The Little Man’s First Backpacking Trip

The little man is nearly three, it’s time to get him out on his first backpacking trip. For this first attempt, we headed up to Blue Lake, just out of Bishop, California.  It turned out to be a great option — only three or four miles out to the lake, with a little elevation gain, but nothing too rough. The scenery was fantastic.

The first night, we camped at Four Jeffrys Campground.  Camping the first night let us rest and goof off a bit before the actual backpack.

Mason really liked the “red drinker”, although he perhaps got a little too philosophical when he had a bit too much (don’t worry, he was only given red gatorade):

Bags packed — likely the heaviest pack I’ve had to carry, since we were carrying for a new member of the group.  We attached a second smaller backpack onto my normal backpack to get everything in.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I think our system where Jeannie carried the little one with whatever gear she could fit in her bag, and I carried most everything else worked pretty well.  We brought my big sister along as well, who we made carry some of our stuff, but I wanted to carry as much as possible as a test to see if we could do this without another adult along to share the load.

Let’s do this:

Jeannie and Mason at Blue Lake.  He did great riding in the pack.

Playing at camp:

It shouldn’t be this easy to get to a lake this nice: