02.08.2024

Hiking With Kids – An Extract From Our Brand New Newsletter

Ta-da 🤗 yesterday evening it was the time, our first Lappland Nature Dreams newsletter was send. A colorful mix of news, information, tips and tricks and hopefully a lot of personality. You have missed to sign up? No problem, if you do it now, I can still send you the newsletter with all personal insights. In general, we will not publish the whole newsletter on our web page or on the blog because it should stand alone as what it is, an email newsletter. But we will publish some extracts that usually are also blog topics 😉

So today: Hiking with children – on tour in the Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve

Since long time Raffi had promised Joël that he would go to the mountains with him. We were looking for a tour that could be done in two to three days and that was suitable for a four-and-a-half-year-old child. So we chose Ammarnäs and the Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve, as this is already a fell region on the one hand, but on the other hand it is not so exposed and remote that it would be too extreme.

First of all, we had to pack. The disadvantage of hiking with a child: as an adult you have to carry twice the equipment, because smaller children should carry a maximum of 5-10% of their own weight. So Joël had his sleeping mat in his backpack, toothbrush, cutlery, a stuffed husky, sandals and his rain jacket, and Raffi had to stow the rest. Well packed, they set off…

They set off from the Kungsleden hiking car park in a northwesterly direction. Joël was in a great mood and sang happily to himself the whole time. Of course, they took regular snack breaks because, unlike me, who never consumes the recommended amount of calories on hikes, Joël wanted to eat all the time. But that’s understandable, after all he set a pretty good pace. They went over the Näsberget, past the Näsbergstjärn to the first stage destination, the Mittibergtjärn, about 7 km from the starting point. Raffi and Joël set up the tent a little above the lake before cooking a delicious dinner and making themselves comfortable in their sleeping bags.

The next morning started with a hearty breakfast, of course, before continuing on the steep climb up Vállienjuoná. Joël was highly motivated and didn’t need to be pushed at all. The weather was also in their favor, with great light and not too warm. Once at the top, Joël proudly posed for a photo. After the obligatory snack break, they continued across the plateau. Soon after, the descent towards Stor-Tjulträsket began, which was extremely rocky and sometimes difficult to walk on. Almost all the hikers they met asked in amazement whether Raffi and Joël were really coming down from there and how old Joël actually was. Meanwhile, Joël continued walking, unimpressed 😃 Actually, it was about time to look for the next place to sleep, but the two were so in their element that they just kept walking. Of course, there were the obligatory lunch and snack breaks again, but they weren’t yet ready for a place to sleep. So it happened that they were soon only 2km from the car park… and then instead of looking for a bigger space in the dense forest, they actually walked to the car, a whole 15km day’s walk 😬 Of course, this is not the standard that should generally be applied to hiking with children, on the contrary, even more than with adults, you have to take children’s individual abilities into account, paying particular attention to making sure that they eat and drink properly, are dressed correctly, are not too sweaty and do not walk with wet feet. If you take all of this into account, even strenuous hikes can be really fun and the children will definitely sleep well afterwards 😉