Summer Camp Games for Older Campers That Actually Land

It is the fourth summer for half your camp. They know where the good sticks are, they know which leader gives out second helpings, and they know the treasure hunt ends at the big oak because it ended there in 2023 as well. Summer camp games for older campers have to survive that kind of institutional memory.

The fix is not more program. It is fewer, bigger things, run properly, with enough room around them that someone can occasionally choose to lie in a hammock instead.

What follows is a set of activities you can run this week, with the rules written out rather than described in spirit. Take the numbers as starting points and adjust them to your terrain and your group.

Older campers do not want a fuller timetable. They want fewer activities that are actually hard.

Pick One Theme and Run Everything Through It

Before any of the rules below, decide what your camp is about this year. One setting, chosen in spring, applied to every game, every ritual, and the sign above the dining tent.

A theme does two things. It gives ordinary activities a reason to exist, so a token-collecting game becomes a war economy instead of a leader handing out clothes pegs. And it gives returning campers something new to compare, because the tenth capture the flag of their camp career is still the first one they have played as a house sworn to a dying king.

Themes work anywhere on the scale between serious and ridiculous. Three that hold up for a full week, listed from the safest bet to the one that needs the most work:

Classic scouting. The oldest theme, and still the strongest, mostly because it is not a costume. The camp is about competence: fire in the rain, a knot that holds weight, a bearing walked accurately, a meal cooked for other people. Give it a structure rather than a story. Post a list of honours that can be earned during the week, each with a written standard that is public and not negotiable, in the tradition of Baden-Powell's scoutcraft and Ernest Thompson Seton's woodcraft honours. Twenty kilometres with a full pack. A fire lit with one match. A meal cooked for the whole camp and eaten without complaint. A night alone at a post within sight of the fire. Earned marks go on a strip of leather or a board by the flagpole, and nobody gets one for effort. Older campers respect this precisely as much as they pretend not to, because it is the only theme where what you earned is still true in October.

A medieval succession. Groups are houses with names, colours, and a banner they sew on the first afternoon. There is a throne, an unclear line of succession, and a map of the territory pinned to the noticeboard. Alliances are allowed and treaties can be broken. One rule keeps this from going wrong: betrayal happens between houses, never between individuals. A house can tear up a treaty; a person cannot be voted out, frozen out, or made the story. Ten days of living together is a long time to be the camper who got personally sold out on Tuesday, and this is not a television series that stops at the end of the episode.

A stranded disco fleet. The comic option, and it works only if you build a real engine under the joke. Crews are groups, each with a name, a colour, a signature move, and a flag made of something reflective. Announcements come over the camp speaker from a leader who never once breaks character. What stops it dying on Wednesday is scarcity: the fleet is stranded, there is not enough fuel for everyone, and fuel is what every single game pays out. The last night is the departure, and the running total decides who leaves and who stays behind to run the disco on this planet forever, which is obviously the better prize, and everyone works that out too late.

Then run the same activities through whichever you chose:

The scouting column barely re-skins anything, and that is the whole argument for it. The activity is already the story.

What kills a theme is not a weak idea. It is a story with nothing to want by Wednesday, and a story nine paragraphs long read out to a tired camp on the first night. Write it in about six sentences and no more, because nobody listens to the seventh. Give it one thing everyone wants and one thing standing in the way. Then let the oldest group write the next chapter partway through the week, because a story campers wrote themselves gets defended, and a story a leader wrote gets tolerated.

Meet Before Camp, Agree the Vibe, Not the Timetable

Get the leaders in one room a few weeks out. One evening is enough, a Saturday is better if the terrain needs a recce.

The point of that meeting is not a minute-by-minute plan. Weather and the group will tear it up anyway, and they should. Rain arrives, half the camp is wrecked after the expedition, one group turns out to love building things and another only wants to run. Those are the signals worth following, and you can only follow them if the plan was never that rigid.

What the meeting is for is agreeing the vibe, so that everyone runs the same camp:

• The story in the six sentences everyone will actually use, said out loud, so nobody improvises a different version on Tuesday.
• The tone, which is the one that goes wrong most often. If one leader plays the medieval succession completely straight and another treats it as a joke, the theme is dead by Wednesday. Decide together how straight you are playing it and hold the line.
• The vocabulary. What groups are called, what the currency is called, what a forfeit is called. Small thing, big effect.
• A menu instead of a schedule. Three activities that work in rain, three that need daylight, two that work when everyone is exhausted. Then pick on the day.
• The boring half: boundaries, forfeit list, phone rules, photo rules, who is not playing in the night game, and who has the first aid kit.

Leave with one page pinned in the leaders' tent. Not a timetable.

The theme also gives the photo challenge later in this article a spine. "Best banner", "most convincing alien", and "proof you lit it with one match" are prompts campers will actually compete over.

One Night Game, Four Rule Sets

A night game is the single best thing you can offer a group that has outgrown a torch-lit walk with a story at the end. Darkness does most of the work for you. Your job is to add a structure that keeps forty people busy for ninety minutes without anyone getting lost or hurt.

Build the shared frame once, then pick a rule set.

Shared setup for any of the four:

• Walk the boundaries in daylight, with everyone, the same afternoon. Point at the actual edge: this track, that fence, the stream. Nobody crosses the road, nobody goes near the water.
• Lives are ribbons. Two strips of coloured fabric tied loosely around the upper arm, easy to pull off. Losing a ribbon costs nothing but pride and thirty seconds.
• Whistle codes, announced before the start. One long blast means freeze and stay silent. Three short blasts mean the game is over, come to the light. Practice both once.
• Leaders wear a red headlamp and stand still at fixed points. Campers learn that a red light is help, never an opponent.
• Minimum group size of two after dark, no exceptions, including for the fast ones who hate it.
• One leader stays at base with the first aid kit and the phone. That person plays no role in the game.

Capture the Flag

The classic, and still the best if your terrain has two decent bases 300 to 400 metres apart with something in between to hide in.

• Each team defends a lantern hung at chest height on a tree at its base. That lantern is the flag.
• The centre line is a real feature that everyone can find in the dark: a path, a stream, a fence line. Not an imaginary line.
• You can only be tagged on enemy ground. Tag means pulling one ribbon. Out of ribbons, you walk back to your base with your headlamp switched on, count sixty seconds, and rejoin with two fresh ribbons.
• Whoever carries a captured lantern must hold it above shoulder height and keep it lit. That is the whole game: everyone can see where the flag is, so the run home is a real chase.
• If the carrier is tagged, the lantern is placed on the ground where it fell. Either team can pick it up from there.
• Best of three rounds, or most captures in ninety minutes. Rounds are better because a team that loses one gets to change tactics.

Two things fix the usual problems. Cap defenders at four inside a twenty-metre radius of the base, or one team turtles all night. And make the regeneration point the base itself, so a wave of respawning defenders arrives together and the attack has a rhythm.

Kill the King

Better for smaller camps and rougher ground, and it produces genuine tactics because a team has to protect a person instead of an object.

• Teams of eight to twelve. Each team has a king, chosen by the team.
• The king wears a green glow band on the ankle, covered by a sock or trouser leg. You only see it when you are close, which means you have to commit to a challenge to find out.
• Everyone else wears two ribbons and plays as normal: pulled ribbons cost a life, out of lives means sixty seconds at base.
• The king has no ribbons. One touch from an opponent's hand ends the round.
• A marshal shadows each king at ten metres, saying nothing, and enforces the movement rule: the king must be at a different location every ten minutes. Fortress-building is what ruins this game, and the movement rule kills it dead.
• The round ends when a king is caught. Kings rotate for the next round so the same confident kid does not take the role three times.

The good version of this game is quiet. Teams start whispering, sending decoys with fake limps, and arguing about whether to hide the king or walk them straight through the middle. Let them argue.

Gather Resources

Slower, less running, much more negotiating. It works well with mixed ages and with anyone who does not enjoy being chased.

• Place six to eight collection points around the area, each with a leader and a box of tokens. Wooden discs, clothes pegs, and painted chestnuts all work. Use three token types with different colours.
• Each point is refilled every ten minutes and not before. Campers work this out fast and start timing their loops, which is the point.
• Carry limit is three tokens per person. Nobody hoards, and everybody has to move.
• In transit, tokens can be robbed: pull a ribbon, and the carrier drops everything they hold and stands still for sixty seconds. The robber may take what fits inside their own limit and must leave the rest.
• At base, a leader converts tokens into equipment on a posted price list. Rope, tarp, candles, a pot, a real breakfast pastry for the morning.
• Change two prices every twenty minutes and announce it loudly. Teams that adapt win.

