Start 'Em Young
Hut-to-Hut Ski Tripping With a Three-Month-Old
I test the coiled steel handle of the woodstove with a quick touch—Ok, not too hot—before grabbing hold of it. With the slowest movement I can muster, I pull the cast-iron door open.
SQUUAAWWWWKKK
I wince, yanking it open the rest of the way—Better to at least cut the screech of metal on metal shorter. In the flickering red glow of the remaining coals, I glance around the one-room cabin. Phew. Nobody stirs. I toss the two birch logs by my feet into the firebox, wait to see that they’re catching, and close the woodstove as fast as I can. It doesn’t make a peep this time. Go figure!
The room is now almost pitch-black, and I wait for my eyes to readjust from the bright firelight to the soft blue glow of the moon reflecting off the white snow outside. I don’t mind pausing here for a second; the radiant heat of the stove feels amazing. Once I can see adequately, I tiptoe past the porta-crib. I can’t resist a quick peek—Elliot is curled up in her infant down sleeping bag, soft breaths the only sign of movement. I grin, sliding onto my side of the bed, squeezing my legs past the furry intruder in my sleeping bag’s footbox, and pulling the unzipped mummy bag over my torso like a blanket.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Kiwi lets me know her displeasure at my rude interruption of her sleep, then uses her nose to rearrange my (her?) sleeping bag exactly as she intended. Much better. I pet her head, and am rewarded with a lick before she rests her head on my shin and drifts instantly to sleep.
“Thanks, sweetie,” I hear Christine whisper next to me, “It was getting chilly.”
“No problem,” I whisper back. I pause, not wanting to start a full-fledged conversation in the wee hours of the morning, before deciding it needs to be said. “I’m so proud of us. Hut-to-hut skiing. At three months old. We’ve freaking done it!”
“Adventure parenting!”
I turn towards her, and we share a tiny, quiet kiss. In reality, we hadn’t “done it” yet—we were exactly 1/3 of the way through doing it, but it felt like I could let out bated breath. It was working. Everything was under control, it seemed.
I lay there for a few more minutes, staring at the dark logs overhead and lost in thought. Today wasn’t a “hard” day of adventure by pre-kid standards, but this success felt as big as any 19,000 ft summit or 30-mile day from years past. Parenthood, summed up, I suppose.
They say parenthood is life’s greatest adventure. While far from being the reason we wanted to start a family, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit excited about this outlook as a lifelong adventure seeker. But that excitement was tinged with a hint of anxiety—I’ve seen so many cases firsthand where parenthood has closed a duo’s adventure chapter. Would that be us, too?
Having a kid gives a strange amount of time—the better part of nine months—to plan and envision what this new version of your lives will look like. All without any real understanding of how that child will actually change things. When the childbearing parent, like Christine, is an absolute trooper, life doesn’t slow down much during those nine months.
Last year—while knowing we’d soon become parents—we spent our time embarking on exhausting cross-country ski trips, whooping with joy on backcountry powder days, sweating with a little bit of nerves while rafting huge Alaskan rivers, and finding tranquility (or so we thought) on Maine’s islands. On each of these adventures (and many others), our conversations inevitably turned to what things would look like in 2026, with a kid in tow. Would this activity still be possible? How would it have to change? How could we make it feasible?
It was a fun conversation over a pint (or a pint of N/A in Christine’s case), but I was always left with this sneaking fear: Were we lying to ourselves? Was it way harder than we imagined? Would we lose this part of ourselves? Or, perhaps worse, was I misunderstanding the entire premise of the statement: was the adventure of navigating the day-to-day as a parent so daunting that we’d no longer crave outdoor adventures as we once did?
Elliot arrived with full fanfare in stick season, and we—both out of necessity and convention—kept our schedules completely blank for about 3 months. But by late winter, that familiar itch was back.
It came on slowly, and at first I was afraid to name it. Was it just me? I don’t want to be the dad craving something outside this perfect family bubble. I waited.
Then one day, Christine mentioned, “Do you think we could do an AMC hut trip?”
With a smile, I replied, “There’s only one way to find out!”
