Young children and hiking/mountaineering

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nyker
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Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by nyker »

How early did you take your kids hiking? And what were these hikes? (a short flat hike to a lake or on a class 1 trail to a 13er/14er?)

(Let's assume non-technical routes for now...)

Were they still in diapers and you carried them (front or back carrier) or did you wait until they could make it (generally) on their own power?

Love to hear all your thoughts.
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ECF55
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by ECF55 »

Oh, I'm nostalgic for the days where I could just throw the kid in the backpack and go. We did it very early and up real East Coast mountains (2000ft elevation). Now, as they have gotten bigger, the whining is deafening after a mile or two... ](*,)
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by huffy13 »

I took my sone on his first 14ers, Grays and Torreys combo, just before his 12th birthday and took my daughter on her first 14er, Handies just before her 11th.
Seems like the times that I need a mountain the most are the times that I can not get to them.
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by -wren- »

Not exactly what you’re looking for but my dad took me on 1 14er a year and other easier hikes starting when I was 8. I definitely needed a long summit break and another long break halfway down the first couple years, and would complain when we couldn’t drive all the way, but overall I loved it and I think if you raise your kids to love the outdoors and to be disciplined there’s nothing wrong with taking them very early. Recently I saw a 6 year old girl halfway up Sherman in great spirits moving shockingly fast.
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by dpage »

My wife and I started taking our kids to RMNP at 3 weeks old using a carrier, first on the front and layer in a Deuter Kid Comfort 2 which I've used with my oldest to carry him up Medicine Bow Peak. He's now 4 and his motivation to hike various with the conditions. Mostly we do waterfall and lake hikes as he finds this more interesting and tends to only be good for 3 miles without it becoming a really long slow day with a periodic meltdown. His brother is 2 and goes between trying to keep up with his big brother and hoping in the carrier. He's completed a mile on his own. I care less about how far or where we go but instead letting them explore wherever we are and playing in the dirt, climbing rocks, splashing in the water, practicing their creek crossing skills, etc. On a day with lots of puddles the 2 of them are more motivated to run and splash the whole way.
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GordoByrn
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by GordoByrn »

We live close to Chautauqua in Boulder. As soon as the kids could walk, we'd take them into the hills.
We have three kids and they have different levels of desire for hiking.

Key things when building their stamina...
a - slowest kid sets the pace
b - if we're going to push someone's limits then 1-on-1 works best, because...
c - I never ventured further than I could carry a kid out. When they were preschool age, this meant a large number of shoulder rides

Keep it fun - they're all willing to hike with me because they had good experiences early and we avoided "death marching with Dad"

We didn't add altitude until they had built endurance in the foothills.
For example, South Boulder Peak is similar to what's required for a 13er/14er, without the altitude.

Our best "athlete" has the toughest time with altitude.
So she prefers to stay low.
We did manage a Family 14er last summer - Handies when they were 7/9/12.

The first time they hit treeline is a real eye-opener for them.
Even if they have the fitness, there's a mental component of getting used to the sensation of being up high.
That's a skill separate from the fitness for the hike.

I did a lot of trips to the Twin Sisters over the years - to the landslide, to treeline, to the summit, to both summits.

Kids aren't great at self-management with food/pace/hydration - so that means lots of stops to make sure everyone tops up and doesn't burn themselves out.
CostCo apple sauce packs are well tolerated and easy to pack/carry.
M&Ms for snacking on the way back down.

They're also lousy with risk assessment so be prepared for tears when you need to bail.

Generally speaking, I take my casual time on a route and double it.
So that gives me an idea about how long I'll need and what's reasonable.
Because they are slow, I'm very conservative with weather selection.

As at the end of last season, my son was 9 and had done 24 14ers, including Halo Ridge in a day.
He also managed Redcloud/Sunshine then Quandary the next day, when we were driving home.
That's NOT typical for my family but gives an idea what's possible if a kid starts young, and you're patient with their development

None of them have much capacity to carry uphill but a little goes a long way to equalize between kids of different abilities.
See the pic below for the end of a typical family outing.
When I'm with my wife/kids, I operate way below my ability.
Creating a margin of safety is a motivator for me to stay in shape year round.

By the way, you can take ANY hike and make it an adventure by starting in the dark and giving a kid a headlamp. They absolutely love that.

There's a couple hundred articles about family, kids and athletics on my personal blog.
https://feelthebyrn.blog

Happy to answer any specific Qs.

g

Pic is the end of the Family 14er. Youngest on my shoulders, oldest's pack clipped to the front of mine, son hanging strong. We descended the standard route and walked back to Grizzly Gulch, to avoid the loose descent off the top of the East Slopes route.

Handies.jpg
Handies.jpg (596.29 KiB) Viewed 1887 times
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Scott P
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by Scott P »

nyker wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 1:31 pm How early did you take your kids hiking?
Age zero if you count carrying them. I preferred to wait until they could walk on their own before going above 13K and even when going above 12K only when they were well acclimatized since we were living at 9000 feet.
And what were these hikes? (a short flat hike to a lake or on a class 1 trail to a 13er/14er?)
We went on a lot of hikes. It just takes practice. Starting them early and before they get hooked on electronics helps too. At age 2 my son was doing five mile days, by age 3 he was doing twelve mile days, and by age 4 fifteen mile days. My daughter was doing 11 mile days at age 5, but she didn't get any fifteen mile days in until she was almost 7. That's OK.

