Family on JMT – 6 days, 55 miles?!

Sounds like a great trip, not a cattle drive. That last day is an easy, mostly downhill trip. Is the Devil’s Postpile shuttle running now, better check. Milk shakes wait at the bottom of the hill.

Thanks Cameron!I appreciate your sentiments.  This will certainly be a different year down there. The shuttle is not running, but if we get lucky, and the road is open we should have a car waiting for us there at the end of it all, and there is talk of letting cars driving around down there this year since there is no shuttle.   TBD.

When I was 16 I did a 55 mile hike from Agnew Meadows to Yosemite Valley. My best friend and I felt like we were total badasses. It was us girls vs a bunch of teenage boys. When we got to the Valley some guy on the bus asked us if we get high. We said yeah, 11,056 feet! Your kids are a lot younger, but they will be bigger badasses than we were.

In general, my formula was “the kid’s age in miles”.  When they were 6, we wouldn’t do over 6 miles in a day on a backpacking trip.  Etc.  And that was with mom and dad carrying most of the gear (UL REALLY helps!).

But at 12, my son did Rim to River to Rim in the Grand Canyon (16 mile RT, 4,500 feet down and 4,500  feet up (but no pack).  My daughter did it at age 9.  And ran the last 2 miles up to the Rim (without me!).

Several years earlier, they’d done Half Dome (16 miles RT 4800 vertical feet each way).

But we were ready to turn around at any time.  Our over-arching philosophy has been “keep it fun”.  Don’t promise a destination to others or get attached to it in your own mind and continually assess where everyone is at, physically, emotionally, energy level, foot health, etc.

I have seen kids–and entire boy scout troops–slogging and suffering on the trail. You don’t want that. Maybe after the first day, depending on how they all respond to actually having to carry loads uphill for miles, your family would decide to forgo the hot springs in order to make two easier 6 mile days to get to Reds. Just a thought. Maybe scout out a possible campsite for that, if one exists.

What David said. Keep it fun.

You know your kids best. Talk to them about the whole plan, what they want to do, what will be fun. With my kids, I had to include peaks to summit and lakes to swim in. With my wife, the key two words are “layover day.”

So given the original schedule, this trip is over now. I wonder how it went? Maybe Paul will give us a trip report.