The winning team is not the fastest one. It is the one that works out to send two runners and one guard rather than six enthusiastic solo collectors.

Last Group Standing

The one they will call Fortnite, and you may as well use the word because it explains the rules in three seconds.

• Three lives each, worn as ribbons.
• The play zone starts big and shrinks three times, at fifteen-minute intervals, announced by whistle. Mark the new edge with lanterns before the game and reveal each ring by lighting it.
• Outside the zone, you lose one life per minute. A leader walking the edge with a red headlamp collects the ribbons.
• Anyone can tag anyone. Take one ribbon per tag, then both players must separate for ten seconds before engaging again.
• Seed three supply caches: an extra ribbon, a card that reveals the centre of the next ring, and one card that restores a whole team to full lives. Put them somewhere that requires a decision to reach.
• Last three players standing win. Not one, because the endgame between two exhausted players in the dark takes forever.

The detail that decides whether this game is remembered fondly: eliminated players need somewhere good to go. Build a fire at base, put a leader on tea duty, and let them watch the zone shrink from a warm seat. Sitting in the dark with nothing to do for forty minutes is how you lose a camper's evening.

The Safety Part, Written Down

Non-negotiable before any night game: the boundary walk in daylight, headcount by name before and after, no games near water or roads after dark, whistle codes practised, no ribbon-grabbing around the neck or from behind at speed, and at least one leader who is not playing. If your organisation has its own rules, those win over anything here.

Send Them Somewhere Without a Map

The summer camp expedition is the story they retell in September. Make it genuinely demanding and it will carry the whole week.

The Drop

Drive or walk each group ten to fifteen kilometres from camp and leave them there. They know the name of camp and roughly which direction it is. They do not get a map.

• Groups of five or six, each with a leader who walks behind and says nothing unless safety requires it. For younger or less experienced groups, run the same thing with a leader inside the group who answers questions only when asked twice.
• Each group carries a sealed envelope with a switched-off phone, the camp number written on paper, and enough cash for a bus.
• Say this out loud at the start: opening the envelope is not failure. Nobody loses points for it. Groups that believe opening it is cheating are exactly the ones who will walk an extra eight kilometres in the wrong direction to avoid it.
• Fixed check-ins by SMS at agreed times. Miss two and the leader steps in.
• They navigate by road signs, the sun, bus timetables at village stops, and by asking people. That last one is the real skill, and most groups find it harder than the walking.

The Geocache Photo Hunt

The competitive version, and the one that produces the best pictures.

• Pick six to eight geocaches within about ten kilometres. Check recent logs first so you are not sending anyone after a cache that has been missing since spring.
• Two groups, same list, opposite order. They will meet in the middle, which is half the fun.
• Proof is a photo: the whole group with the cache in hand, taken as a self-timer shot on a rock or a rucksack.
• Scoring: three points for reaching a cache first, one point for second. Difficulty ratings from the cache listing can act as multipliers if you want the harder ones to be worth chasing.
• Cache etiquette, and it is worth explaining properly: sign the log, put everything back exactly as found, and do not publish photos that reveal a hiding place. If your groups pick up a trackable, log it properly.

Give each group a photo brief on top of the caches. A group portrait at the highest point, the worst signpost of the day, and one picture of whatever went wrong. The last one always beats the scenery.

Two groups running a hunt like this will come back with sixty pictures each, and they all need somewhere to land. We put together Pine Creek Camp, a camp gallery, so you can see what a week of cache proofs, banners, and boots looks like once it is collected in one place. The camp is invented. The point of the gallery is the shape of the thing, not the pictures in it.

One Night Out

If your permissions and terrain allow it, add a bivouac. Tarps, one fire, dinner cooked by them, breakfast made badly and eaten happily. An overnight expedition asks more of a group than any six-hour hike, mostly because they have to organise sleep, water, and food themselves while tired.

Hutututu, and Other Games Worth the Bruises

For the hour after lunch when nobody wants to think, run hutututu. It is the camp version of kabaddi and it is brutally simple.

Rules:

• Two teams, a rectangular field roughly ten by ten metres per half, with a clear centre line.
• Teams take turns sending one raider into the opposing half. Only one raider at a time.
• The raider must chant "hutututututu" continuously, out loud, on a single breath, for the entire time they are on enemy ground. Silence or a second breath ends the raid.
• The raider tries to touch as many opponents as possible and get back over the centre line while still chanting. Everyone they touched joins their team.
• The defenders try to hold the raider until the chant breaks. If it does, the raider joins the defending team.
• Play until one team is empty, or set a timer, because a good group will keep swapping members for a very long time.

