Tip - Ask the Expert: Interpreting Camping merit badge Requirement 9a - Bryan on Scouting

When it comes to life-changing experiences, there’s no substitute for camping. And when it comes to the Eagle-required Camping merit badge, there’s no substitute for Requirement 9A. It reads as follows: 9. Show experience in camping by doing the following: a. Camp a total of at least 20 nights at designated Scouting activities or events. One long-term camping experience of up to six consecutive nights may be applied toward this requirement. Sleep each night under the sky or in a tent you have pitched. If the camp provides a tent that has already been pitched, you need not pitch your own tent. That one paragraph has caused a few Scout leaders some consternation. Bill, a district-level training chairman, sent me this e-mail: “There seems to be a lot of interpretations of Requirement 9a (number of nights camping) of the Camping Merit Badge and if more than one long-term camp can be counted. Also questions about what exactly a long-term camp is. If you haven’t already, can you put up a blog article on it?” I can answer that last question: Yes, I will write a blog post about it. For the rest of the answers, I turned to Chris Hunt of [...]