Five tricks for getting tired kids through a hike

Posted by Jeff on Aug 22, 2015 @ 4:45 am in Hiking News | 0 comments | Last modified: August 21, 2015

Is it looking like your plan to hike your kids and your 12-year-old nephew 3,000 feet and nearly four miles uphill to the brink of Upper Yosemite Falls—and then, of course, back down—is on the express bus to the graveyard for dumb ideas from overzealous hiker-dads?

Hike, backpack, cross-country ski, or do anything physical outdoors with kids regularly, and there will inevitably come a time when you have an unhappy kid who’s complaining he can’t take another step without severe consequences, possibly including death. You’re out on the trail, still on the hike—you can’t just call a cab. What do you do?

First and foremost, picking a hike that inspires kids will go far in making the outing successful. Minutes beyond that moment of epidemic disgruntlement in Yosemite Valley, you round a bend to your first view of Upper Yosemite Falls plunging over a sheer cliff through a vertical quarter-mile of air, creating a cloud of mist that rains onto the trail. That will spin the kids’ attitudes 180 degrees. They may alternately walk and run the remaining 2,000 feet of that ascent.

But that turnaround may be because of some other tactics you used to energize the kids. Plus, you can’t always count on having a 1,400-foot waterfall in your corner.

Here are a few tricks that help get young kids through difficult times on a hike or any outdoor adventure…