If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that the idea is to write about my adventures in the outdoors with my family. 2021 was the year I got back into overnight hiking again – finding myself after the years of motherhood duties reigning supreme.
My eldest boy has long been keen to try overnight hiking, and while we’d talked about possibilities close to home, sometimes it’s hard to actually make it happen in amongst the busyness of life. So we cooked up a plan to head to Tasmania to walk the Three Capes Track and then, if all went OK on the first walk, we’d walk the Overland Track. Prior to this, we did a training run on a walk close to home – the Northern Border Trail, which is part of the Canberra Centenary Trail.
Mr 9 handled all this fine. His introduction to overnight hiking has spurred a passion for more adventures and we are constantly adding to our bucket list.
Mr 5 is itching to have the same opportunities. He desperately wanted to come on both our training walk and our Tasmania adventures. The training walk was a cold, pissing-down rain weekend, so that was a definite no. As for Tasmania – while he may have been able to do the Three Capes Track, to be honest, I needed a bit of selfish me-time without having to pander to a 5 year old – so, also a firm no. However, there may have been a few promises made to placate him, including that we would take him on the Northern Border Trail another weekend when the weather was nicer.
Mr 7 is a bit ambivalent to the idea of overnight hikes. Not really his thing. However, he does like the idea of having all the cool gear, like a camelback and his own proper hiking shoes. So, my deal with him was that if I get him the gear, he has to use it.
This is the background to how I came to spend my weekend traipsing the ACT border with my 3 boys, instead of braving the shops to do that Christmas shopping that I was putting off (on second thoughts, hiking sounds like a much better option!) The Northern Border trail is a great walk for an intro to overnight hiking. For one, it is literally in our backyard – starting from just outside the suburb of Forde, and finishing in the village of Hall. If starting in Forde, the walk is only about 5 km to the campsite (and you can either do the proper walk around the border, or take a short-but-steep-cut and head uphill, cutting off about 2km). This means you can still do Saturday sport, go home and pack, hit the trail at 4pm and be at the camp with plenty of time to set up, have dinner etc. Secondly, if day one proves to be a bit much, you could always just backtrack the next day instead of doing the 12.5km walk to Hall.
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase – what is it really like taking kids out for an overnight hike, carrying their gear, for the first time?
1. They are impatient to get going
I’m sure any parent getting ready for a holiday or even just a fun activity knows how annoying kids can be when you’re trying to get organised and they just want to get straight to the holiday. There’s the question the minute you get home from Saturday sport: “Are we going camping now?” Then the: “Can I help?” Finally you shoo them away to their rooms to play lego and leave you in peace, and then there’s a blood-curdling scream or the tattling on each other. By this stage you are wondering why on earth you are willingly planning to spend your ‘time off’ heading out camping with these creatures. As a result, often there is something that gets forgotten, because just as you were trying to get your thoughts straight, someone came an interrupted you. And it’s usually something like your morning coffee (or gin for the evening perhaps) that is forgotten.
2. They use up way too much energy at the start
You get out of the car, shoulder your pack, prepare to give the safety briefing, and next thing they’re halfway down the track, climbing a tree or playing ninjas. Take a deep breath, and try not to say ‘I told you not to waste your energy’ when they start whinging 20 minutes later.
3. They will whinge
“This is taking soooo long”. “My shoulders hurt.” “I wish we didn’t do this”. “I’m hungry.” “I’m cold.” “I’m hot”. “I need a nature wee.”
And that’s probably all within the first 20 minutes. Again, it’s not productive to tell them you told them not to burn their energy up straight away.
4. Pack lots of food (and bribery by lollies or timtams is highly recommended)
I thought I had a pretty good supply of food for the walk. Then they hooked into the trail mix on day one like ravenous beasts. They gulped down their breakfast oats and all asked for more despite having watched dole it all out. By this stage I was a bit worried that I may have seriously under-catered. I know these guys eat a lot, but they were even more ravenous on the hike, and less able to understand that we needed to ration the trail mix. Next time I will pack more muesli bars, simply because they are an easy and quick snack. I’ll also bring a bag of lollies (or three) to use as rewards/bribery.
