Hiking With Toddlers: 9 Essential Tips to Make it Fun (and Safe)

If you are an avid hiker and want (or dream) of hiking with your toddler, then this is the post for you! I asked a friend of mine here in Switzerland to share his tips and tricks as a dad who hikes…

When our baby girl arrived, my fiancée and I were already keen hikers. Having a baby in the family didn’t deter us from spending time outdoors and the older she got the more organized we became whenever we went hiking.

Our first hiking trip with our toddler daughter was fraught with mishaps and we learned some great lessons (great in retrospect). Hiking with toddlers has its pros and cons but if you know what you’re doing it can be tons of fun and safe. Not necessarily sweat for the man and tears for the lady in the family.

I’ll share 9 essential tips for hiking with your toddler so you can learn from us without having to “enjoy” some of the pain we went through to get life lessons.

1. Use a Child Carrier Backpack

I live in Switzerland and there’s no shortage of mountains with over 40,000 miles of hiking trails to explore. On our first hike, we took our baby’s stroller. Big, stupid mistake! Very quickly we realized we were limited to the types of trails we could choose. In the end, we had to stick to flat terrains. Not quite the hike we had expected!