Here was my son's first 14er attempt at age 3. We would have made the summit of Belford if the weather didn't turn.

https://www.summitpost.org/kessler-s-fi ... mpt/170276

By age 4, my son was doing some of the hardest trails in the Grand Canyon. By age 5, he was climbing 17,000+ feet mountains in the Andes (with lots of acclimitization of course) and on foot was crossing canyons more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

https://www.summitpost.org/a-grand-and- ... yon/253033

https://www.summitpost.org/father-and-s ... eru/378565

By age 10 he was doing winter ascents in the Himalayas, though the peaks weren't any of the really big ones. Sadly though one of the Everest vetran Sherpas overexerted trying to keep up with him (very few climbers could keep up with him when he was 10). The Sherpa, who had been on many expeditions didn't want to admit that he couldn't keep up with a ten year old kid so didn't say anything was wrong, but we made sure we went slower after that and everything worked well in the end. It was a learning experience for sure.

https://www.summitpost.org/a-return-to- ... aya/838418

That's about when he started lead climbing too and he started leading some fairly serious (by my standards at least) rock climbs at age 12. Here are a few photos of him leading (he likes to lead more than I do):

https://sp-images.summitpost.org/993648 ... cd9940c749

https://sp-images.summitpost.org/986297 ... 732b4910bb

At age 6 my daughter hiked across Sumatra on foot which was a pretty challenging trip:

https://www.summitpost.org/mountains-ju ... oes/691015

Bu age 9 she was doing some of the pretty big stuff in the Andes:

https://www.summitpost.org/adventures-i ... uel/894764

The kids are older now 17 and 19, and their lives are busy, but we still do stuff when we can. Some of my favorite trips when they were a bit older was our trip to the Huayhuash and our climbing trip to the Alps.

https://www.summitpost.org/the-spectacu ... sh/1012136

https://www.summitpost.org/alps-for-graduation/1041320

The kids have long surpassed my abilities though so when they want to do hard stuff they have to go without me.

Anyway, to sum it up kids are really natural born climbers. It just takes practice.
Last edited by Scott P on Sun Jun 27, 2021 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jaymz
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by jaymz »

My son will turn 3 in August. Just this past February or so, I needed to distract him while my wife could do her job from home for a few hours, so I started taking him to local trailheads just to play around on the boulders by the parking lots - White Ranch, Eldo, some pull-offs in Clear Creek Canyon, etc. I tell him "Let's go climb a mountain!" and he gets super excited. Started loading him into the child carrier and hauling him up North Table for my workouts this spring, but he gets about a third of the way and wants down, and just starts running up the trail. I think he's "climbed" N. Table about 5 or 6 times now, and he loves pointing to it from the living room window and telling anyone who'll listen, "We climbed that mountain!!"
These past few weeks, I've started easing him into longer trips, taking him up to the high passes. We've been on the Vasquez Peak trail from Berthoud, the west side of Loveland, and on the Square Top trail from Guanella, and each time he's just shot right up the trail about a half mile, maybe a mile or so before calling it quits. To echo dpage, I mainly just let him explore the trail and play in the dirt/snow as much as he wants. I'm trying to be extra careful not to do too much more than he feels like, because I don't want him to have any negative associations with hiking right now - when he's ready to turn around, we turn around!
"But in every walk with Nature, one receives far more than he seeks."
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Scott P
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by Scott P »

jaymz wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 2:40 pm I'm trying to be extra careful not to do too much more than he feels like, because I don't want him to have any negative associations with hiking right now - when he's ready to turn around, we turn around!
I agree and you might have the opposite problem as well. My son wasn't happy age 3 when I made him turn around.
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by spiderman »

Each kid is so different and there is no universal rule of thumb. We started in a backpack at 6 months old, and self-propelled at 2 years old. He did the uphills and I carried him down for naps. We started to transition to big hikes when he was 8. Now he carries all of my crap up big mountains like Denali and Aconcagua because there is no way that I can keep up any more.
Scott P wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 2:44 pm I agree and you might have the opposite problem as well. My son wasn't happy age 3 when I made him turn around.
Scott, you need to be firm with your son that the hike is over when your Sherpa has died of AMS and you need to get his body back down to the nearest tea house.
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by tonythetiger »

Our kids climbed their first 14ers (Democrat for my daughter and Belford/Missouri for my son) when they were 4 going on 5. (They are now 29 and 31, so it was a while ago.) We hiked a lot with them prior to those climbs and climbed several 14ers with one or both in backpacks. Both of them finished climbing the 14ers by their 18th birthdays. Most of these peaks we climbed as a family but they actually climbed the last few (Windom, Sunlight, Capitol, Longs) together without us.
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nyker
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Re: Young children and hiking/mountaineering

Post by nyker »

Thanks for all of your ideas everyone.

Scott, those trips are pretty impressive, I remember when you posted a few of those when Kessler was younger.

ECF55 -which east coast mountains were those? I can't imagine taking anyone too young up the harder Adirondack peaks with those wet slabs and boulders.

huffy13, wren - had your children been on quite a few hikes before getting their first 14er?

spiderman and tonythetiger, When you say "in backpacks", do you mean you put your child in an appropriately sized backpack or child carrier/backpack?

dpage - that deuter model looks good, where do you put your gear that you might normally carry, since the gear storage in that one looks like its just for the little one?

GordoByrn: You raise some good points. "By the way, you can take ANY hike and make it an adventure by starting in the dark and giving a kid a headlamp. They absolutely love that." ...that's good idea

Jazmz - "he loves pointing to it from the living room window and telling anyone who'll listen, "We climbed that mountain!!" ...That's pretty cool
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