Last weekend my daughter and I went on a backpacking trip to the Mount Evans Wilderness Area. I chose the Abyss trailhead because I am familiar with the trail and knew that my daughter could handle it. The Abyss trail follows a good sized river through most of it and for the most part is an easy to medium hike. If you hike in more than five or six miles the hiking difficulty and altitude both increase. This hike had great views and plenty of solitude. We arrived on Saturday morning and saw very few people on the trail.
Although she has been camping with me since she was three years old, this was my daughter’s first backpacking trip. My daughter is just shy of seven years old so I had to plan and execute this trip completely different than my prior backpacking trips. The first thing I did was to build her up for the journey. I spent the last three years taking her on increasingly longer hikes carrying light weight in a small backpack. I told her that she was practicing for the day when she would be able to go on a backpacking trip. Over the last two years she became more and more exited to go backpacking.
I learned that backpacking with children is very different than backpacking with adults. First you really need to lower your expectations. Usually when I go backpacking I set goals for myself as far as how far I would like to hike each day between camps. When I set out on this trip I planned on her and I walking about 3-5 miles over the course of an entire day. I figured I would take plenty of breaks and we could accomplish this easily. I found that although my daughter is a great hiker, carrying a pack at altitude really wore her out. We made it about 2 miles and I could tell from looking at her that it was time to find a place to camp.
My first reaction when I saw how tired she was getting was frustration. I had wanted us to get further up the trail where we could camp near the river. I knew there was some beaver ponds another 2 miles up the trail and I wanted her to see them. Luckily for me and her I kept my frustration to myself and set out to look for a place to camp. The area we stopped was nothing but open woods so I decided to walk off the trail to the north to see what I could find. We found a perfect campsite about a 1/4 mile north of the trail where we found the river.The next thing I learned was that like everything in parenting, my backpacking trip became a classroom. My daughter loved to learn all the tasks of backpacking and camping. She got a chance to set up the tent, cook on a camp stove, puryify and learn about safety.
Because this was her first trip we only stayed one night then we walked out the following afternoon. I did not cover near the ground I usually do but I had a much better time sharing my trip with my daughter. Watching my daughter experience backpacking and increase her love of the outdoors was much more satisfying than covering 30 miles over 5 days like I would do if she was not there. Being with her forced me to slow down and really enjoy the trip.
I can't wait till next summer so that we can go again. I'm already fighting myself to not set my sights to high. I want her to be able to walk 25 miles and be gone for a week but I know it won't be possible for many more years.
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