10 Tips for Taking Kids on Their First Backpacking Trip

By Michael Lanza

Whether you’re a family of novices planning your first backpacking trip or an experienced backpacker ready to take your kids on their first multi-day hike, heed this friendly advice: You’re in for some surprises. And I speak from experience. I’d been backpacking for years—in fact, I was already working as a professional backpacker—when my wife (also a longtime backpacker) and I first dove into the grand new adventure of taking our young kids into the wilderness.

We learned a lot. But the biggest lesson was this: Our backcountry adventures brought us closer together as a family and helped mold our children into eager and skilled backpackers and confident young adults with a passion and appreciation for the outdoors—and who seize every chance to spend time with us (their parents!) outdoors (and indoors!).

This article shares lessons I learned while taking our kids on countless backpacking trips since they were quite little and over the course of the 10 years I spent as Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog.

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Follow the tips below to make your family backpacking trips a success and ensure that your kids want to go again and again. Like many stories at The Big Outside, much of this one is free for anyone to read but reading the entire story requires a paid subscription. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you for supporting my blog.

Please share your thoughts, questions, or your own tips in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments. Click on any photo to read about that trip.

Check out my expert e-books to classic backpacking trips and my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan your next great adventure.

Planning a backpacking trip? See “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips”
and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

1. Car-Camp and Dayhike First

My wife and I were avid and experienced backpackers before our two kids came along and we took our first child backpacking when he was a baby and toddler. But once our daughter joined the pack—and we had two in diapers, with all the stuff you have to carry with children that young—we shifted for about five years to dayhiking and car-camping as a family (and taking our adult backpacking trips whenever possible, separately or together).

Both proved a great means of preparing kids for backpacking. Our family hiking together became normal and familiar to them before their oldest memories and we got a sense of our kids’ hiking abilities—making the transition to backpacking easier for all of us. Similarly, car-camping helped us dial in our systems and gear for backpacking and probably made backpacking seem ordinary to our kids.

Once our youngest was five years old and could hike more than a few miles, we resumed family backpacking trips. I also established a tradition of annual father-son and father-daughter trips, creating very special one-on-one time together.

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Backpacking Parent Tip Kids up to about age four roll around a lot in their sleep—often sliding out of a sleeping bag. We learned to just bring a child’s favorite blanket or two camping (on relatively mild summer nights). It’s much easier to throw a blanket over a kid in the middle of the night then to keep stuffing her back inside a bag.

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2. Don’t Get Overambitious

If you backpacked pre-kids, this won’t be like that. And even if your kids are good dayhikers, backpacking changes the entire dynamic. Your kids may be carrying more (see more on that in tip no. 8, below), but at the least, you are carrying much more weight and getting somewhere grows more complicated.

Myriad obstacles slow you down—most often that kids up to tweeners simply don’t hike fast, get distracted, and need frequent rest breaks and snacks. Set modest goals for distance and especially elevation gain and loss. Take your first trips on good trails that aren’t too difficult and have frequent, reliable water sources.

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Backpacking Parent Tip Have a bailout plan. Be ready to accept that it may not go well the first time and a safe retreat is preferable to a loss. The only “failure” is if the kids don’t like it and don’t want to go again. Remember that your goal is their enjoyment, not yours—your reward will be seeing their joy and, when they’re older, their eagerness to do this more with you.

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3. Outfit Them With the Right Gear

We heard the young girl crying through the howling wind and July snowstorm on Besseggen Ridge in Norway’s mountainous Jotunheimen National Park. We caught up with the family and saw that she was eight or nine years old, crying inconsolably and repeating one word over and over: “Cold! Cold!”

We stopped to ask if they were all right. The parents and two teenage boys were dressed for the weather in good boots, enough insulation, and shells. The young girl, inexplicably, wore open-top rubber boots, tights, and the kind of winter jacket you’d buy in Wal-Mart. She walked very slowly. She clearly was hypothermic and only getting colder. The next hut was several miles ahead of us.

We convinced them to turn around and walk downhill to the Gjendesheim hut, just a few miles back. There, they could take a ferry across a lake to the next hut. (In fact, my wife and kids had taken that ferry instead of hiking through the storm.) We saw them that evening in the hut, warm and happy.

