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| Ruth Mountain, WA. |
So, you're expecting your first child and wondering how to keep getting outside once you have a human larva to care for. I've been there. This post is supposed to help. At the same time, I'm not a medical doctor or expert of any kind. I'm relating my experience. Use your own judgment about what is safe for you and your child.
When to go:
In the first couple weeks or months postpartum it's probably best just to lie low. You have a lot to adjust to, Mom probably needs some rest, and it's a time when medical emergencies for the child are more likely. But eventually you're going to get itchy feet; you hear the call of the wild and just need to go. Our first overnight trip was at the 3-month mark.
Kid Carriers:
In the first year of life the Ergo Baby, or similarly designed kid carrier, is your best, best, best friend. With the infant insert, head stability need not be attained before getting active. I got pretty good at checking my daughter's pulse through a vein on top of her head, as sometimes it was hard to tell if she was still alive in there – she'd sleep for hours. I carried her around in our Ergo Baby all the time, both for hiking and just doing stuff around the house.
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| A front carrier lets you haul a full pack of gear. |
This style of carrier has minimal weight or structure, just a strip of cloth with appropriately positioned straps and buckles. They are designed simply to hold the baby against your body, and distribute some weight to your hips. A useful consequence of this design is that you needn't worry too much about your baby getting too hot or cold: they stay at your body temperature. If you're working hard, hiking up hill in warm weather, your baby's going to get a sweat bath, but as far as I can tell this isn't something that will bother them. It only grosses out the adults.
As the child gets older you may find that you want to stick with the Ergo as long as possible, as it enables you to carry a full size load of your own, and doesn't weigh much in and of itself. I have a love/hate relationship with backpack style kid carriers, as they have so little cargo capacity beyond the child, and weigh so much empty. When our daughter was 8 months old we spent 10 days out in the Wind River range, which would not have been possible with a backpack style carrier. You can achieve a lot with an Ergo, and a willing and able parent-mule.
Eventually though the child will become too big, and probably too active, to tolerate the Ergo. A year or two of backpacking them will be required. For this reason alone, big backcountry trips are easiest in the first year of life. If you have a reasonably light camping kit, it's definitely feasible for one person to carry all the gear, and the other to carry the child. Just don't expect to bring climbing gear, or expect it to be a reasonable system with a second child.
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| 8 mo. old. Cirque of the Towers, Wind River Range, WY. |
Clothing Systems:
Good technical clothing for children and babies is hard to find. Perhaps more importantly, none of it seems designed for the child's primary position: sitting in a carrier sling or pack.
In the first six months things are relatively easy. Oversized onesies in synthetic materials, lycra, fleece, etc. are reasonably easy to find. Patagonia has a good line of outdoor garments for kids and babies, but they are often out of stock, and it's expensive.
One item that we found indispensable is the Patagonia Synchilla. It's a fleece onesie that comes in sizes from infant up to 12 mo with a very clever design. You can either configure it to have separate legs, or zip them together to form a sleep sack. This also allows access for diaper changes without taking the garment off. It includes hand covers that fold back for active periods. Superb.
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| Patagonia Synchilla in the North Cascades |
However, unless you always dress the child in pants that are 3-sizes to large, you have a problem in the kid carriers, as mentioned above. Their pants ride up, or are pushed up by the sling/pack leaving a lot of bare leg that us vulnerable to the sunburn and cold. The solution is a large pair of adult sized socks, which can either be thin liners or thick woolies depending on the conditions. These will go up to the child's hips to provide the needed protection, and can be worn over shoes and other clothing. The same trick can work for keeping their hands warm in the winter, as mittens sold for babies are always inadequate.
Hardshell jackets are useful to have, but shell pants and onesies are of limited utility because of the leg-length problem discussed above. It can be effective to close your own jacket around the child, but it has to be a pretty roomy shell for that to work. If it's raining that hard, you should probably just get the tent up.
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| Backpack or bivy bag? |
Sleeping Systems:
For swaddled infants this isn't much of a problem. Use a hooded fleece onesie and as many fleece swaddles as seems necessary. You can even tuck a baby into the top of your backpack for extra protection. Once past the swaddling phase, it gets harder.
As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a good toddler/baby sleeping bag, at least not one sold as such. I found more appropriate items marketed for dogs than for children. My solution: the Feathered Friends Vireo. This is a bag marketed to alpinists as a minimal ultralight bag for big routes. I still use it for that purpose occasionally, but it ALSO excels as a sleeping bag for toddlers and babies. It weighs less than a pound, and packs down to about 1.5 L. It has a graded down fill, such that at the toe it's rated to 20 F, and at the shoulder 40 F. No hood, no zipper. The idea for the adult user is that you'll be wearing a puffy jacket as well. the trick for using it effectively with a child is to half-invert it and synch the draw-cord below the toe box so it cant ride up. Voila: a half-length, ultra warm, ultra-light down bag. Bonus: for those of you worried about suffocation/SIDS (and what parent isn't these days) it flares well at the top making it much harder to cover the face accidentally. You can also just keep pulling it down in the inversion process until it is no more than shoulder length on your child. I'm hoping an added benefit will be longevity. They won't outgrow the Vireo, and it could be they'll still be using them when/if we start alpine climbing together in their early teens.
Ground padding is easy, since kids are made of rubber and not at all picky. Buy a basic foam pad from REI, or wherever, and cut it down to size. Use two layers. We used this as our crib mattress, let alone backcountry!
Backcountry Food:
In the first 6-12 mo. this is really easy: bring Mama. In this context the hand powered Medela (Harmony) breast pump can be very handy too. It's really small, light, packable, and effective! This is mostly for Mama-comfort if there's an over-supply problem, but can also be used to allow Mom to do something more exciting while Papa takes baby duty for a day. Snow can be a handy backcountry fridge to keep pumped milk drinkable for 12-24 hours.
Once solid food is on the menu things could get difficult if you want it to be. Our solution was simple: feed the kid exactly what you eat. The trick is that you may have to pre-chew it for them. Think dried fruit, nuts, salami. It works. Parenting isn't for the squeamish.
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| Tent bound. Little does she know, we're almost out of dry diapers! |
Diapering:
For short overnight trips you can go disposable and pack it all out. This is a very limited strategy though, as you're carrying not just the weight of the diapers, but all of the babies urine as well. This gets very heavy, very fast.
Cloth diapers and wipes are the only choice for long trips, but you have to have conditions in which you can dry them out. On our Wind River trip we just washed and dried as we went, burying any solid excrement. I think we had six cotton diapers in total. There was an exciting few hours toward the end of a long period of foul weather when we thought we were going to run out of dry diapers, but we squeaked by. Note that washing is not done in streams or other surface water. We brought a rubberized collapsable cloth bowl as a washing tub, used biodegradable soap, and emptied the effluent into organic soil far from water sources. This is a very good, and not especially messy solution when your baby is still primarily breast fed. Once solid food becomes a major part of babies diet though, it could get really rank.
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| 24 mo. Shelf Road, CO |
Growing up:
The hardest age for backcountry trips is 24 mo. By this time your cute little infant is not so little any more. They want to walk, but aren't very good at it, and are very distractible. They are still in diapers, but producing huge, rank fecal logs. For us, this is also around the time our second child came along, and long trips with them have not been manageable since, simply because of the amount of people and things that need to be carried. We've fallen back on day hikes, and short overnight trips until our youngest gets his legs under him, and his diapers off. We're hopeful about next summer.
At the same time, this is the age when your kids are old enough to really start engaging and enjoying the experience. You have to move slower, pick exciting trails, let them play with dirt and rocks along the way. That's where our little experiment rests at the moment. We'll see what the future brings!
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