50 Miler Backpacking

There’s something about going up into the mountains and carrying everything you need to survive on your back, and sleeping in a totally different place each night.  You get a sense of accomplishment that you couldn’t get anywhere else.  You feel entitled to say, “I can do it!”

We chose to do our 50 Miler up in the mountains around Kings Peak, and to bag the peak one of the days while we were there.  Plus, we had a leader with bad knees so we decided to throw in a new twist and rent a few pack goats.  You have to understand that we have a troop full of city slickers, who haven’t ever been around a farm animal.  We thought it would be a good experience for them to learn how to take care of a goat, AND we figured it would give some of the boys that get bored with hiking all day, something to do.  They can keep track of the goats and make sure they’re ok.

So we decided on this trip before Christmas, and got lists out to the parents of what their son would need for the trip.  Up until this time we really hadn’t done any backpacking, so nobody had the gear for it.  We used some of our troop funds to buy 3 good, external frame backpacks that the boys could borrow and a few good backpacking tents. 

One of our practice trips

We debated on getting the external frame or internal frame backpacks.  I know the internal frame ones are all the rage right now, but if you have one, then everything you take with you has to be more expensive, and compact to fit inside the pack.  We wanted to make this as inexpensive as possible for the families of the boys.  With external frame, they could strap a tent on the top and a sleeping bag on the bottom.  Then whatever size sleeping bag they had would work – instead of having to buy a $400 down mummy bag so it would fit in the bottom pocket of the internal frame pack.

Click on a link below to learn more about our preparations and the actual trip:

Practice Trips

Pack Goats

Backpacking Foods & Cooking

The Actual Trip

Lessons Learned

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