[at-l] Kids packs

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob C.)]

When I hiked 280 miles of Maine with a 9-year-old grandson, I bought him an
adjustable Kelty external frame kids pack. Our major problem was he kept getting
ahead of me on the trail. I finally loaded more stuff into his pack to slow him
down.

 My kids all used the same Kelty adjustable packs, after about age eight or
 nine. Younger they used ordinary "school book" day packs.

 Maybe the best way to get kids into backpacking is to do family tent camping
 combined with day hikes. If you camp in backpacking tents and do a lot of day
 hikes, the transition to overnight backpacking becomes just a tiny extension of
 the usual.

 My three kids were all camping before they were one-year-old. The oldest was on
 the trail by age six. After a while I gained courage so the youngest was
 backpacking at age three.

 My advice is to keep the first trips short -- very short -- three miles at the
 most. I liked also to backpack to a site and then use it as headquarters for a
 series of day hikes. Chimney Pond in Baxter Park was a frequent destination for
 our family. It's 3.5 miles in. Then we would spend three or four days, doing
 short day hikes before backpacking out.

 As they got older, we would backpack 8 miles or so to Russell Pond in Baxter
 where we would spend several days exploring.

  Weary