Re: new here

Jade

As Roseiline stated it's hard to advise you without knowing where you live or directing you toward like minded people in your area.

I live 45 minutes from lots of trail heads but commonly travel 2 to 3 hours for a 2 night hike.
I am 1 hour from the PCT at Stevens Pass WA and try to do atleast 1 hike each year of 7 to 10 days and multiple 1+ night hikes.

I started each of my four girls out backpacking a age 4 on easy 3 or 5 mile hikes. At age 6 they were going on multi night hikes and at age 9 they were going threw the Goat Rocks over Old Snowy (known in PCT thru hiker circles as the Knife Edge)for 4 nights
.
The reasoning for age 4 was that I nolonger needed to deal with diapers or wet sleeping bags and by that age they knew how to start a safe fire, use a whistle for signaling, help set up the tent, use a cathole, and most important the importance of staying on the trail.

My youngest did get lost going to an open air backwoods outhouse on her first outing.
When her older sister returned to the campsite without her the search started. I found her 20 minutes later and 1/2 mile down the trail (I was a distance runner) toward the car parking lot where she knew there was an outhouse she had used earlier in the day ........ very scary ..... but typical for that daughter. She was not lost, she knew exactly where she was and where she was going and so was not blowing her whistle.
The same daughter got lost at Disneyland and at the Puyallup Fair.

'til later
Jon

 
--- In [email protected], "starryeyedsophia" <starryeyedsophia@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all, I'm new to the group and new to backpacking as well.  I grew up camping and hiking just not really together. I've been slowly getting gear and really want to go backpacking but now that I'm looking at sites, there seems to be NOTHING around me. The closest I've seen is several hours and I'm not sure if there's much there to even see. So, I was wondering, on average, how long and how often are your trips? How far do you have to travel to get there? 
> 
> I'm starting school in a few weeks (as is my daughter) so I'd really only have the weekends to go right, but it seems a long way to drive for just a night or two. 
> 
> Also, if you have kids at what age did you start taking them backpacking. (I have an almost 2 year old and a 6 year old). I've read alot of varying things online but would love some personal experiences/opinions on that.
> 
> Thanks for any input I appreciate it. I'm having a hard time meeting anyone in my area interested in backpacking to discuss it with.
> 
> Jade
>