Hiking Safety and Family Travel Tips for Exploring with Kids

We always are traveling with friends or family, internationally and locally. Not everything we do is a group activity, but a lot of things are. Hiking as a group is always fun and usually is uneventful, but every now and then something happens and that’s when you have to think about hiking safety and simple preparedness, including wildlife safety.

Hiking in the woods is one of our favorite activities and the kids are great at being good sports and enjoying it just as much as we do.  It’s rare that we ever have injuries but I’ll tell you, our youngest, falls a lot on the trail, even as he’s gotten older. When a kid falls, usually it’s just a bounce-up-and-go; when an adult falls, that does typically come with an actual boo boo. Hence why we’re sharing our tips about hiking safety. If you have any questions about hiking safety or getting kids out on the trails, please leave a comment or send us a note. We’re always happy to share more and help families plan great outdoor adventures.

Hiking Safety Tips: Advice for the Trail

When I’m hiking on my own, I usually am well prepared with my camera gear and the right shoes, and then I don’t think about much else because I’m an adult and I can manage myself. When we’re hitting the trail with our kids, even as they’re now teens, we take a very different approach. We have to think about hiking safety for the four of us, knowing that even with our kids being pros out in the wilderness, they’re still young humans and need some guidance and encouragement. That’s all part of keeping your family safe on a hike.

Choosing a Good Hike with Kids

If you’re heading out on a hike, how do you decide where you’re going to go, or do you just head up the hill? You can always look at hiking guides or ask other hikers, but keeping hiking safety in mind, do you know how to pick a hike that’s right for your group’s energy and hiking experience? That’s something we’ve learned to be careful about:  picking a hike that we’re going to be able to complete safely. It’s so easy to hear that the view at the end of the five mile trail is just to die for… or that the elevation gain is only 500 feet. Here are the things to keep in mind with these aspects of picking a trail:

• Distance is a round trip consideration – five miles isn’t bad, but ten is really tough
• Elevation gain can happen gradually or in one treacherous climb – what are you and your group capable of doing safely?
• And what goes up must come down, and the downhill can be harder or more tricky

The other thing to consider when you’re picking a hike, especially when I comes to family hiking, is motivation along the way. Kids don’t always want to just walk in the woods or being climbing constantly. A hike that has some known points of interest along the way will keep kids and adults motivated to keep going.

Trail tip: a great hike in Mt Rainier National Park that has great sights and variations along the trail is Comet Falls on the southern side. The terrain is varied and there are other falls and bridges to see along the way. Check out our hiking in Mt Rainier Nat’l Park post for more ideas!

Splitting up a Hiking Group for Safety or Energy

Our family is pretty good about sticking together when we’re hiking. Nobody wants to hike alone and we don’t want the kids running off and getting hurt or something. Sticking together is a cardinal rule in hiking safety. True, sometimes half the family or group will want to see what’s beyond the trail or past the goal at the end, and that’s okay, but be smart about it. Hiking safety starts with communication and getting everyone aligned with a plan and end to the hike.

Tip:  even in the woods on a busy trail, have a clear rendezvous point and time to be there. This will save everyone stress, panic, or general unhappiness.

When you’re hiking with kids, you should also think about who’s best to handle the kids if they get wild, tired or hurt. Splitting up a group and giving one adult more responsibility for the kids than they can handle isn’t using your hiking safety skills. Keep an even split of kids and adults, and be sure each group has the right supplies for their hikers. I totally the desire to send one parent forward with one kid and one return to the start or visitor center with another, but be sure everyone has appropriate snacks and water for the trail they have ahead.

Tip:  if you’ve got a little person, make sure that their necessities go with them. Example:  the pack with the Epi-pens and Benadryl needs to go with the kids with allergies.

Cautionary Hiking Safety Tale re: Splitting Up

We went hiking with some friends from out of town, and they had never been to Olympic National Park. We played tourist with them, explored Olympic NP and decided to go hiking in the Hoh Rain Forest. We had picked our trail in advance, the Spruce Trail loop. Immediately upon starting our hike, we had a double kid-poop emergency. I took the kids back to the Visitors Center since we had only just left on the hike, we took care of business and then headed back onto the trail.

Prior to splitting up, I told our friends which trail to follow and that we’d meet them on it, as we wouldn’t be gone too long. Yeah, they had some confusion and headed up the Hoh River Trail instead of the Spruce Trail. The Hoh River Trail is a 17 mile one-way up into the Olympic mountains. We headed back onto the Spruce Trail, sure that we’d be hiking with our friends in just a few minutes. Nope, we did the whole loop, which was beautiful, and never saw them. We went back to the start of the trail and sat.  

After more than two hours, we were pretty concerned about the girls. We started asking other hikers as they came off the trails “Did you see some twins hiking on the trail?” All we got were no’s. As we approached the three hour mark, I headed to the Visitors Center with the kids and we made an official missing hikers report. The rangers got their equipment together, we completed the paperwork and were just heading out to search for our friends. A couple saw the commotion and heard us talking and ran up, stating that they’d just seen them on the Hoh River Trail and they were heading back down.

In pure joy, the boys and I ran to the trail head and started back up the path. Right then, our friends came around the corner, tired, hot and thirsty. We all hugged, figured out where we went wrong, and headed out of Olympic National Park, thankful to have all survived.

