How to Go Backpacking with Your Baby

A raindrop splattered on the nose of my 5-month-old, strapped into a carrier on my front, and he looked up at me with solemn eyes. I snapped a bright pink umbrella open over our heads and eyed the charcoal clouds rolling over the ridge above the Thorp Lake Trail. 

When I proposed this trip to our friends — the parents of a barely walking 14-month-old — I told them to expect a little Pacific Northwest mist. A downpour was not supposed to be in the cards, and sounded like a lot less fun with two babies on their first backpacking adventure in tow. 

“We’ll just start hiking and see how things go,” I told our friends as we locked our cars and made final adjustments on our heavy loads. 

I was fully prepared to pull the ripcord on the trip if we all ended up soaking wet, but I was hoping we wouldn’t have to. 

“We’ll reassess in a half-mile,” I said, and we started hiking. 

I’d been dreaming about this trip since before my son was even born. In the first few sleepless weeks of his life, I’d searched out trip reports and articles about camping and backpacking with babies. Is there any greater joy as a parent than sharing the things you love with your children? 

The idea of taking my son into the backcountry, and my determination to still take wilderness adventures, had been fixed in my mind all summer. 

“We’re doing it, baby,” I whispered down to him. And as if he had been my co-conspirator on this trip, he looked back and grinned.

Front Row seat. A front carrier for younger babies makes meals and monitoring their temperature a little easier. Photo by Loren Drummond.

• Permission to go alone

• Being a parent or caregiver is a lot of work. And no backpacking trip with a baby along is going to deliver the same kind of restoration or experience that you had before. 

  After WTA staffer Krista Dooley added a second child to her family, she took a backpacking trip with friends. “The best part of the trip was that it was all adults. I gave myself a much-needed break from being a mom and spent time immersed in nature with adults who made decisions for themselves, cooked their own food and laughed at my jokes. I encourage all parents to spend time outdoors with their kids as well as to take time for themselves.” 

• “As a mom with a full-time job, I rarely feel like I can relax for 5 hours at home. There are always chores to do, or simply the vague feeling I ought to be using my time better, not a particularly relaxing mindset. Backpacking lets me remove myself from the to-do list at home and focus on being present,” says WTA magazine editor Jessi Loerch. “It’s all a balance. Weekends are when I get the best quality time with my family. I give that up when I go backpacking alone. But getting to recharge alone in nature is important to me, and I think it’s important for my daughter to see me make space for the things I love.” 

• shon’t savage, a mom, public health professional and “perpetual adventurologist,” has this advice:
  1. Honor and respect your current phase of parenthood. Each phase is different. The independence of a parent with an infant is different from a parent with a teenager. 2. Avoid comparison — it truly is a thief of gratitude. Your child is unique, and so are your parenting and adventures. Celebrate their originality. 3. Designate self-care as a necessity. We often undersell the importance of self-care; it is an integral ingredient for growth and balance, not a luxury. A whole, healthy you begets a whole, healthy parent

Taking a backpacking trip with a baby or young toddler requires a good dose of creativity and planning. You’ve just come off of a crash course in how to keep a tiny infant alive, you’re still dialing in how to get them to sleep, and now you have to learn how to do it in the woods. 

We’d already tested the waters with a few car camping trips with our son. These practice runs were about a 40:60 ratio of effort to fun, but they helped us dial in our sleeping setup. We’d already done middle-of-the-night diaper changes and feedings, and we knew that an extra phone charger to keep the white noise app on our phone running was worth the weight. 

But anyone who has helped raise a baby knows that there is a reason parents refer to their children in months and weeks. 

A 4-month-old has very different needs from a 10-month-old, so besides deciding when your little one’s first overnight will be, you will likely need to tweak your system for each trip. Our trip to Thorp Lake was the first time I had worn our front carrier with a fully loaded pack (it was tolerably comfortable), and the pink umbrella was our solution for staying dry (it worked perfectly). I hoped the friend who was hauling a bit of extra weight for all of us wouldn’t be kept up all night by baby shenanigans. (He wasn’t.)

But we were determined to start as we meant to go. I have big dreams of backpacking with my son throughout his life, so we were determined to make hiking and camping a part of his normal from the early days. 

“You were right. We should have chosen the other trail,” I said to my wife as we slogged straight up the steep mile-long section of trail before reaching the lake. I estimated both of our packs came in between 40 and 45 pounds. We’d have water at the lake, which helped lighten our loads, but we were carrying more than we were used to. I had been sure to pick a short hike — just 2.5 miles — but this had a steep section my friend called a grind. Go short and easy — that is the standard advice for choosing trails for beginning backpacking with a baby. I had gotten the short part right, but underestimated how easy 1,000 feet of elevation gain sounded. Lesson learned: Next time, choose the short, flat trail, even if it means 20 more minutes of drive time with a fussy kiddo.

1,000 feet elevation gain with baby and 45 pound pack. Photo by Loren Drummond.

Our friends, who had gone ahead when we needed to stop and fix a bottle, greeted us in a wide, flat camp. Their son grinned and staggered around, tumbling into huckleberry bushes and climbing back out again.

