Backpacking with Babies: The Climb
I was half-convinced that what we were doing was really very impossible. It would probably result in disaster. It was just scary enough to be wildly exciting. The challenge, the chance for pushing ourselves and mastering something—but also the glimpse of freedom, the world of possibility open to us if we could just find a way to pack gear for a family of 5 up the side of a mountain. In the midst of a quarantine, with even remote campgrounds closed, the allure of freedom to just GO was enough to overcome the mental barriers.
We bought as little as we could, made do with what we had, and cut out anything extra. Individual toothbrushes are a luxury—one for the whole family will do! Baguettes, artisan cheese, hard salami, fresh fruit, and fine chocolate is a necessity. We can wear the same clothes the entire time to make the food fit. Fine, the kids get one change of clothes, but that’s IT.
I intentionally didn’t buy the gear I knew we probably should have. We took a 2-person tent, a single car-camping sleeping bag, and two waterproof woobies (for blankets) that Chris dug out of his old military gear. I convinced everyone that it would be fun to sleep in a big pile in the tiny tent, and that we would be so exhausted from hiking we could sleep without a mattress pad. I wanted the fancy down backpacking sleeping bags, but they were expensive, and I didn’t want to buy the wrong thing without time to return it. Plus, what if we all hated this? No, it was best to give it a test run, then purchase the gear once we had a better idea of what we wanted.
So the night before our trip found us carefully laying out our supplies, anxiously checking the weather, weighing the bags, and staying up till 2 a.m. with a toddler and a baby that, for whatever reason, thought the night before a big trip was the time to try for an all-nighter. As we collapsed, exhausted, into bed, I reflected that the only sensible thing to do was to postpone our trip to a later date with better sleep, better gear, and better weather. Chris agreed. That was the sensible course of action.
But the sensible choice is not the only one! We got a late start the next morning and plowed on anyway. We got Duck Donuts and sang John Denver and read Heidi on the drive. We arrived late, and Chris was anxious to get going. I planned an hour per mile for our kids to have an unhurried hike, and we didn’t want to be setting up camp in the dark. We packed up and forgot our phone chargers in the car. It didn’t matter too much, because my map on my phone didn’t work—we had no cell service. Oh, well. That looks like a mountain, let’s go that way!
The rhododendron were in bloom at the base of the mountain, but I realized as we hiked that the elevation change affected the season—we were travelling back in time to early spring, watching the seasonal cycle of a bush from full bloom, to setting buds, to green leaves, to new leaves, to bare branches. We found a mini salamander, the highlight of Chris’ hike: “I’ve never seen one that small! Idris don’t touch it!—he will rip it in half—NO TOUCHING!—It’s so tiny!” We hiked up a wooded slope, where moss blanketed boulders and swathed the trees, and water trickled down into a tiny stream. Idris was tired—that happens when you miss half a night’s sleep and a nap—and hiked about a quarter of his usual 2 miles before sitting down to play. He didn’t want to take off his backpack—which I’d packed far too full of clothes, snacks, water, and bedding for a toddler to carry—but he wouldn’t be carried, either. We meandered along for half a mile before convincing him to ride in the kid’s backpack I was wearing.
The following mile was the most brutal of my life. I was carrying 55 lbs of toddler, water, and gear, and I simply couldn’t make my legs step up onto the rocks that formed the path. Chris was carrying baby Coco in a front carrier, and 36 pounds of gear, plus water. He couldn’t help me. I was bowed down with the weight of it, and I knew it wasn’t okay: Backpackers should carry no more than 20% of their body weight, ideally less. For me, that was about 26 pounds. I was carrying more than double that.
But it was a beautiful hike. There were tiny wildflowers along the trail, the views were already incredible, and I was out with my family, I was doing it! I breathed and dug my fingers into branches to pull myself up the path. One more step, I can do one more.
Chris wasn’t having it. He convinced Idris to walk a bit more, and he did. But after a quarter mile, he asked to ride on Chris’ shoulders. “No! Don’t! I can carry him!” …too late. He was riding on Chris’ shoulders, feet held carefully away from Coco’s face. I did the mental math. 18 lbs for Coco, 33 lbs for Idris, 36 for the pack, plus water. Chris was carrying around 90 pounds.
A few minutes in, Chris turned to me and said, “can you take him off, my fingers are going numb. I think the pressure is pinching a nerve.”
It was a good time for a snack.