Backpacking Merit Badge

Read requirements 10 and 11 first

They are two entries near the bottom of a list of eleven, and they are the badge.

• Requirement 10: three treks, each of at least three days and **at least 15 miles**, each using at least two different campsites, carrying everything you need.
• Requirement 11: a five-day trek covering at least 30 miles using at least three different campsites, with a service project on it, planned in advance and journalled daily. Added up, that is a minimum of **fourteen days in the field and seventy-five miles carried**, across four separate outings that each need a date, a route, permission and people. Nothing else on this badge takes more than an afternoon. Everything numbered 1 to 9 is preparation for those four trips. Read them that way and the badge makes sense; read them in order and requirement 10 arrives as a surprise.

Two requirements cannot be done at home

Requirement 6(b) asks you to establish your position on the ground at three different locations while on a trek, with map and compass, or with a GPS receiver. Its two neighbours, 6(a) and 6(c), are both indoor work, which is exactly how it gets missed. Put it on the first trek you take under requirement 10 and it costs you twenty minutes; leave it and you will be adding a trek to get it.

Requirement 8(d) asks you to show proper food storage while on a backpacking trek. Same problem, same fix.

The journal starts on day one

Requirement 11(c) is a daily journal kept during the trek: a day-by-day description, what worked, what you would change. It is written last on the badge and it is not a write-up. Pack something to write in and write in it every night, because a journal that was not kept cannot be produced afterwards, and requirement 11 is not a trek anybody repeats casually.

Two plans that get used, not filed

Requirement 9(a) is a written plan for a two-mile hike, and 9(e) is that hike, using that plan. Requirement 11(a) is a written plan for the five-day trek, and 11(b) is that trek, as planned. Both pairs say so in the requirement text, so both are drawn as conditions here.

The 11(a) plan is a real document with six named parts: a description of and route to the trek area, a schedule including a daily schedule, a food and equipment list, a safety and emergency plan, and a budget. The two-mile plan at 9(a) is the rehearsal for it.

What this page is

The Backpacking merit badge, drawn so that the scale of requirements 10 and 11 is visible from the start rather than discovered tenth. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.