The road is a mess—sheet ice interspersed with meltwater puddles and the occasional muddy morass. Our Subaru chugs along, lurching in and out of the deep ruts formed by logging trucks that frequent this route, and I’m left feeling thankful for the all-wheel drive and knobby snow tires. Somehow, there’s no peep from the backseat where Elliot is sound asleep in her carseat—how she’s sleeping through this rollercoaster ride I’ll never understand. Kiwi, on the other hand, is absolutely losing it with excitement—gravel roads almost always mean a trailhead in her world, and she’s not wrong!
The thermometer reads only 41°F, but this late-winter sun beats down with greater intensity—spring is just around the corner. Luckily, the condition of the access road has little bearing on the trail condition as we pull into the AMC winter parking lot—a corduroy ski trail winds out of the lot and downhill into the distance.
First, we drop our bags in the gear-shuttle shed—more gear than pre-dad me could’ve ever imagined for two nights out! On top of small packs for the two adults, we have a large bag of gear for Kiwi and Elliot combined: dog food, diapers, burp cloths, and enough outfit changes to survive the worst imaginable rate of blowouts. Crucially, we also load Elliot’s pack-and-play—this crib, while not too heavy, would’ve been a bulky problem if we had to haul our own gear into the huts! So a huge thank you to the AMC’s gear shuttle team for making even the baseline logistics of this trip feasible!
With the click of Elliot’s seatbelt in the Chariot, a countdown begins—if we don’t get moving very quickly, there’s about to be a screaming infant. With haste, I drop my chunky new Madshus backcountry Nordic skis down into the snow, where they land with a splat on the mushy trail that has the texture of mashed potatoes. We won’t be setting any speed records today—the snow, while holding up better than the access road, is still quite soft and slushy. I click my backcountry boots in, tap my poles, and glance around. Christine is clipped in, camera in hand, and Kiwi is trotting around with her new favorite stick lodged between her teeth. Even Elliot is happy with this efficiency—still twirling her pacifier in her hands, while giving me a look like, ‘Ready when you are, Dad!’
And with a kick and glide, we are off—our first family adventure begins!
From the winter parking lot, the route to Little Lyford Lodge begins on the wide K-I (Katahdin Iron Works) Road. In the winter, this gravel “highway” is a multi-use trail for snowmobilers, xc-skiers, and others. Before long, an intersection brings us onto the Hedgehog Gate Trail—a much narrower, windy, and exceptionally fun route that skirts the flanks of Indian Mountain—for skiers (and snowshoers, I suppose) only.
After a brief flat introduction, the Hedgehog Gate Trail begins climbing steeply up a few hundred feet. Getting an adequate grip on steep climbs is often an issue when pulling Elliot in the Chariot—the added weight pulling me back can easily unseat my usual cross-country skis, no matter how well I plant my feet—but today, with the aggressive fishscale pattern on the bottom of these new Madshus Panoramas in conjunction with the slow and wet snow, I can basically just stride straight up the steepest gradients. When we breach the top of the hill, I remember there are tradeoffs—these metal-edged skis aren’t exactly speed demons, especially in these conditions, but they offer a controlled and measured ride—exactly what an adventure dad should be prioritising when their three-month-old is in tow!
Elliot, unexpectedly, is still awake, and intermittently squealing with joy as Kiwi races past on a descent, or as trees flash by. I typically describe the Chariot as her “nap machine” for its almost instant ability to knock her out and leave her in a deep slumber for the extent of our ski outing, but today she is locked in on everything going on around her. Maybe these tighter trails appeal to her, I wonder; 90% of our skiing has been at the decidedly uninteresting Riverside Golf Course. Whatever the reason, I’m delighted she’s enjoying it!
Right as our legs are starting to feel the burn, the Hedgehog Gate Trail spits us out on the Upper Valley Road—another wide, expertly groomed, winter highway. From here, we just need to make one last turn, then a sweeping descent right to Little Lyford Lodge. I set off on the last downhill, Christine right on my tail, Kiwi in a long loping gait to my left, oversized stick still lodged in her jaws.
I pull up in front of Little Lyford Lodge, a silly grin plastered on my face. I look over my shoulder as Christine slows to a stop just behind. We now have a sleeping babe—of course, right at the end, she decides to nap!
“Seven miles down!” I say as we high-five.
“We made it,” Christine smiles back!
In years past, we may have bee-lined for the very inviting sauna, but instead we settle into our cabin for tonight—Wolf Star. The hut staff has the woodstove cranking on our arrival, perhaps too much for a day in the forties (maybe we would get to sauna after all!), but what a lovely treat to arrive at an already toasty cabin! Christine feeds Elliot while I get our gear inside, Elliot’s crib setup, and work to get Kiwi accustomed to our home for the evening. She also needs to be acquainted with the other four-legged friends at camp tonight: Oakley and Amber, two big and fluffy golden retrievers!
Soon, the sun is getting low over the horizon, lighting up the wafting woodsmoke overhead. Time to head to the main lodge for dinner! With Elliot in tow, we walk over, make up a heaping plate of Indian food: butter chicken, rice, naan, vegetables, and coconut lentil soup, and grab a seat at a table of strangers already in lively conversation. Before joining in and making new friends, we look one another in the eye, smile, and clink two cold cans of Bissell Brothers Substance.
Elliot, sitting on my knee, soon becomes the leading topic of conversation at the table.
“How old is she?” one woman from Montreal asks.
“Three months,” Christine replies with a smile.
“Amazing!” I hear another woman gasp.
The older gentleman to my right, in his late 70s, seems less impressed. Perhaps he’s seen it all before. “Start ‘em young,” he advises, “that way they’ll keep taking you to places like this even when you’re old!” He points, with a wry smile, to his 50-something-year-old son sitting across the table.
“Yeah,” I reply, laughing, “I’m hoping fifty years from now she’ll be the one pulling me in on a sled!”
On our previous visit to Little Lyford in 2022, disaster struck. A rare “Arctic Blast” brought frigid temperatures, even by Maine standards, to the region. Overnight temperatures on our first night hovered just barely above -30°F, and the high temperature on the day we were skiing from Little Lyford to Gorman Chairback Lodges was only -8°F.
As we were getting ready to hit the trail that morning, I bent down to clip my boot into the binding.
CRAAACKKK!!!
The icy cold plastic of the binding exploded—a hundred brittle little shards where the binding mechanism ought to be.
I used some wire to fashion a repair of sorts, but this binding seemed to have almost zero metal components, so even the wire repair seemed likely to fail once we were moving. The gear shuttle driver offered to take my car key and retrieve a spare set of skis from my car, but given the logistical difficulty of trying to manage a midday linkup somewhere on the vast trail network to exchange skis, they told me the skis would be waiting for me at Gorman Chairback along with my car key. Unbelievable service, but that relief felt worlds away when my wire repair failed less than a mile into the journey.
Now, one ski strapped to my backpack, I did my best one-legged ski after Christine, who couldn’t slow down too much to wait for me without worrying about her temperature dropping. Kick, glide, kick, glide. Downhills were terrifying—trying to stay upright on one, inch-wide piece of balsa wood and carbon fiber. As my ski leg tired—it was doing 90% of the work—I fell more regularly. I tried switching my ski to my left leg, only to discover, I guess, I’m right-leg dominant when it comes to skiing—falls were almost inevitable with the ski on my left.
Through all of this, my frustration built. “Go ahead without me,” I finally huffed, “I know I’ll make it.” So Christine skied off down the trail without me.
Eventually, I limp-skied out onto the K-I Road crossing, still some 3.5 miles from Gorman Chairback. I was fully defeated. Hearing the roar of a snowmobile, I decided to wait, take a break, and let them pass. Lo and behold, it was the gear shuttle that offered me a ride back to Gorman Chairback, where they’d just dropped my replacement skis!
Waking up this morning, I knew I was in for a very different kind of challenge today. My binding issue had been solved this time around—not only were the temperatures much milder (around 25°F, the perfect skiing temp), but the NNN backcountry binding had metal components, something I could trust to keep working on a backcountry trip. Instead, our main challenge today would be the firm, dare I say icy, crust that formed when yesterday’s slush froze overnight. Everything in sight has the slick sheen of an ice-skating rink.
