now because we had one youth spot left.

Also from the website, I kept getting pages with links that didn't work.

Did you see how many slots are still available for 2019? Is this normal? https://www.philmontscoutranch.org/registersection/availableslots/

I agree with the others about looking at where the District needs are. As a leader, the District people have been invaluable to me in helping deliver an awesome program to the scouts.

As the person responsible for collecting all the payments from the families and sending them to the Council on the various payment due dates, I would find this system very confusing and it would add a lot of extra work on my part trying to figure out who is going to pay what amount and then making sure I send the correct amounts to the Council.

How many scouts attend your meetings on average?

Our boys bring their own lanterns, which are usually Luci lanterns. No batteries or breakage to worry about. The Luci lanterns don't put off a lot of light like regular lanterns, but I've found if we have two or three propped up on walking sticks or hanging from a canopy, they put off plenty of light.

We live in California near the coast, so we have the luxury of being able to camp all winter long if we so choose. We try to do one snow camping trip per year and will tentatively put a few dates on our calendar, but the drought has interfered with that several times. There's a national park only 4 hours away with a bathroom in the campground that stays open year round and is slightly heated to keep the pipes from freezing. As a woman, this is a godsend. Squatting in the snow to pee is not my idea of fun. Since we often don't get snow until after the first of the year, we have to squeeze our snow camping trip into a single weekend instead of over the school's winter break. We leave on Saturday morning to avoid driving at night on possible black ice and trying to set up and stay warm in the dark. Arriving on Saturday mid-day gives the scouts time to dig snow caves to sleep in if they want. It's a lot of work for a one night trip, but well worth it. 

1 hour ago, TMSM said:

https://www.philmontscoutranch.org/philmonttreks/expeditions/

 

Thanks, I can't tell you how many times I clicked on that link, but I just kept trying to click forward to the register portion where I thought it would give me more info. I feel stupid that I didn't even bother to read the text that was above each link. More stupid questions to come...