DofE expedition - small teen

[QuixoticQuokka]

My 13 year old is not unusually small, but he is only 155cm and 43kg, so about the size of a 12 year old. He will be doing his DofE practice expedition in March. He has plenty of experience of hiking and camping with Scouts, and did his Scouts expedition challenge (similar to DofE expedition but only carrying day packs) when he was 11.

I'm worried about him carrying a full size trekking rucksack though. Is there a maximum percentage of his weight he should be carrying? He already has a 65 litre DofE recommended rucksack but has only used it for Scout camps where he hasn't had to carry it far. Would this be too big?

Does anyone else have a small teen who has done the DofE?

Mine was smaller, she's only 150cm as an adult, I seem to remember she managed just fine with her rucksack.

Do you remember what size rucksack she took bloodywhitecat?

My daughter managed her Silver last year. She's very slight for her age, the smallest and lightest of her group. Her rucksack was comedy huge, but she did it!

Sounds like your lad has experience already, and that will stand him in good stead for his DofE.

Remember he doesn't have to fill his rucksack up completely - DD took far too much stuff that didn't get used or eaten. Just stick to the basics to keep him warm, dry and fed.

Mine hated it. She woupd have found it easy without the rucksack, because we do quite a lot of walking as a family, but she said the weight made it miserable. She was pretty small and slight at that point.

My son was small and skinny when he did bronze - no problem- at all

Pack light - particularly dehydrated food, and he won't need too much clothing for the 2 days and 1 night. For Bronze, I would usually recommend a 50-55L pack - focuses the mind and means they don't pack too much.

They only need enough kit for the two days. I think they can share group kit out between them can’t they? So who else is in the group?

He needs to learn to pack ruthlessly. Bags are only excessively heavy because of poor packing.

Is this bronze? Which is four hours per day for two days?

So less food and fuel weight.

One full set of day clothes including socks and one full set of night clothes including socks packed to keep dry. Change into dry clothes for sleeping, put day clothes back on in the morning even if wet. It's only horrible putting them on, once you start walking again it's fine.

Taking more than two pairs of socks is foolish and unnecessary. If you're socks are set them your boots are, so putting dry socks into wet boots will just get wet again.

Food wise dehydrated ration packs where you boil and add water are much lighter.

Don't take a full tube of toothpaste, take a nearly empty one. Don't take a towel you don't need.

Take brillo pads instead of carrying a bottle of washing up liquid (hopefully he wasn't going to do that one though!).

Etc.

I am 157 cm and use a 65 or 70l rucksack (I am an adult and a good 10kg heavier than your son though!). The size of rucksack is fine in terms of physical fit. But don't overload it with stuff. He should be able to lift it on to his own back quite readily.

*if your socks are wet then your boots are

Remember he doesn't have to fill his rucksack up completely - DD took far too much stuff that didn't get used or eaten. Just stick to the basics to keep him warm, dry and fed. He's doesn't want my help with food planning or shopping as the group have planned to go to the supermarket together. I've offered to get him some boil in the bag trekking meals. I'll remind him not to take too much though.

That's good to know the fit should be okay LtGreggs.

I think there are 6 of them in the group, no 6 foot teens but the rest are average sized 13 and 14 year olds. I'm hoping he won't have to carry too much group kit.

My DD was smaller. She had a 55l bag, but we got her one for shorter people with adjustable straps (I know they all adjust, but this allowed the whole strap system to move up and down). If you look into the details, most bags are designed for a certain 'back length'. DD was about 10 cm less than the min, so we investigated the ones designed for shorter people.

When he gets back from the practise expedition he might want to unpack the bag and write down everything he Take a out and annotate whether he used it and whether he could have survived safely without it.

It will help weed out any unnecessary crap so when he does his qualifying expedition and then silver and gold his bag will be lighter.

Within the bounds of safety, the less stuff you take the better time you will have.

When sharing group kit I would also recommend splitting up tent poles from flysheet and properly distributing kit between group members based on weight not number of items shared. Otherwise you can end up with one person carrying an entire tent, one person with a complete trangia and one person with a single gas canister skipping along. Unless as a group they're happy and agreed for some people to carry more weight than others, e.g. If someone is struggling.

A lot of bronze is figuring this stuff out and absorbing the importance of it for yourself.

If they are organised as a group take one toothpaste and one first aid kit between them. My son took hardly anything. Think he slept in his clothes then changed in the morning.

