The Canada Day long weekend snuck upon us while Natasha was on a business trip and I was home alone with Toothless for the week. I realized it would be our last opportunity for a shake down hike before August, when we have plans to hike the Brazeau Loop and hopefully several other hikes to fill the rest of August with Toothless. This will be his first year hiking the majority of the day on his own, and also his first year with a new sleep system, so we wanted to get out onto trail and get a hike under our belts in July. Also, we all like being outside (Toothless talks about our camping and hiking trips non stop).

In a panic, I threw together a plan to head to Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park. I had been missing the park as it was closed during COVID, and this was our first real opportunity to go there.

We planned three days – two nights on trail. Toothless would be hiking as much as possible. We decided to keep our days short. The trail in Stein Valley is really suitable for children and a late start – there are a number of campsites within the first 10 km of the trail, and within the first 20 km of the trail the campsites are fairly close together.

Day 1

Natasha came back from a business trip on Friday afternoon, so I tried having everything ready to go when she got home. After putting Toothless to bed, we packed our gear and fell asleep and got ready for a motivated start the next day.

On Saturday we woke up with our rooster – I mean when Toothless woke up. We ate breakfast, got dressed in car clothes and negotiated a car outfit with Toothless (who was insisting on wearing his black running shoes), then threw the gear in the back of our Jeep Cherokee XJ.

The drive out to the park is about 3.5 hours usually. We made decent time for a long weekend. We put fuel in the vehicle and got moving, hitting some traffic and a lengthy wait at a construction zone.

The reaction ferry was running on time, but we got there just at the end of their lunch break. We arrived at around 1pm, and then Toothless ate a lunch, we all got changed and realized that we left Toothless’ hiking shoes at home. When asked where his hiking sandals were, he said at home (we learned later that he decided he wanted to wear running shoes, so he put away his hiking shoes and we both thought the other parent packed them). After getting the car locked up we got started … at 2pm.

Our goal for the day was very manageable: Have toothless hike as much as possible, and just get 1.5-4km into the trail to camp for the night.

The hike in was beautiful and the temperature surprisingly manageable. Toothless was easily motivated and generally kept on trail. He climbed and scrambled over some low boulders, and cranked it out. At some point he picked up a hiking stick – we might need to buy him a set of trekking poles.

We camped our first night at Devil’s Staircase, which is roughly 4km in from the trailhead. Toothless hiked most of the way, but Natasha carried him for a few hundred kms near the end.

We got to camp at around 4-5pm, and quickly made camp, dinner and started on bedtime.

We tried getting Toothless to sleep for about 1-1.5 hours with no luck. We left his peapod in the Jeep (intentionally) and only had a sleeping pad and quilt for him. He’s been showing readiness to sleep without a crib, and sleeps on a cot for naps at daycare, so we thought this would work. After an exhausting amount of time trying to get him to settle and not be distracted and bounce around the tent (which knocked our triplex down 2 or 3 times) I decided I needed to get the peapod.

I was wearing sleep clothes. At this point it was 8:40pm and I had less than an hour of light. I quickly packed my bag, with headlamp, water and rain gear for warmth, then tied my shoes and started running the 4km back to the trailhead. I had to roll up my sleeves and pant legs to my sleep baselayers to keep cool (temperatures were in the high 20s to low 30s deg C). I made good time and got to the Jeep just before 9pm. After drinking a bunch of water at the car, and some leftover cola, I ran back with the peapod and a stuffed animal for Toothless. It got dark at about 9:25pm, so the last couple hundred meters were hiked and not run, but I got back to our tent after around 45 minutes. I then learned that Toothless had fallen asleep 15 minutes earlier!