Choosing a backpack if you are a scout or youth

I made this video to help scout parents when choosing a backpack. It's main audience are those who don't have a lot of money and need to buy a pack for a youth who grows a lot. This is especially helpful for single moms, who are juggling a lot and don't necessarily know what to look for. This is also helpful for our frequent 12-13 year olds wanting to get into survival. If you are older than 17, or your parents are loaded, then this really isn't for you. Keep that in mind when you don't agree with my assessment.

http://youtu.be/sO-UMPD54hI

Thanks for watching, and any advice on future videos is appreciated.

Thanks, watching now. I know how to buy a backpack for myself but have never bought one for my kids. My son was taller then me since he was 11 and is now a towering man child at 13. I'm sure he's not done growing by any means. But I don't take them backpacking, only camping. Too many bears for me to want to take them out there. Maybe next year. Besides, backpacking is my thing, my solitary thing.

And yes, I love my external frame. I bought an internal frame, used it twice, put it in storage....

Okay, a few suggestions.

1. Pay the actor more. When they yawn in the middle of filming you either have to do a retake or fire the actor.
2. Tell the producer and director to stay out of the shot. Sheesh man, years of college in film making you'd think they'd know that.

Kids aren't adults. Run of thumb for a child is no more than 15% of their body weight. If your child weighs 90 pounds that's 13.5 lbs they can carry. The skeleton is still growing, cartilage is still soft and some bones like the sacrum in the spine are not even bones yet. They are still cartilage. Other bones have not yet fused together. Interesting aside to point this out. Most of us have 206 bones in our body but your younger kids may have as many as 300 because many have not fused.

Overloading them can lead to serious injuries that could plague them all their life.

Good vid on an important subject.

From my observation....seems like every school kid in the USA carries a bad back pack with too large of a load, just judging by how they are stooped over walking by the house in the morning.

Maybe everyone should watch your vid....Good job.

I think your observation is a danged good one.

Rick, that is a great point. I should do an overall equipment consideration video and mention not weighing down the kids. I know for my own kids, I just make them carry their sleeping bag and clothes. I try and keep that under 10 lbs total. A 12 year old can carry all their gear, especially for an overnight, granted he brings light gear. A 15-16 year old can bring all his own gear, plus some of yours. That way you won't have to walk so fast.

Thanks for posting, I'll refer back to this in a few years I hope.


Right now, I'm only day tripping with the kids. The two eleven year olds, I'll put as much as nine pounds on. The seven year old I limit to seven pounds. If we need more than that, it goes in my pack. It's a soft target on my part, but I don't see them carrying an overnight pack until thirteen.

As a scout leader, an external frame is a good start. Kelty makes a Jr. Tioga good for younger scouts and allows room to grow. Some internal frame packs have loops allowing you to make incremental adjustments an inch at a time.
If you have a decent sporting goods store, like REI, EMS, Sports Authority, etc., go there to find a pack that best suits your needs, and when it is found, go online and search for the best price, including eBay and Craigslist.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick

Kids aren't adults. Run of thumb for a child is no more than 15% of their body weight. If your child weighs 90 pounds that's 13.5 lbs they can carry. The skeleton is still growing, cartilage is still soft and some bones like the sacrum in the spine are not even bones yet. They are still cartilage. Other bones have not yet fused together. Interesting aside to point this out. Most of us have 206 bones in our body but your younger kids may have as many as 300 because many have not fused.

Overloading them can lead to serious injuries that could plague them all their life.

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Okay-okay, but in this case we are not too healthy in Hungary.
Primary school children (with 30-40kg) carry school bags with 5-15kg book.
In the secondary school we had days when we had to carry even 20kg book!

It's not just Hungary. We have the same problem in the States, too. Couple that with poor nutrition habits and no exercise making kids more susceptible to skeletal injuries.

I was lucky in this case, because I went to exercise every day for 1-2 hours.
But the truth is that my school bag was a cheap and bad rucksack without load balancing.
In secondary school I used a better one, Adidas sports backpack or something like this.

Last public school I taught in we had all our course work on-line. Saved the cost of books. Each student had a laptop and we had two full computer labs that would accomidate the entire student body at one time. The students e-mailed their homework to me, I graded it and e-mailed the grade to them and to their parents.

The average text book now costs $100+. 2,000 student school with 6 books for each student is $1,200,000 so reconditioned lap tops with tracking devices in them are cheaper than outfitting each student with a book for each of 6-8 classes.

The kids carried their gym clothes in their back packs, that was about it.

You can't go wrong with a Kelty External framed pack. They just work.