This past weekend my four-year-old Emerson hiked 7.5 miles with a vertical elevation gain of 3,000 feet, summiting Uncompaghre at 14,309 ft altitude. My 7- and 9-year-old were there too—it was a three boy + one dad adventure—but clearly my four-year-old claims the prize.
The hike started at 4:30 AM, it was 38˚ F. The boys were excited to wake up in the dark for an adventure. This time I didn’t even have to drag them out of bed—they started getting ready without prompting when they heard me moving around. They were clearly way more stoked to be rising at 4 AM than I was.
We summited shortly after 9 AM and were back in camp around 1 PM. I was proud to watch the boys support each other. We talked about Minecraft for probably half the hike (hours and hours), but conversation makes the miles pass more easily.
I didn’t carry Emerson one single foot; every bit of it was entirely on his own two feet. He had only a few minutes of emotional difficulty (crying) during the entire adventure. I don’t often brag about my kids, but I have to admit that I am wildly proud of Emerson. Proud for the achievement itself, and particularly proud that he did it with aplomb.
This time we ditched Karen at home so she could have some personal time (she was really disappointed to have an entire weekend to herself :-). It was wonderful to have the father-sons bonding time, and this trip will occupy a special place in my memory.
Hiking 14’ers with my boys is something I’ve looked forward to for years. This was the first 14’er with all three boys hiking under their own power, without me carrying any of them on my back. Hopefully the first of many. To me, it represents a huge milestone for family adventures, and it has come earlier than I had expected. I know a lot of parents want to do this kind of stuff with their kids but feel like it’s impossible. Since we started hiking when Bodie (our oldest) was only a few months old, I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way that have made things easier and have given me the confidence to even attempt such things.
- Bring special snacks. The kids don’t typically get sweet stuff for breakfast, but on these trips we’ve started a tradition of having brown sugar cinnamon pop-tarts as we head up the trail. I also bring mini candybars, cookies, gummy bears, whatever the kids are into, to serve as motivation for hiking. They get to choose a treat after each mile and can basically eat whatever they want once we get back to camp.
- Don’t be afraid to bribe them. Particularly on long, difficult hikes like this, I understand that the kids might not value the journey or the summit as the grand achievement I do. The value in reaching a summit after long tiring hours of exertion just to turn around and retrace one’s steps is a bit abstract, after all. That said, I have reverted to promising the kids a prize of some sort if they make it to the top. Last time, I promised them new lego sets, this time they are getting foam minecraft swords. On the last mountain, Emerson turned around and didn’t reach the top, but I told Bodie and Jasper that Emerson would also receive the reward if they got to the top “for him.” It brought tears to my eyes to hear Bodie talking about how he wanted to reach the top so that his brother would be able to get a participation prize. Note to self: set more specific dollar limits on the prizes. Note to adults: this tactic works for you as well. About 2 miles shy from the trailhead, when I start feeling tired myself, you better believe I’m promising myself a cold one when we return to camp.
- Set out all the gear the night before. I was surprised that I had to clue Karen in on this the first time we did a 14’er, so I will not assume that this tip is a given. Hiking with kids means you inevitably have to bring more stuff. The night before, prepare your lunches, get the snacks together, pack everything up, and put your kids to bed dressed in the clothes they are going to hike in. Older kids might be able to get dressed in the morning, but, really, you want as few obstacles as possible to getting an early start. Roll out of bed, grab the pack, and go. I even get the coffee maker ready, sitting on the stove, so all I have to do is light it up. Remember, you’re going to be starting when it’s still cold and dark and it feels like you ought to be in bed.
- Talk up the adventure. As soon as I told my kids that we were going to be hiking in the dark, they were psyched. There is something about the silence and eeriness of the early morning “alpine start” that ups the excitement factor about 50%. My kids love putting on their headlamps and suiting up when the stars are still out. If you’re not already super excited about it yourself… fake it. Pretend to be super excited about it, for their sake and for yours too. After Jasper’s first alpine start a year or two ago, he talked about it every couple of weeks for months, about “that time we got up when it was still dark”. The reason it was so memorable to him? I handed them each a hot chocolate as soon as they rolled out of their sleeping bags, to drink in the car on the short drive to the trailhead. I tell them it will be hard; I don’t pretend it won’t be. But I also talk about how tough they are, and how I am confident that they can do it. I talk about how they may end up choosing to turn back, and that it’s fine if we don’t reach the top, but if they choose to turn back it’s because of their mental choice, not because they are physically incapable of it.
