The Outdoor Adventure Giving you tips, tricks & recommendations to help make adventuring in the Outdoors fun, safe & exciting for you and your kids.
When I was about 13 my dad took me on my first backpacking trip. Now that I have my own kids, I’ve wanted to instill in them a love and enjoyment of the outdoors. That made it very important for me to do it right when I took my almost 5 year old daughter on a backpacking trip this summer. The trail was a little used shortcut into the Monashees Park in BC that starts at a deactivated Logging road and pops you out at Margie Lake.
Margie Lake is usually the end point of a long hike that starts with a 1 hour hike into Spectrum lake, continues 8 km and 52 switchbacks up to Little Peter’s lake, a little further to Big Peter’s lake and then another hour or so to Margie Lake. With this shortcut and a bit more driving, you hike 45 minutes up hill and then 30 to 45 minutes around a lake and then end up at your base camp. A reasonably easy hike, all things considered.
The park has been reasonably active and in the past 5 years has put in an outhouse and bear tree to lessen the impact of hikers (the park doesn’t permit fires in alpine areas). The trail, however, into Margie from the deactivated logging road is not maintained, but not too difficult to follow if you follow the tape and are familiar with map and compass work.
After crossing into the park at the trail head, be expected to traverse a creek, follow a muddy trail uphill and then continue a somewhat steep climb up the valley side. The sound of the rushing creek, complete with waterfalls is a pleasant background noise and the trail itself sweeps by to give several beautiful photo opportunities on the way.
Once the trail levels out, you begin to skirt the lake (watch for a side trail to the left that takes you by the remnants of an old plane crash (it’s easier to find on the way back)). You should be able to see an outhouse (brown building with a white door) across the lake that is close to your camp if you aren’t moving on to the tent platforms at Peter’s lake. After crossing the creeks that flow into the lake you should find a nice area with a beautiful view of Margie lake.
My daughter managed without too much complaining, especially after we started implementing our distraction plan. To keep the trip interesting, my daughter got to choose when to take a snack break and what type of snack to bring. We brought beef Jerky (or Beef Turkey as she chose to call it), rice crispy bars and gluten free cereal bars /she has a sensitivity to gluten and dairy). As a further distraction she had the job of watching for the marker tape and finding the trail. As the trail was still muddy she also watched for the footprints of those in our group that had gone ahead of us. The presence of snow on the trail acted as a good play time as well!
After setting up camp the rest of our crew headed off on the 1.5 hour hike to Peter’s lake while we stayed behind to eat lunch and rest. I had packed to collapsible chairs (something my daughter greatly appreciated) and we sat by the lake eating cheese (goat cheese for my girl) and crackers. I threw my rod in and we managed to pull in sushi… er… trout for our sushi dinner. This time we would cook it. My daughter had a small net that she used to “help” me bring the fish in.
After that, she was ready for a nap and slept until dinner time while I prepped the food. The sushi was a disaster this time (brown sushi rice does not work on the trail), but Abigail had worked up an appetite and happily downed an entire rolls worth. With cocoa and sugar we put together some hot drinks for the nice and we put my penny alcohol stove to good work.
After that we both ducked into our sleeping bags an early (and what would be a long, cold) night.
