Last summer, we hiked the Wonderland Trail with our 7 kids (ages 14 down to 18 months).
The Wonderland is a 93-mile loop trail around Mount Rainier, with 22,000 feet of elevation gain. People have taken anywhere from 20 hours to 15 days to hike the entire thing.
We did it in 12 days.
For those who want to hike the Wonderland Trail with kids, or do something similar, here’s how we prepared:
FIRST– HIKE HIKE HIKE
Get out there and do it. We did a lot of day hikes, increasing in distance, then in difficulty, then adding weight in packs.
BE ACTIVE IN GENERAL
We went for a walk every day– at least a mile– for months in advance. Sometimes we added in other activities (biking, jogging for 5-10 minutes), etc., but mostly, my goal was just– be active, at least a little bit, every day.
We ran bleachers with our packs on (loaded with books or gatorade bottles) about 5-6 times in the last few weeks before our trip. I think it all helped.
THE MOST IMPORTANT WAY WE PREPARED OUR KIDS FOR THE WONDERLAND TRAIL WAS ***NOT*** PHYSICAL.
But really, I’d say that the most important prep work we did with our kids was drawing out their expectations and talking through the realities of what it would be like.
We really took time to get their buy-in before we fully committed and went all in. One day, after our longest pre-Wonderland hike (10.7 miles), we talked to them each individually about their thoughts, concerns, and expectations.
We asked for complete honesty and said they could tell us anything at all they were thinking.
Here’s the notes I took from what they said (expectations, good things, hard things):
MeiMei (10 year old daughter):
Expectations: “It’ll be fun, we’ll spend time together as a family.” Good: see pretty places, take pictures
Hard: “I’ll survive” (smiled), heavy backpack, long days, getting tired