Safety, because this game gets physical fast: play on grass, no grabbing by the neck or clothing, no kicking at legs, watch for anyone at the bottom of a pile, and stop the round on any whistle. Old clothes. Shirts do get torn.

Around it, the games that hold up with older campers tend to share a shape: a simple rule, real physical stakes, and a way for the group to out-think the other group. Camp olympics with absurd events they invent themselves. A cooking competition judged by a visiting parent who has no idea what they have walked into. A tournament in something nobody is good at.

One Game That Runs All Week

Everything above is an event with a start and an end. A camp also wants one slow game running underneath all of it, costing nothing, needing no field and no timetable slot. This is the best one we know.

The Token.

• One physical object. A wooden disc, a marked stone, an old key, a signet ring. Small enough to palm, solid enough to survive a week. Never a slip of paper, which dies in the first rain.
• Every morning at breakfast, a leader passes it to one camper without anyone seeing. That person is the carrier for the day and tells nobody.
• The carrier keeps it on their body all day. Not in a tent, not buried behind the wash stand. If a leader asks privately at any point and the carrier cannot produce it, that counts as losing it.
• Before the evening fire, the carrier has to pass it on to someone else, unseen by anyone. The receiver carries it the next day.
• If any third person witnesses the handover, the handover is blown. The witness gets the credit and both the carrier and the receiver take the forfeit.
• Accusations happen once a day, out loud, at dinner. Everyone gets exactly one, which is the rule that stops the whole camp shouting names at each other from Tuesday onwards.
• A correct accusation costs the carrier a forfeit. A wrong one costs the accuser the same forfeit. That symmetry is the entire anti-spam mechanism, and it turns the game from guessing into watching.
• Points if you want them: one to the carrier's group for every day survived, two to the accuser's group for a correct call.

The forfeit is the part to get right. A bucket of cold water at the evening fire is the classic and it is hard to beat, but write the list of possible forfeits on the noticeboard on day one and never invent one on the spot. Cooking breakfast for the camp. Carrying the water for a day. A truly stupid hat, worn everywhere, including on the expedition. Anyone can take the alternative chore instead of the water without being asked why. Nothing that touches how somebody looks, and nothing anyone did not sign up for on the first evening.

Leaders play. Leaders also take forfeits, and the first bucket of the camp should go over a leader, in front of everyone, cheerfully. That single moment sets the tone for the whole week and decides whether this game stays fun.

Keep a spare token in a pocket, because it will get lost, and it is a much better game if losing it means a forfeit and a restart at breakfast rather than the game quietly ending on Wednesday.

It skins onto any theme without effort. Under classic scouting it is a test of silence in the same spirit as the honours list. Under the medieval theme it is the seal of a house and being caught means the plot is exposed. Under the disco fleet it is a fuel cell covered in glitter, which is a very hard thing to hide, which is the joke.

By Thursday the whole camp is watching each other's hands at dinner. The game costs one wooden disc.

Give the Camp One Ritual of Its Own

Ritual sounds grand. In practice a camp tradition is one small repeated thing that belongs to your camp and to nobody else. Older campers pretend to find these embarrassing and then get quietly furious if you skip one.

Pick one or two, and do them the same way every year:

• The ash tin. Scoop a spoonful of ash from the last fire into a tin, and pour it into the first fire of next year's camp. This is a real and old scouting tradition, and it works because it is a physical line between summers. Keep the tin somewhere obvious in the equipment store.
• Roses and thorns. At the last fire, everyone says one thing they hated, one thing they loved, and one thing they want from next year. Leaders go last and answer honestly. No commentary between speakers.
• The book. A hardback notebook that lives at camp. Every camper writes exactly one line before leaving, signs it, and hands it on. At the opening fire next year, a leader reads five lines aloud from previous years without saying who wrote them.
• The ugly trophy. One awful object, welded or glued from camp junk, engraved with a year and a winning team. It goes home with someone and comes back next summer. The uglier it is, the more seriously it gets contested.
• Midnight tea. On one announced night, the kitchen opens at midnight for tea and bread. That is the whole ritual. It works because it is a small rule broken with permission.
• The last breakfast. Outside, tables carried into the field, and the first ten minutes eaten in complete silence. Then someone laughs and it ends. Do not explain it.

