Camping with Kids

At any age, day-hiking with children is easier than backpacking with them. On a day-hike, if the weather turns sour or a child suddenly gets sick, the car is usually just a short distance away. If a similar situation develops on a backpacking trip, the time required to get out is much greater. Backpacking is also more difficult than day-hiking because of the dramatic increase in the parent's load. Parent's packs are heavy with an oversize tent, extra food and most of the kid's clothing and gear. Dawdling along at a child's inchworm pace can be torture when you've got a monster pack on your back.

If the child is too young to walk, then one parent must carry the babe in a child pack while the other totes the remaining gear. If you’re not careful, the sheer bulk of the necessary equipment will overwhelm the largest pack on the market, which means that two trips are necessary for the parent acting as educated alpine mule. That's feasible only if the campsite is just a mile or two from the trail head.
Confining your backpacking with kids to desert regions in the warm months is another possible solution. One couple I know took their two young boys on several desert backpacking trips without ferrying loads. Both boys were young enough they had to be carried most of the way. The couple managed it by stripping down the gear to an absolute minimum: one two-person tent for the family of four, one sleeping bag which, when unzipped, could cover both adults, and warm sleepers in lieu of sleeping bags for the kids. Each parent carried a child, plus half the gear.

An alternative to ferrying loads or doing hot-weather trips is to hire a teenager to act as a porter. Once the party reaches camp, the teenager can help baby-sit.

In some parts of the country, you can rent lamas to help carry the load. Lamas are generally docile, sociable animals who feel right at home in the woods. Most lama ranches require you to take a half-day course in lama wrangling before you embark on your trip. Once you’re trained, they’ll meet you at the trailhead with the lamas, so you don’t need to worry about stuffing two lamas into the trunk of your car. Lamas also cause much less impact on the land than horses, which are still another way to carry the weight. Renting some kind of pack animal is really the only feasible way to do a week-long backpacking trip with young children.
If backpacking with young children sounds like lot of work, you're right. Nonetheless, it can be done. My neighbors Gregg and Amy, who are both ex-wilderness guides, started backpacking with their two daughters when the youngest was still in diapers. Still, you don't see many couples on the trail with children who are not yet potty trained. Cloth diapers can be washed out and reused if the weather is warm enough to permit air-drying and you bring along a separate diaper-washing pot. Wash water should always be dumped well away from any water source. If you bring disposables, you'll have to pack them out inside several layers of plastic bags.

Children like the familiar, and the wilderness can seem like a strange and intimidating place to a young child. Initially at least, a tent doesn't seem like home, and children may find it difficult to go to sleep. To help alleviate those night fears, pitch your tent in your backyard and spend a night or two there before you go on a real backpacking trip. Children who like to sleep with a night light may find that a tent pitched in the wilderness seems awfully dark. To help relieve those fears, sit down with your children in the backyard and explain all the night noises they hear so they realize there's nothing to fear. Do the same once you're actually camping in the woods. Sometimes it helps to bring along a few favorite nighttime toys. Letting the kids help set up the tent familiarizes them with it and may make them more comfortable with sleeping inside it.

As a general rule, letting your child sleep with you inside your sleeping bag is an invitation to trouble. The child may sleep well, but you probably won't because the child's squirming will keep you awake. Each child should have his own sleeping bag, which shouldn't be more than about four inches longer than his height. A bag that is too big is hard to warm up, and the child is likely to sleep cold. Adequate child-size sleeping bags are available now. Look for a model with a hood that can be closed down snugly just like an adult's. All children's sleeping bags have synthetic insulation, which in a kid's bag has the advantage over down that it can more easily be machine washed and dried.

If you have a choice of where to camp, try to select a site well away from other campers so the inevitable childish racket doesn't echo through the woods and disturb your neighbors. Check the site for obvious nearby hazards: a waterfall, a cliff, a patch of poison ivy or poison oak. Equally important, try to find a site with child appeal. Water, whether in the form of a pond or a stream, is always enticing. Equally good is a late-lingering snow patch, which provides endless ammunition for snowball fights and building material for snowmen and snow forts. Beware of snowfields that slope steeply and end abruptly in brush and boulders. A child can easily start sliding out of control and crash into the obstacles at the snowfield's foot.

Whether on the trail or in camp, parents should establish an absolute, unbendable rule that children will always play within sight of an adult. The cooking area and the tent should be ruled off-limits to play. Little fingers can too easily be burned on a hot stove or hot pots, and little feet can easily trip over tent pegs and guy ropes. Consider giving children a whistle and then making another rule: the whistle will only be blown in the case of a real emergency. An adult should accompany children when they need to go to the toileting area, which, as with adults, should be well away from any water source. Adult supervision ensures that the child doesn't wander off and that he buries his waste properly. Be sure your pack contains a well-stocked repair kit. Kids are hard on gear, both their own and community items like tents.

When it comes time to break camp, encourage your kids to help you police the site for any litter you may accidentally have dropped or that may have been left behind by previous campers. If need be, make it a game. Pretend you're trappers or Indians seeking to leave no trace of your passage so your enemies can't track you down. By teaching children at an early age about no-trace camping, you can be confident you'll be raising another responsible citizen of the wilderness.

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