Children need functional gear—most critically a backpack and boots that fit properly and are appropriate for what they’re doing—and a versatile layering system just as much as adults do. Yes, that can get a little expensive, but cutting corners risks creating an uncomfortable, negative experience for your child and, at worst, placing him in danger of hypothermia or worse.

Plus, good-quality kids’ outdoor clothing and gear can often be obtained inexpensively. See my “10 Tips for Spending Less on Hiking and Backpacking Gear.”

Most importantly, check that they’ve brought everything they need before you leave home—my son, at age 11, once forgot to pack his rain shell, fleece jacket, and warm hat for a five-day backpacking trip in Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness. (He survived just fine. I felt a little chilly in camp with him wearing my down jacket.) And make sure they’re adjusting layers as needed in the backcountry and learn how and when to do that.

Plan your next great backpacking trip on the Teton Crest Trail, Wonderland Trail,
in Yosemite or other parks using my expert e-books.

4. Go at Their Pace But Meet Them Halfway

Young kids are not in any hurry on the trail. They want to stop and play in a creek, stream, or lake. They want to throw small rocks and climb on big rocks. They certainly want to watch animals. This is all good and you should encourage it: Children want to interact with their environment—which makes this fun for them. (That’s why tip no. 2 is important.)

But you also have a campsite to reach every day. Give them the time to stop and play and explore along the way—it also lets you set that heavy pack down for a bit—and join them exploring because they long for your attention (see the Backpacking Parent Tip under tip no. 6).

But remind them that you have to move along at some point. Tell them they’re going to love the campsite (and make sure you deliver on that—see tip no. 7).

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Backpacking Parent Tip When our kids were little, we established a tradition: Every day on the trail, they got a chocolate bar when we were halfway to that day’s destination. (We got one, too.) It was a good motivator that we also used on dayhikes.

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5. Keep Feeding Them

I’ve been reminded of this truth countless times: A kid who’s griping about being tired is usually just hungry. Give her a big chocolate bar or energy bar or stop for lunch. Children need to eat more frequently than adults—sometimes every hour, especially when they’re small.

Look for warning signs: a slowing pace, growing quiet or grumpy, or a faraway look. Feed them before they scream, “I’m starving!” Ditto with water. Most kids sip rather than gulp, so remind them every 15 or 20 minutes, “Everyone take a big drink.” Giving each kid a hydration bladder helps. Don’t let them get dehydrated—that takes longer to fix than eating does.

As for meals, my wife and I have always kept it simple, preparing what we knew our kids would eat and that wouldn’t require much prep or cleanup.

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Backpacking Parent Tip Don’t let a kid hit the wall. When he’s obviously in need of fuel, resist the urge to insist, “Let’s just hike a little farther” unless you intend to stop very soon. Take a few minutes and give him something to eat. You will spare yourself much unnecessary grief.

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Start out right. See “10 Perfect National Park Backpacking Trips for Beginners”
and “The 5 Southwest Backpacking Trips You Should Do First.”

6. Talk and Play Games

When our kids were young, my family played word and number games while hiking for hours—it helped the time pass for our kids and was genuinely fun: We’d laugh for hours.

One favorite was “The Story Game:” One of us would begin making up a story with a few sentences and each of us would add some piece of narrative in turn, over and over, until it reached some conclusion. Our kids often introduced bizarre plot twists that reduced them to paroxysms of cackling.

That regular practice, I believe, set the stage for the long, engaging conversations we had while hiking with our kids once they became teenagers—because they had come to recognize this as an opportunity for us to spend extended periods of time talking to each other.

In camp, we’d also play games together, typically those that were easy to carry, like a deck of cards or, in the case of my daughter and me, working on Sudoku puzzles together on a tablet.

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Backpacking Parent Tip To a young kid, a parent’s attention is everything. Even teenagers covet your approval, even if they don’t show it. Nothing you can do will make them want to do this again more than your full attention. Besides, few times provide so much undistracted time together as being in the backcountry—away from our phones and devices. That, I came to learn, delivers the greatest value of family backpacking trips.

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Like this story? You may also like my “10 Tips For Raising Outdoors-Loving Kids”
and “The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

See my stories “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” “How to Decide Where to Go Backpacking,” “10 Tips for Keeping Kids Happy and Safe Outdoors,” “The 5 Best Tips For Hiking With Young Kids,” and “5 Questions to Ask Before Trying a New Outdoors Adventure.”

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