Dress each one in this year's theme and it stops feeling like a school assembly. Under classic scouting, the last fire is where the earned honours get read out by name. Under the medieval theme, the ash tin holds the ashes of every house that ever took the throne. Under the disco fleet, roses and thorns becomes the last transmission home, delivered standing on a bench. The mechanics do not change at all. The costume does.

Whatever you choose, hand it over. Let the oldest group run the ritual, decide the order, and keep the tin. Ownership is what turns a leader's tradition into their tradition.

The Part Nobody Plans: the Photos

Being straight with you: Partoska collects event photos, and this is our blog. That is the bias, stated up front. It is also why we notice this particular gap. Camp programs get planned in detail for months. The photos get planned by nobody, ever, and then somebody spends the second week of September asking a chat group for pictures.

Every one of these activities generates them. Groups on the drop photograph the bus stop where they finally worked out where they were. The geocache hunt is built on photos. Someone will film the last thirty seconds of the night game and it will be unusable and hilarious. Under a theme, half the camp will photograph the banners.

By the following Tuesday, those pictures are scattered across twenty phones, three group chats, and one leader's WhatsApp thread that is now mostly a discussion about a missing sleeping bag. They are not lost because nobody took any. They are lost because nobody was given one obvious place to put them.

There is a genuinely good analogue answer to this, and it deserves saying out loud. Buy a stack of single-use film cameras, hand one to each group at the start, collect them at the end, and develop everything in September. The photos come back worse and better at the same time, nobody checks the screen, and the wait is part of it. If that fits your camp, do it.

It still will not cover the week. Everyone at camp is also carrying a phone with a decent camera, those photos are going to exist whether you planned for them or not, and those are the ones that scatter. Film camera for the ceremony, shared album for the other four hundred pictures.

Set up that album before camp starts. With Partoska you create the event, then get a QR code and a link. Campers open it in a phone browser and upload. Nobody installs an app for a week in a field, and it works across whatever mix of phones your group turns up with, which the features page covers in more detail. It is the same problem, and the same fix, described in Stop Chasing Photos.

If you would rather look than read, the Pine Creek Camp gallery is the finished version of all this: one week, one album, nobody chased in September.

Make It a Challenge, Not a Chore

Asking older campers to upload their photos gets you nothing. Giving them a camp photo challenge with real constraints gets you a full album, because now it is a competition.

Four prompts per group works well:

• a place everyone walks past and nobody looks at,
• the best improvised repair of the week,
• a photo that explains this camp without showing a single face,
• the last light before dinner.

Add one prompt from the theme, because that is the one they will fight over. Best banner. Most convincing alien. Proof your house holds the throne. And offer a standing bounty all week for a photo of a token handover caught in the act, which will produce a great many blurred pictures of sleeves.

Partoska lets people mark favourites, which is enough to run a vote for photo of the camp on the final evening without building anything. Keep the categories about the pictures rather than the people in them. Best repair, best disaster, best proof that a group reached a cache. A popularity contest between campers is not a game you want to referee.

Where to Put the QR Code at a Camp

A code taped to the office door will be scanned by three people, all of them leaders. To collect photos from a summer camp, put it where campers already stop and wait:

• the dining tent, on the tables or the serving hatch,
• the noticeboard where the daily program goes up,
• the charging station, which is the single best spot at any camp with older participants,
• the equipment store, at the counter where kit is signed out,
• the toilet block door, which is undignified and works better than anything else on this list.

Print several copies of the same code and laminate them, or use small cards on tables. Sizes and printing details are in the guide to printable QR code cards for event photos. Scan the printed version yourself before camp starts, in daylight and in the dining tent, because a code that works on your screen can fail on damp paper under a tarp.

Photos of Minors: Decide the Rules First

This part is not optional, and it is the reason a private album beats a public folder.

Keep the camp album private and share it only with the people at camp. The organiser reviews uploads and decides what stays. Two separate rules, both written down and told to campers and parents before camp:

1. What may be shared inside the camp group.
2. What may be published anywhere public, which should default to nothing without explicit permission.

For public posts, faces are the line. Hands on a map, boots by a tent, silhouettes at the fire, canoe bows from behind, and a very ugly trophy all tell the story without identifying a child. A private album with moderation does not replace your consent forms or your data-protection duties, and it does not replace asking. It just means you are not trying to unpublish something after the fact.