We relaxed into the routines of late afternoon and evening familiar to any family — changing into cozy, warm clothes, fixing dinner, tucking babies into bed. Our son was at an easy-sleep stage, and he went down at 6:30, bundled in a down suit and sleep sack in a travel bassinet in the tent. I had learned from our camping trips that I worried about him staying warm, so I put him by our heads, so we could periodically check on him throughout the night. When our friends’ toddler was asleep, the five of us gathered around our cookstove and drank hot drinks, pretty freaking proud of ourselves. We had gone to a lot of trouble packing and driving and hauling our families up here, but it was beautiful, and it had worked.

Before the sun set, I had gone down to filter water at the small lake, and the sun finally broke through the low-hanging clouds, reflecting against the cliffs on the far side. “Yes,” I thought. “This is it.” Since we had become parents in spring, so much of our lives and identities had been upended, and I had been missing the feeling of being in true wilderness. I wanted my son to experience this trip, to look up and see nothing but trees and sky. But in truth, this trip was really what I had needed to feel like myself, to envision the kind of family I wanted us to be in the years to come.

WTA's Southwest Regional Manager Ryan Ojerio and his daughter. Photo courtesy Ryan Ojerio.

Suggestions for backpacking  with your baby or toddler

If you love backpacking, it’s definitely an activity you can share with your young child. Like most things about being a parent, what works best will depend a lot on your particular family and baby. We hope these tips and ideas help get your backpacking trips off to a good start. Things will go sideways from time to time. But if you’re prepared and strive for fun, not perfection, you’ll be able to roll with it during those early years of adventures.

Planning and packing

Start with a practice run trip. Choose something with an easy exit, where you won’t feel put on the spot if your baby cries all night. (Dispersed camps are one option for this.)

Get your kid used to being in a carrier with lots of walks. 

• Think of strolls in town as hikes.
• Give yourself extra planning and packing time. 
• You will need to adjust your gear, sleeping and eating systems as your kid grows. 
• Go when you feel ready. Hike your own hike. You know your baby best, how they eat, how they (and you) sleep, how well they adapt to changes in routine. If you are recovering from giving birth, you know the limits of your body. Don’t let anyone else tell you when the right time to try backpacking is for your family. Make your calls and feel good about them. 
• Pick easy and short hikes, and readjust what you think of when you think “easy.”
• Recruit an easygoing friend or two to help you haul gear. Make them a part of your kiddo’s earliest adventure stories. 

Fears and risk assessments 

• Air out your fears. Be honest with yourself and your hiking crew. Then run them through the how likely/how bad filters. (How likely is this to happen? How bad would the consequences be — uncomfortable or life-threatening?) 
• Stay flexible. Things will go sideways at some point. 
• Add layers to your risk-management approach. We research the nearest emergency room to our trailhead, carry a satellite messenger and make sure there are enough people to help in case of the unexpected.  
• Practice. When you head for the backcountry, you simply exchange one set of risks (electrical sockets!) for another. The more you practice being a parent in the outdoors, the more it will feel like home. 

On the trail 

• Consider poles to steady heavy, wiggly loads. 
• Take it down a notch. Plan to carry more and go slower than you are used to. Build in time for breaks. 
• Make sure your pack is comfortable — and be prepared to make adjustments as your baby moves from a front carrier to a structured back carrier to toddling along on their own. 
• Keep water and snacks handy for both of you. 
• Naps on the go are inevitable; embrace them and plan to hike during normal nap times. 
• Embrace dirt. If your baby gets wet, change them. But don’t worry too much about dirty clothes. 

Naps on the go are inevitable; embrace them. Photo by Loren Drummond.

Sleeping and eating

• If you’re nursing, you’ve got it made. (Just remember to drink enough water.) Wear clothes that will allow for easy feedings at night.
• Formula feeding? Measure out more than you typically use in a baggie, and carry a couple of lightweight bottles. A thermos can be handy for keeping water warm in your tent for late-night or early meals. A few drops of Dr. Bronner’s soap and several rinses works well for washing. 
• Shelf-stable milk is a great solution for backpacking toddlers. For kids eating solids, plan meals you can share, and bring calorie-rich foods you know are favorites. 
• Your sleep setup and layering approach will vary by season and family preference. Try to re-create your home bedtime routine. For a 5-month-old sleeping in a travel bassinet with a forecasted low of 42 degrees, we layered a capilene base layer, thin fleece footie pajamas, a down puffy suit with a hood, and his sleeveless wool sleep sack over that. He was warm, but never sweating. 
• White noise essential to your baby sleeping well? Choose a destination near a river or creek. 
• Truth? You probably won’t sleep well the first night out. 
• But your baby very well might. 
  

Gear

• Perhaps the worst part of backpacking with a baby is diapers. They get larger and heavier as you go, so take extra resealable bags for full diapers. If you get the chance, try drying them out in the sun to evaporate some of the water. For short trips, disposables are often easiest. You might consider washables or a hybrid system for trips longer than a week. 
• Packs are personal. Find one (or a combination if you are wearing a baby in a front carrier) that fits well and carries a heavy load comfortably. If you are planning to trade off child-wearing with someone else, be sure the pack setup works for both of you. 
• Sun, rain and chapped cheeks. You’ll be outside all day, so be sure to pack items that will keep sun and rain off of your baby, plus balm or Vaseline to protect their skin from cold or wind.