KiDs FiRsT BaCkPaCkiNg tRiP

I wanted to post some pictures of the kids first backpacking trip! There are a lot of them so beware. We hiked 5.5 miles into chimney lake where we stayed for 2 nights.

Nojah taking a breather looking out over the canyon. I was showing him Sawtooth in the distance where he had climbed to earlier this month.

We took breaks about every 1/2 mile on the way up taking us about 6 hours to get there. I had gotten off of work that morning and with no sleep made this journey. This is about mile 4 at Laverty lake, we stopped to let the dog drink and the kids sit.

Well, apparently we hadn't let the kids sit long enough because miss poopy pants here got a little irritated about mile 4.5.

I would imagine it must be even MORE irritating when mom stops and takes photo's instead of taking her bag, the fit lasted about 10 minutes and we were off again. Seriously it wasn't any worse then what we have at home on occasion.

Beautiful Chimney Lake, the first night we ate hot dogs, roasted marshmallows and went to bed.

Here is camp, the kids had a little tent which they were not impressed with. They wanted to sleep out under the tarp with mom and dad. Wish we would have known that before packing the tent . We did make them sleep in it though because we have bivy sacks and they didn't. The temps got down into the high 30's low 40's so we were afraid they would get cold. No complaints though both nights.

The 2nd day we did a day hike up to Hobo Lake about a 1 to 1.5 miles up from Chimney. The kids played in snow fields....

And in ICY cold water.

Here we are coming down from Hobo lake looking over Chimney. The kids played around camp the rest of the day and tried to fly fish with Tob.

The third morning Alexyss woke up with a belly pain and wouldn't get up or eat. This wasn't good due to the fact we were hiking out that day. We packed everything up between our packs so she wouldn't have one and then headed out, thinking it would be a slow walk. She didn't even make it a 1/4 the way around the lake before she dropped to the ground holding her belly screaming.

My thoughts were for Tob and I to take turns hiking down the trail ahead, dropping our packs and coming back up to carry her down every mile or so. He said no he thought we would just stay together as a family. So this was her ride down.

All 5.5 miles of it.

We would stop every mile to take a break and during those breaks she would rest on the ground or in daddy's arms. It was a sad little sight.

But after about 3 hours we made it back to the car! We had pizza and milkshakes when we got home. Lex was sick most of that night with a temp of 102. She didn't eat much for a couple of days but then was back to normal.
So that was our trip. In between the smallish fits (which would happen at home or hiking) and sick little girl it was fun. We always love a good challenge and are pretty proud of the kids for what they can do.