Top products from r/philmont

The other day my CamelCamelCamel alert told me that the Osprey Atmos AG 65 was on sale about 25% off, so around $195 (normally $260). Not the lowest it has ever been, but good enough for me to pull the trigger.


This backpack typically gets great reviews so I thought others might also have been waiting for the price to drop. Looking around many other Osprey items are also about 25% off so if you have other items you have been looking for may be worth it to check.
Link to a Review: https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/reviews/camping-and-hiking/backpacks-backpacking/osprey-atmos-65-ag


Link to REI and Amazon pages:

https://www.rei.com/product/878451/osprey-atmos-ag-65-pack-mens

around $180 right now at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Osprey-Mens-Atmos-65-Backpacks/dp/B00U3O8GRW


I ended up buying at REI before the price dropped even lower at Amazon. grrr.

I took a swimmer's towel. We never had a shower camp or anything, but it was enough to clean off with.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0742R14NQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Kept it in it's box in my pack.

We're using a remote canister stove. After seeing our scouts spill fuel and almost start a fire, we transitioned to canister stoves. This one?
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B007S3MHI0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thanks for the advice!!

You can find them on Amazon for $4. I just ordered one for myself.
Link

Rain hat

At home they get up and walk 15 feet to a flush toilet.

At Philmont, you wake up, grab a light, put on a jacket, put on headlamp, check boots for spiders, put on socks or other clothes you don't sleep in, walk 50 feet from camp, pee, and then undo everything you just did. Then you're pretty darn awake and you've interrupted your sleep cycle.
https://www.amazon.com/NOVA-Medical-Products-Male-Urinal/dp/B003U3CJWQ
These are used routinely in healthcare. Not a big deal.
I'm not really sure what peeing overnight has to do with smelling in the day time. You lost me there. Unless your urethra is abnormal (e.g. hypospadias), males should not have a big problem peeing into a bottle. In any case, it's between that guy and maybe his tentmate and nobody else. The point of my post was that Phil-rules don't back up stopping this, not that it was tasteful to do so.

13 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 18.3mm (28mm equivalent). I wanted to use a longer exposure but my battery was on its last legs. I had to push the exposure 2-3 stops in post as a result. I shot this with a Ricoh GR.

Most, if not all, of the bags that the dinners come in are not able to hold hot water. Like u/eine_ente said, people have tried and failed to cook their meals in the bags. Additionally, turkey bags are explicitly banned from Philmont for the waste that they generate.

Leaving aside cooking for the moment, consider dish sanitation and cleaning. Philmont has crews sanitize all utensils and dishes before meals by submerging them in boiling water. These same items are cleaned after a meal through washing them in the cooking pot with camp suds and rinsing them in the pot used to boil water. Trying to clean all of these things becomes much harder without at least one pot, lest you spill food waste and soap all over your cooking area.

Now, you specifically called out the inefficiency of Philmont's cooking method. In my experience, it is only more inefficient compared to other methods if the crew's stove(s) is not well maintained. What some crews have done is bring multiple Jetboils to boil water at a faster pace, but at the end of the day they were carrying more weight.

To speed up both the cooking and cleaning process of the Philmont method, do the following:

• Set aside the dinners for that night when hanging bear bags. Leave them by the fire pit if you are staying in camp or hang them in the oops bag for later.
  
• Have water ready to go for cooking. You should not have to wait 15 minutes for people to return with water from the time you decide to start cooking.
  
• The duty roster should be known by everyone. There should not be any question as to who is cooking or cleaning that night.
  
• Everyone should know exactly how to cook or clean. Pay attention to your Ranger when they teach the process.
  
• Make sure everyone brings their own utensil and bowl to the cooking area beforehand. As a personal aside, your mess kit should consist of exactly 3 things: spoon, bowl, and mug if you are so inclined. Leave your squishy/collapsible bowls at home - they're a pain to clean and have to go up in the bear bag. Don't use a Light My Fire mess kit - you don't need everything in there, the spork is almost guaranteed to break, and the triangular bowl barely fits into the pot. In my experience, the best set up a crew can have for mess kits is to have the same bowls and spoons so that everything stacks. You can put these in a mesh bag to sanitize them all at once and have just one crew member carry them. /rant
  
• Carry a food scraper to remove as much food as possible from the cooking pot before cleaning.
  
• Practice the Philmont method on your prep hikes.