5. We moved slowly and stopped often
We averaged about 2km/hour. This is a super easy track. I don’t think we were necessarily that slow, but we were stopping every half hour (and even that was with me pushing them on). When I walked this track with Mr 9, we smashed day 2 in about 3 hours (admittedly the rain was sort of a motivator to just get to the end and call our lift). With Mr 5 and 7, I had to be super patient.
6. They squabble about stupid stuff
We have 3 hiking poles. There are 3 kids. One pole each, right? Not that simple. “I want the red one.” “But I want the red one”. Me: “oh, FFS, they all do the job!”
Then there was the sporks (spoon and fork in one if you’re wondering). I bought each child a colour coded spork to match the colour of their fleece jumper. Of course, Mr 5, who loves his yellow fleece, does NOT like yellow when it comes to sporks. Again, me: “oh, FFS, I should have just bought boring old plastic cutlery and saved my money on these sporks!” In the end, they sorted it out and realised that colour coding was sensible, and that if they wanted to eat (which they always do), they should just get what you get, and don’t get upset.
7. It was, despite everything, fun
Loved seeing them feel the sense of achievement.
Loved snuggling up in the tent.
Loved seeing them interact with fellow campers (though sorry to those campers if they were looking forward to a peaceful campsite!).
And loved that, despite a long day, sore feet and shoulders, when I asked them if they wanted to wait for Dad at the trail end or walk another block to a playground and they unanimously shouted “Playground!” I, on the other hand, was content to rest against our pile of assorted hiking packs and discarded jumpers, marvelling at their ability to recharge like the energizer bunny, as long as there’s a playground.
Gear list:
Here’s a list of what each person carried and approximate total weight. Where possible, each child was responsible for their own gear, with me carrying all the communal gear, such as tent, stove, fuel, first aid and most of the food.
Mr 5:
- Small backpack
- 1.5 L Osprey hydration pack
- Small thermarest
- Rain jacket
- Set of thermals
- Fleece jumper
- Mini first aid kit (basically just bandaids)
- Small soft toy
- Cup
- Sandals
- Total weight: approx. 2.5kg
Mr 8:
- Trek Lite 50L backpack (this was too big and awkward for a child his age)
- 1.5 L Osprey hydration pack
- Foam camp mat
- Aldi down sleeping bag
- Rain jacket
- Set of thermals
- Fleece jumper
- 6 muesli bars, pack of trail mix
- Cup
- Sandals
- Small soft toy
- Total weight: approx. 3.5 kg
Mr 10:
- Osprey Ace 50L backpack
- 1.5 L Osprey hydration pack
- 1L water bottle
- Denali self inflating mat
- Mountain designs synthetic sleeping bag
- Rain jacket
- Set of thermals
- Fleece jumper
- Food – wraps, pasta, salami, cheese, oats, chocolate
- Cup
- Map holder and notepad
- Trowel
- Sandals
- Small soft toy
- Total weight: approx. 8kg
Mum:
- Macpac Esprite 65L backpack
- Tent – Mountain Hardware Drifter 4DP
- Camelback 2.5 L hydration pack
- 1L water bottle
- Thermarest
- Mont helium 300 down sleeping bag
- Wanderer kids synthetic sleeping bag (Mr 5)
- Rain jacket
- Set of thermals
- Fleece jumper
- Trangia stove
- 1L fuel (because I couldn’t be bothered decanting it)
- 4 x foldable bowls
- Cup
- 4 x sporks
- Pocket knife
- First aid kit
- Sunscreen
- 4 x toothbrush, toothpaste
- Insect repellent
- Phone
- Camera
- Crocs
- Total weight: approx. 15 kg
In addition to the above, we were all wearing a long-sleeve shirt, shorts/pants, hat, sunglasses, boots, and each child used one hiking pole (2 for me).