When I did my mountain leader training, it was recommended that a gut person should be able to carry 25-35% of body weight in a well fitting rucksack for an overnight expedition.

The key is in the fit of the rucksack, intelligent packing and judicious choice of kit. Outdoor clothes are so much more technical and lighter than when I was a teen. I genuinely wore, and carried spares of, corduroy trousers and a Shetland wool jumper and drank out of a thick plastic bottle. Compare the weight and bulk of that to a thin fleece or two, walking trousers and a hydration bladder!

Can your sons group split up kit? There is no point in carry 4 stoves, 4 first aid kits etc. Presumably they are sharing tents - in which case one person carries the inner, one the flysheet and one the poles.

I imagine that you might be panicking more than your child, but please do practise a bit with a laden rucsack and get straps adjusted correctly etc before the main trip.

My dd was a similar size. Rucksack choosing was nearly disastrous. I had assumed she would use the same one as her sister but then realized she would need a smaller one and ordered a 50l 'short backed' one online but it was just a really bad fit. So I went to Go Outdoors again and he recommended this one which is actually 65l but a really good fit for smaller framed teens (he said go outdoors had slightly shortened the straps or something and that it's actually a pretty old model but a bit tweaked, no idea if it's true but this was a perfect fit for dd and totally different to the one they recommended for dd1.

www.gooutdoors.co.uk/15905046/hi-gear-nepal-65-rucksack-15905046

Hope this helps. He sounds like he will do great.

And yes there is a Max percentage of their weight but I can't remember it off hand. Aim to keep it to 10kg which we managed. It's counterintuitive but he might be better offering to carry something 'bulky but light' of the group kit eg tent minus pegs, storm shelter.

Presumably they are sharing tents - in which case one person carries the inner, one the flysheet and one the poles. They will be given tents and stoves etc, they will likely have a tent between three of them. Then there will be smaller items where they will organise who brings what as a group.

Dehydrated meals are lighter but the self-heating meals are wonderful after a long hike in the cold and wet - DD was eating warm food while other people were faffing about with pans and stoves.

The key piece of advice I give our young people who do DofE is they don't have to fill their rucksacks. They're always amazed at staff doing the expedition taking so little with us.

Group kit is usually shared out between them. Students tend to be considerate when allocating kit to each other because they know it's a team effort.

In my experience it isn't the group kit that makes rucksacks heavy. It's the amount of crap they put in themselves. Its good he wants to pack and organise himself, but it might be good to get him to take every little extra that seems small and put it in a bowl, then weigh the bowl to show how much excess he is carrying.

My daughter isn't small but has a bad shoulder. For their practise they walked 18km the first day and 23km the second. She managed. She's not very sporty but she said she was one of the fastest (and would have won the first leg if they hadn't gone in completely the wrong way at first).
She took alot of snacks but said the dried apricots were the best - instant energy boost. Most of the trail mix came back uneaten.
The weather will be a factor - luckily it was dry and mild. The silver trek (another year group) was very hot and three girls were ill with heat exhaustion.
And she wants a thicker sleeping mat as the one from the camping shop was way too thin.

Not sure if it's worth buying this rucksack?www.decathlon.co.uk/50l-rucksack-grey-id_8300838.html
We already have the 65 litre one, and a 33 litre one for when he's staying in bunks, so would another be too many?

He never usually overpacks for Scouts, I have to check he's actually taken his waterproofs as he doesn't like wearing them except in a downpour.

DD1 found she took less and less on each expedition, so ended up with a lighter rucksack for the 4 days of Gold than the two days of Bronze .

A tip from DD2 - if you take the majority of the food, your rucksack gets lighter as you get tireder . Also worth thinking properly about food - pasta is heavier to carry than noodles for eg, but both provide the same end volume of food.

All 3 DDs have survived DofE so far, despite being tiny, having rubbish shoulders (hypermobility) or with disability adjustments in varying combinations, by not overpacking, and making sure group kit is equally distributed by weight.

Agree with being ruthless when packing. He should also familiarise himself with his rucksack, making sure the shoulder staps are moved up or down so they sit comfortably on his shoulders, and his waist strap fits snugly above his pelvis so the weight is taken by his hips as well as shoulders. He should use the chest strap so the rucksack isn't wobbling about as he walks and avoid having things dangling off the rucksacks for the same reason. Apologies if you know all this, but I see so many of our pupils struggling to carry their load. When I take a few minutes to adjust their rucksack properly they're always amazed at the difference.