Tip:  learn from our experience and be very clear in communicating plans… or just don’t split up. Not everyone has an innate sense of direction or is familiar with trail markings. If there’s a risk that hiking safety will be compromised by splitting up, don’t do it.

Hiking Safety: Snacks and Water for the Trail

If you’re a parent, you already know that you don’t go anywhere without snacks.  Well, when you’re heading out on a trail with kids or adults, you need snacks AND drinks. No conversation about hiking safety can go without talking about water. There are a few option for bringing H2O with you on the trail, but our favorite is using a Camelback or similar product. We like to load our water pouches with ice so that they’re continually refreshing and since we wear them, they act like DIY air conditioning units.

Tip:  pack more water than you think you’ll need.  It may be heavier at first, but it adds to your workout and you won’t need to ration your water. Believe me, if you’re doing a hike that’s more than 2 miles, you’ll drink through your water supply, for sure if you have kids with you.

Snacks on the trail, especially for kids, should always be more healthy than you want to bring. You can’t go wrong packing apples and carrots. Bananas, peaches and pears are NOT good hiking snacks. “Squish…” We like to have things like jerky, meat sticks and corn nuts too, as these are all things that don’t get destroyed in a backpack and hold good nutritional value, including salt (electrolytes).

Tip:  trail mix and nut bars are great snacks too, but remember that whatever you pack onto the trail, you need to pack out. There are no trash cans in the woods and we should always be practicing LNT: Leave No Trace.

Focus and Fun are parts of Hiking Safety

If you know me, you know that my role in life is to manage the fun. It’s true. Everything should be fun, but when you’re someplace like a beach or on a trail, you need to be cautiously enjoying yourself. Watching where you’re going and not running down a trail covered in roots and rocks are the easiest ways to stay safe while hiking. You can still have fun while hiking responsibly, and by taking your time being observant along the trail, you’ll likely be able to see wildlife and insects as well, which is important for safety.

Tip: looking for cool wildlife or insects as you hike is important, both for fun and safety. While we were hiking to Silver Falls in Mt Rainier National Park with our friends, we saw the coolest spiderwebs that were enormous and woven like domes. We would’ve missed them if we were going too fast. Also on the hike, signs of bears on the trail, which made us a little more cautious.

Wildlife Safety for Hiking

Getting to see wildlife on a trail is so cool and really is amazing when kids get to see animals in their native habitat. Usually this is a pretty innocuous experience, you know, seeing rabbits and birds and deer, but sometimes there is a danger-floof on the trail. We’ve encountered MANY bears and moose on our hiking trips with kids, and safety precautions have given us great stories instead of bad ones. When you read about bear encounters turned bad on a hiking trail, it’s usually because the hikers weren’t behaving properly, not because of the bear. Here’s how you can stay safe hiking in bear country:

• make noise as you hike – don’t be disrespectfully loud, but be audibly present
• keep a wary eye on the trail ahead and areas beside the trail
• look at surrounding hillsides and riverbeds to spot wildlife before it spots you
• eat snacks and trail meals in a tidy way that leaves no trace (crumbs)
• don’t bring highly scented food or leave food unattended while hiking
• stay together when possible, pick up small kids if you’re in an encounter

These tips alone should keep you very safe from most wildlife you could encounter on a trail. Very few animals are actually interested in meeting people, so prevent the encounter instead of reacting to one.

Should I go Hiking with Bear Spray?

Bear spray is only as safe as the person using it. If you don’t know how to use bear spray, learn how to use it properly or DON’T BRING IT. There are places with lots of bears and having bear spray is a nice precaution, but if you haven’t been trained on how to use it, the spray can be really dangerous for the humans involved. Imagine you’re encountering a bear and in your defense you accidentally pepper spray yourself? Yep, that’s the risk if you don’t know how to use it.

Now, if you know how to use it, great. Bring it when you’re hiking in bear country and keep it handy. Ideally, if you’re following the other precautionary wildlife hiking safety tips, you won’t ever need to use your bear spray. I’ve only ever pulled it out twice while hiking in 30 years, and one of those times was actually during a dangerous moose encounter… and I still didn’t have to discharge the spray.

Rewarding a Good Hiking Day with Kids

One last tip to make family hiking fun and safe is to have something fun to share with kids following the hike. For us when our kids were young, it usually meant a treat in the car or getting to watch a show for the drive home, but that’s not always the case, especially now that they’re teens. Sometimes we have to motivate a little farther in the future… like something fun when we get home or an ice cream stop when we’re back to civilization. Basically, there’s nothing wrong with rewarding an awesome day on the trail.

Tip:  have a plan for what to do after your adventure so kids can stay motivated and keep their attitudes up. I was hiking with our kids, just the three of us, and we encountered an INSANE staircase in a canyon. Having a good post-hike motivation saved me from having to carry two small kids up 300 stairs. Take your time and have the motivation ready!

We realize that a bunch of our tips are pretty common sense, but you know, it’s easy to forget to be prepared or to get caught up in the hiking moment and then find yourself in a pickle. Do you have any good family travel or hiking safety tips to share? Leave us a comment or send us a note.  We’d love to hear from you and share your advice with others!