- Plan to do nothing else for the rest of the day afterward, but bring games or screens to occupy your kids while you take a nap. We naively thought that long hikes would tire our kids out. Nonsense. As soon as we get back to camp, they either pass out for, at maximum, only an hour, or they start running around wanting to eat all the snacks they can. If you are carrying a toddler or preschooler on your back, there’s a good chance they will nap at some point during the hike and be ready to play later, so there is literally no rest for the weary once you get back to camp. Plan for an easy, low-prep dinner. Buttered noodles and hotdogs. Or junk food, whatever. After they hiked a 14er, who cares?
- Make a BIG DEAL out of however far they walked. If you make it to the top, that’s great. But if you only make it halfway, cheer and encourage your kids. It really is about the journey. Don’t set yourself up for failure by requiring a summit in order for the experience to be successful. Talk up the opportunity to push yourselves, and talk about how you’ll go as far as you can. Don’t tell them they need to reach the top in order for it to be a good day. Hopefully, you’ll make it next time and your kids will still associate hiking with a sense of accomplishment and positivity. Exactly what we’re going for.
- Don’t underestimate your kids. When we set off to hike Uncompaghre, I was not sure if Emerson would be able to make it. In fact, I was leaning towards it being quite unlikely. It’s hard to overstate how big of an accomplishment that was for a four-year-old. Bodie hiked Handies under his own power when he was four, but that was less than 5.5 miles while Uncompaghre is 7.5, and Bodie was hanging off of my hand for the last few miles, and that was also a surprising and unexpected accomplishment to me. Kids will often step up to a challenge when you least expect it. They have no idea how far they can go; that lack of preconceived notions is also a lack of the same mental limitations that often plague adult endeavors. The mind is what usually prevents us from approaching our upper limit. Go in believing your kids can do it, hope that they will, and know that, realistically, you might have to turn back long before you’d planned to. We have not always summitted on our 14er trips. On a previous trip in fact we started up Uncompaghre and turned around after a mile or so. One time we went to do San Luis and didn’t even try to hike because I drove around for hours in the middle of the night with baby Emerson in the car seat on dark back roads trying to get him to go back to sleep.
- Be a stubborn/patient/indefatigable parent. The kids will talk about turning back. They will talk about how they can’t do it, how they’re tired and don’t want to do it. I will not force them to do it, but I will not let them off easily. I will tell them we’ll reconsider when we reach the treeline. That we’ll “talk about it” or we’ll “think about it.” I tell them that we got up early so that we have plenty of time, extra hours that we can sit and take long breaks if necessary before we have to decide about going down. This is one of my favorite tropes—I think of it as the “we’re in no rush” message. If given an option of sitting still in one place for a half-hour, or continuing to hike farther up the mountain, I think most kids choose to keep hiking. I rarely have to actually end a break (if nothing else, Jasper will leap up and start back up the mountain solo which requires the rest of us to mobilize). I will try to do everything except talk about going down. I only use words about going up, being strong, positive. I talk about how hardcore they all are, already – that they have accomplished a great thing just by getting up in the dark and starting to hike. Right up until the moment we turn around, I will continue talking about how strong and fine we are all doing. I will provide options, diversions, excuses, anything to make the choice to turn around a distant, near non-option. Out of mind. The boys don’t feel any pressure from dad that we must reach the summit—I don’t want to be that type of parent—but they also don’t feel like they have an accessible immediate option to turn around. If they go up to the ridge, then maybe we might think about talking about the possibility that at some point they might be able to turn around… But I just keep pushing the decision farther up the mountain, until we either reach the top or they really do completely run out of juice.
- Hike with friends. If you can, hike with someone. Anyone. Preferably people you know, but Jasper has been known to plow on ahead of us and befriend strangers who are willing to talk with him along the way. Kids will usually go harder and longer if they have peer support or just someone other than mom and dad to hang out with.
- Be the example they need to see. I don’t care how tired I feel myself, the boys will see me as relaxed, comfortable, normal. I don’t care if my knees hurt and I have a headache—those are inconsequential and nobody needs to hear about it. We talk about whatever they want to talk about, whatever they want to tell Dad but don’t get enough endless opportunity to do so. These days, this means talking about Minecraft for hours. We talk about Minecraft like we’re taking a stroll down the sidewalk while we’re hiking at 14,000 ft in the wind and cold at the top of Colorado and, to them, it seems perfectly normal because I ACT like it’s perfectly normal. They take their cues from me: Dad isn’t scared about the cliff over there, Dad isn’t tired, Dad is smiling and joking and messing around, clearly this whole thing is no big deal. That expectation and mental mindset becomes our reality.
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