Tell campers the rule in one sentence, because they will follow a clear one: photos of other people go in the album, not on your profile.

Phones Without a Revolt

Confiscating every phone for ten days makes the phone the most interesting object at camp. Agree on the boundaries instead:

• screen-free meals and screen-free core activities, including the entire night game
• one charging station, no cables in tents
• maps, timetables, and emergency numbers stay available, always
• photos go into the shared album
• nothing gets posted publicly showing another camper without the agreed permission

On the drop and the geocache hunt, the phone has a job. That framing does more for phone discipline than any lockbox.

After Camp, Close It Down

When camp ends, the organiser reviews the album, removes anything that should not be there, and every signed-in participant can download the collection as a ZIP or export it to their own cloud. Then move the final set into wherever your organisation actually keeps things, which is usually Google Drive, OneDrive, or a NAS in a cupboard.

Partoska is the collection layer for the week, not the archive for the decade. Collect it while everyone is still in the same field, then park it somewhere permanent and start a clean event next summer. "Camp 2026" beats a folder called "photos final new shared 2." The same pattern works for any repeating event, as described in the write-up on company sports day photos.

The free starter tier gives you 25 MB for seven days, which is enough to test the whole flow before camp with a leaders' weekend. For a full camp with thirty uploaders and a longer download window, pick a bigger option on the pricing page.

Set It Up Before the Bus Leaves

Create the album now, print the codes, and put one on the charging station. Then go back to the more difficult problem, which is deciding whether the night game happens on the night with the good weather or the night before the expedition, when everyone should really be asleep.

Create Your Camp Photo Album

FAQ

What activities work for campers who have been to camp before?
Fewer and bigger. One night game with proper rules, one demanding expedition, hard field games like hutututu, and one ritual that belongs to your camp. Leave blank blocks in the timetable rather than filling every hour.

Does a summer camp need a theme?
It needs one if you want the games and rituals to hang together. Classic scouting is the safest and strongest option because the competence is real and the marks earned still count in October. Invented settings work too, from a medieval succession to a stranded disco fleet, as long as there is something scarce worth fighting over. Keep the story to about six sentences and let the oldest group write the next chapter partway through the week.

How much should we plan before camp starts?
Meet as a leader team a few weeks out and agree the theme, the tone, the vocabulary, the forfeit list, and the safety boundaries. Do not build a minute-by-minute timetable. Bring a menu instead: a few activities that work in rain, a few that need daylight, a few that work when everyone is exhausted. The weather and the group will tell you which one to run.

How do I run a night game safely at summer camp?
Walk the boundaries with everyone in daylight, use ribbons as lives instead of physical contact, agree whistle codes, keep leaders on red headlamps at fixed points, never play near water or roads after dark, and keep one leader out of the game at base with the first aid kit.

What are the rules of hutututu?
Two teams on a small field. One raider crosses into the opposing half chanting "hutututu" continuously on a single breath and tries to touch opponents before returning over the centre line. Everyone touched joins the raider's team. If the raider runs out of breath, they join the defenders instead. It is the camp version of kabaddi.

What game can run for a whole week at camp?
Pass a single physical token in secret. A leader gives it to one camper each morning, that camper keeps it hidden all day and passes it on unseen before the evening fire. One accusation per person per day at dinner, with the same forfeit for the carrier if the guess is right and for the accuser if it is wrong. The symmetric penalty is what stops constant guessing.

How do I collect photos from a summer camp?
Create one shared album before camp, print the QR code, and put copies where campers stop: the dining tent, noticeboard, charging station, and equipment store. Campers upload from a phone browser without installing an app.

Can a camp photo album stay private if the participants are children?
Yes. Keep the event private, share it only with the camp group, and moderate uploads. Set separate rules for sharing inside the group and publishing anything publicly, and treat the album as one part of your consent and data-protection process rather than a replacement for it.

Should we ban phones at camp?
A blanket ban makes phones a prize. Agree on screen-free meals and activities, set up one charging station, keep maps and emergency contacts available, and give phones a real job on the expedition and the photo challenge.

What do we do with the photos when camp ends?
Review the album, remove anything that should not be there, then download the ZIP or export to your own cloud storage. Keep the long-term archive in your organisation's own Drive, OneDrive, or NAS and start a fresh event next summer.