When Bethany was very young, we took her on a few overnight hikes, but time & winter got away on us faster than we’d intended! And it wasn’t until Bethany was 12 months old that we did her first real multi-day hike outside of the womb. So we decided to look for something we could do over Labour Weekend.
A bit of looking at the DOC maps, and we decided that the St James Walkway fit the bill!
Long days yes, but no big hills, and nothing extreme like what we were used to! So perfect for the baby!
My mother in law was also staying with us from overseas, so we decided to invite her out to experience a bit of a backcountry NZ tramping experience too. And that gave us the added bonus of another adult to split the carrying load with!
Now, we already knew from all our overnight & day trips that Bethany LOVES the carrier. So long days weren’t an issue - and we are pretty fast walkers, so as long as we went fast while Bethany is awake & happy or sleeping, we could then take lots of big breaks when she needed a feed etc. And still cover up to around 9 hours DOC time walking a day.
So we decided to split the days up as follows:
Day 1: Lewis Pass - Ada Pass Hut ~ 10 KM
Day 2: Ada Pass Hut - Anne Hut ~ 23.5 KM
Day 3: Anne Hut - Magdalen Hut ~26 KM
Day 4: Magdalen Hut - Boyle Village ~12 KM
Making for a total of about 68KM in 4 days. And we still had some flexibility with staying at other huts on the way if the weather turned sour, or if Bethany wasn't in the best mood!
The organising list was pretty similiar to what we were used to:
Food, shelter, clothing.
Food:
We dehydrated our own food, as we normally do, just packing a bit extra as I would be breastfeeding, and Bethany would eat a bit too. For lunches we took dehydrated food, and rehydrated it in the thermos with a bit of boiling water while we walked, to save us needing to pull the gas cooker out at lunch.
For snacks, we had some apples, & capsicum for Bethany, and same plus regular snacks for ourselves. Oh, and we had about half a kilo of prunes. The snack of champions. And Bethany's favourite snack. We literally had to hide the packet from her, and she would start digging through every time she caught a slight glimpse!
Shelter:
We were planning on staying in DOC huts all the way round, but we did take a two man tent, and camping mats with us - just incase the huts were full, we didn’t want to be sleeping outside with a baby & no shelter!
The main problem though is the weight of the tent. At 3kg, it's not exactly very light to carry when you're already carrying an extra human, and all the extra humans gear!! I do have my eyes set on a lovely cuban fiber tent - under 1kg!! One day!!
Clothing:
Merino for the baby - and lots of it. All the clothing we took for Bethany was either merino, polyporp, or fleece - plus the waterproof layers. Bethany’s carrier has a wonderful rain shelter, so when it rained, she was toastier in there than all of us, despite her not doing any walking!!
Nappies requires a whole blog post on its own! But when people asked - what nappies did you use - the answer was mainly - NONE! We did take a couple of cloth nappies for each day, as I wasn’t sure how she would do, but B ended up in the same nappy from when we left Christchurch, till when we got back to Christchurch. Instead, we lugged around her potty - which actually weighs less than a couple nappies.
We use cloth nappies at home, and because of the “Leave only footprints, take only photos” principle, we knew if we did take disposables, we would have to take them home to dispose of anyway. But with cloth we could rinse them & dry over our packs while we walked if need be, and then re-use them. So the decision was easy.
We made sure to take plenty of sunscreen though, but I did make the mistake of forgetting the insect repellent - ARGH!!! But the sunscreen was great! Every time we stopped, Bethany wanted to run around - and the sunscreen meant that we didn’t have to worry about the gorgeous little naked bottom of hers getting burnt while she was having nappy free running about time in the grass!