Every Kid Gets a Pack, and Four Things Go in It

Quick answer: Every child who can walk the trail carries their own small pack. Inside: a whistle clipped on, one sealed snack, a warm layer in a bright color, and a card with your phone number. Total weight is a pound or two. You're packing it for the worst twenty minutes of the trip, not the best.

Your pack isn't their pack

Most parents carry everything. The water, the first aid kit, the extra socks, the phone. It feels responsible. It's also the setup that fails the one time it matters.

A kid can be out of sight in the time it takes you to retie a boot. A switchback, a boulder, a patch of trees. When that happens, everything you carry is with you, and the child has a T-shirt and a runny nose.

So the rule is simple. The kid carries their own. Even the four-year-old with the pack the size of a loaf of bread. Even when they complain it's heavy. You can lighten it, but you don't skip it. Serving your kids sometimes means saying no to the whining and handing over the pack.

The pack isn't a replacement for watching them. Keep them in sight, and keep the little ones within arm's reach at trail junctions and water. The pack is what you're counting on if all that fails.

The whistle

Three blasts is the universal distress signal. A child's voice gives out in a few minutes of yelling. A whistle doesn't, and it carries farther than a scared kid can scream.

Buy a pealess whistle, meaning no little ball inside. The Fox 40 is the common one. The ball in a cheap whistle can stick when it's wet or cold. You want something that works with a shaking, out-of-breath six-year-old.

Clip it to the chest strap or a zipper pull on a short loop. Skip the cord around the neck. A lanyard can snag on a branch, and you don't want a child hung up on a trail in the first place.

Then teach one thing: three blasts, pause, three blasts. Not a game of toots. Practice it once in the driveway, and then take the whistle away until it matters, or they'll have it worn out by the trailhead.

The snack

Not the trail snack. The emergency snack.

Put one sealed item in the inner zipper pocket. A bar, a pouch of jerky, a handful of crackers in a bag. Something that doesn't melt, doesn't crumble to dust, and that your child will actually eat. If you're packing for a child with a nut allergy, choose accordingly and put that on the card too.

The annoying part: kids find it. Within ten minutes of the trailhead, they've eaten it. So give them a separate snack in the outer pocket for the walk. Tell them the zipper snack stays closed until a grown-up says so, or until they're lost. Check it at the car before you leave, and replace it if it's gone.

A scared child who's been missing for an hour is also cold, tired and hungry. Hungry kids make bad decisions. Food buys you calm.

And the wrappers go back in the pack. Teach that from day one. Whatever they carry in, they carry out.

The warm layer

Bring a fleece or a synthetic puffy, and make it a bright color. Orange, red, yellow. You want to be able to spot it from a hundred yards through the trees.

Leave the cotton hoodie at home. It's fine until it gets wet from rain, sweat or a creek, and then it pulls heat out of a small body fast. A child has a lot less to spare than you do. If you want to know why the ground and the weather work on kids faster than they work on you, read The Ground Steals Your Heat Before the Air Ever Does.

Cheap extra that earns its room: a bright orange contractor bag with a hole cut for the head. It weighs nothing, blocks wind and rain, and makes a kid easy to see. Show them how to wear it, and never over the face.

If you're hiking where weather turns, read The Weather That Kills Hikers and How to Read It in Time before you leave the driveway.

The name card

Write it on an index card in permanent marker, slip it into a zip bag, and put it in the pocket your child will think to check. Include:

• Child's first name and age
• Your names and cell numbers
• Any allergy or medical need
• The trailhead or campground name and the date

A laminated card is better if you hike often. Sharpie on the inside of the pack lid is a good backup.

One trade-off is worth knowing. Don't put the child's name on the outside of the pack. A stranger who knows a child's name can use it, and a lost kid who's been taught to be polite may follow the person who says it. Keep the name inside. Teach the child to hand the card to a uniformed ranger, or a parent with children, and never to leave with anybody who just says they'll help.

The drill that makes it work

The gear is the easy half. The kid needs a plan.

Before the hike, tell them the same three things, short enough to repeat back:

1. If you can't see me, stop walking.
2. Stay where you are, near a big tree or a rock, and blow the whistle three times.
3. Put on the warm layer. Eat the snack. Wait. I'll come to you.

A program called Hug-A-Tree and Survive has taught children this approach for decades. A child who stays put is far easier to find than one who keeps going. Kids want to keep moving because they think they can find you. Tell them plainly that staying still is the brave thing, and that you'll be coming.

Run it once at a park. Have them practice their three blasts, sit by a tree, and see how long it takes for you to find them. Make it a game, with a prize. Do it again next season.

For what you should be carrying yourself, The Ten Essentials and Why Veterans Still Carry Them is the baseline. And if the roles reverse and you're the one turned around, The First Hour After You Realize You Are Lost covers the first sixty minutes.

Pack it the night before

Lay the four items on the kitchen table with the kids standing there. Let them zip each one in. A child who packed it knows where it is, and that's half the value.

You'll probably never open that inner pocket. Pack it anyway.