• Recognize that your kids will get dirty—probably downright filthy, in fact. Live with it. Don’t bother to scrub them clean every time you see them. Getting dirty usually means they are having fun.
• If your kids are too young to recognize natural dangers (poison oak, steep drop-offs, anthills, and the like) then you will need to physically block these off or designate an adult to keep watch.
• A little entertainment makes a big difference. In the evening, kids love the idea of having a headlamp, so bring along one for every member of the party. Bring simple games. Playing cards, pick-up sticks, and small board games all work well. Finally, don’t forget to brush up on your storytelling. It is still the best way to spend an evening with kids in the outdoors.
• Don’t forget to bring snacks—lots of ’em.
• Get the kids involved in the planning. Delegate to older kids tasks like planning the menu and checking the weather, and consider providing each kid with a printed map or a notebook for recording their impressions along the trip.
• Be thoroughly familiar with child first aid, and recheck your first aid kit to ensure that it contains children’s aspirin, lots of bandages (often great for psychological comfort even when the child isn’t really hurt), and tweezers for removing splinters.
• Consider bringing along the child’s best friend, or even that friend’s whole family. It may not fit with your idea of solitude in the wilderness, but kids usually love having a playmate while exploring the outdoors.
• How much leeway and independence you give your children depends on their ages and ability to follow instructions. But even the most responsible youngsters may at times stray too far from camp when searching for huckleberries, chasing a squirrel, or engaging in some other equally distracting activity. To help combat this problem, all children should carry a whistle, preferably on a necklace, that they have been instructed to blow if (and only if) they become lost.
Tadpole watching at Rush Creek, Indian Heaven Wilderness (Trip 23)
photo by Douglas Lorain
Your choice of backpacking location is especially crucial when traveling with young hikers. Unlike adults, children are rarely impressed by great views and invariably complain about steep climbs. (To be fair, adults often complain about steep climbs as well.) This book includes dozens of backpacking trips that are especially well suited to children. Identified both in the summary chart and by icons on the first page of each individual hike, these trips are relatively short, involve less elevation gain, and include plenty of the things that youngsters love—splashing creeks, wildlife, berries, lakes to explore, and the like.
Elk Meadows (Trip 37) boasts a picture-postcard view of Mount Hood.
photo by Paul Gerald
An excellent time to schedule a backpacking trip with kids, especially into the Cascade Mountains, is late August. This is huckleberry season, when children (and adults) can stuff themselves with handfuls of the delicious berries. In fact, one measure of the success of a hike at this time of year is how purple one’s fingers and tongue are by day’s end. In addition, the mosquitoes are usually gone by this time, and the mountain lakes remain warm enough for a reasonably comfortable swim. Finally, your trip will take place just before kids go back to school, so they will have impressive stories to tell when the teacher asks the inevitable, “So what did you do this summer?”
For further information on backpacking with children, see the recommended reading in Appendix B.
How to Use This Guide
The trips in this book are broken down by geographic region, starting from the southeastern Olympic Mountains in the north and working down to the Mount Jefferson and Mount Washington area in the south.
Each individual trip begins with a quick overview of the hike’s vital statistics, including scenery, solitude, and difficulty ratings, as well as distance, elevation gain, managing agency, best time to visit, and more. This allows you to rapidly narrow your options based on your preferences, your abilities, and the time of year.
Just below the trip title are numerical RATINGS (1–10) of the three qualities that traditionally attract or deter hikers the most: scenery, difficulty, and the degree of solitude you can expect.
The SCENERY rating is my opinion of the trip’s overall scenic quality on a 1 (just OK) to 10 (absolutely gorgeous) scale. Of course, this rating is completely subjective: I happen to swoon over alpine meadows sprinkled with wildflowers, while you might prefer a riverside trail through deep woods. There are no bad choices; every hike in the book has beautiful scenery, it’s just that some of them are so spectacular they’ll make your wide-angle lens think it died and went to heaven.
The DIFFICULTY rating is also subjective and runs from 1 (barely leave the La-Z-Boy) to 10 (the Ironman triathlon). Keep in mind that this book is designed not necessarily for lifelong backpackers but for those of us who don’t manage to get out there as often as we’d like. We might be fitter than average, but we’re not in the habit of carrying all our food and shelter (and maybe our children’s food and shelter) up steep and rocky mountain trails. The difficulty ratings reflect this; the few hikes rated a 1 are either nearly flat or very short, or both. Hikes rated 9 or 10 are extremely challenging (but so rewarding!). I’d prefer to have someone leave the trail thinking, “That was easier than I expected,” rather than, “Good grief, if that was a 5, I’m not even going to think about trying a 9!”
Because SOLITUDE is one of the things backpackers are seeking, it helps to know roughly how much company you can expect. This rating is also on a 1 (bring stilts to see over the crowds) to 10 (just you and the marmots) scale. Of course, even on a hike rated 10, it is possible that you could unexpectedly run into a pack of unruly Cub Scouts, but generally this rating is pretty accurate. Note that there are trade-offs: extreme solitude usually means the trailhead is hard to reach. To boost your chances of camping solo in more popular, accessible areas, try to go midweek or in the shoulder seasons.
The next two lines list total ROUND-TRIP DISTANCE and ELEVATION GAIN for that trip. For many hikers, the difficulty of a trip is determined more by how far up they go than by the mileage they cover, so pay especially close attention to the second number, which includes the total of all ups and downs, not merely the net change in elevation.
Every trip includes a map that is as up-to-date and as accurate as possible. But common sense dictates that you’ll also want to carry a topographic map. The OPTIONAL MAP entry identifies our recommended map(s) for the described trip.
Next you will find two seasonal entries. USUALLY OPEN tells you when a trip is typically snow-free enough for hiking (although this can vary considerably from year to year). BEST TIME lists the particular time of year when the trip is at its best, such as when the flowers peak, the huckleberries are ripe, or the mosquitoes have died down.
AGENCY is the local land agency responsible for the area described in the hike; these are the people to call if you need a map or want to double-check road and trail conditions before setting out.
PERMIT tells you if a permit is currently required to enter or camp in the area and how to obtain one. It notes the few instances when permits are not free or advance reservations are required, along with the necessary details. When a Northwest Forest Pass is required