We head out, bellies full of bacon, egg, and maple syrup-soaked waffles. Yesterday’s conditions feel like a fever-dream—today I’m fighting for every ounce of grip on the slippery climbs, and those measured descents have given way to high-speed roller coaster rides on two Madshus metal-edged rails. Thirty-odd years of ski experience, put to the test. Both parents are grinning widely, Kiwi joyous, her long tongue lolling to the right, Elliot cooing with glee.
We’re moving fast, covering ground. Not because it’s a race, but because we’re in a flow state, skiing in unison, eating up the miles. The big climb that broke my resolve four years earlier on one ski? We’re cresting the top when I realize we’re on that climb. No morale issues this year!
We hit the K-I Road around 11:00 AM, and I ask Christine, “Do you want to stop for lunch mid ski? Or eat it when we get to Gorman Chairback?”
She glances at the sleeping Elliot in the Chariot. “Let’s just get there! Then all three of us can eat.”
These are new trails for me—Christine skied them, but I never did. The Lodge to Lodge Trail winds down from the K-I Road crossing, through a lovely forest of White Pines and massive old Hemlocks—clearly older than some of the more recently (still many decades ago) cut forests we’ve skied through. Soon, the bright white expanse of Long Pond is visible through the forest—we’re almost there!
A flurry of activity upon arrival follows—unpacking bags, diaper changes, crib setup—then the first bite of that turkey and salami sandwich, with Elliot staring intently at the crackling woodstove. Kiwi sighs heavily, curling into a ball and shutting her eyes.
“There’s more than enough time for us both to fit in a sauna,” I mention to Christine. “You want first dibs? I’ll hang with the girls.”
Saunas, I’ve learned, are among my favorite ways to wind down. Especially when there’s an icy body of water in which to dunk after saunaing. But a cold shower and 25°F air will do the trick, too, as is the case at Gorman Chairback Lodge.
Twenty minutes can feel like an hour in there—intensely hot, dark, silent. Truly peaceful. Just me, my thoughts, and my sweat. A real treat for anyone, but especially a new parent. I get out, rinse, and walk back to our little cabin still dripping—basically a cold plunge.
My energy is up, and I can tell I am not alone. I am met by an almost effervescent Christine. She and Elliot are playing on the bed, giggling out loud.
“Want to go up for dinner a bit early and grab a beer?” she asks.
I nod enthusiastically. We are unstoppable, and Elliot, it seems, is the most go-with-the-flow baby in the world.
Christine and I grab a can of Substance each, and settle into conversation with new friends up at the lodge—Elliot happily watching the world go by around her.
Then, dinner is served—a Thanksgiving spread: roast turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce—and the conversation moves to the table. There is a pair of Brooklyn architects, a newly engaged duo from Maryland, a retired Bath Iron Works engineer, and a musician from southern Maine, among others. A fantastic melting pot for conversation.
Elliot yawns. We keep chatting. “Want another beer?” one of the guys asks me.
I look at Christine, and she shrugs. “Sure,” I say, “Thanks!”
Conversation keeps flowing. Elliot nods off on my lap, then startles awake. Uh oh.
Success is a powerful drug, but it can breed complacency. New parents are perhaps especially prone to this trap—we crave normalcy, and every success seems like a cue that you can relax the very framework that helped create that success in the first place.
Her usual bedtime is right around 7 PM, but it can be pushed a bit. Dinner at the AMC huts is at 6 PM, but easily bleeds into the 7 o’clock hour. The first night, we had a good time, but after eating, we quickly excused ourselves and put her to bed. Tonight, we got sloppy. Overconfident.
Now the tears are flowing. Slowly at first, but as Christine sweeps her from my arms and heads for the exit, they turn to wails. I say a round of goodnights to the whole crew, then follow after. I can hear the shrieks from outside our cabin as I walk over.
There’s no creature harder to get to sleep than an overtired baby. Feeding, rocking, singing, we try it all. Sometimes patience is the key—the patience to just be there with them, and wait it out—but it can be awfully hard to find!
The only redeeming thought I keep having is, thank goodness the AMC hut experience at Little Lyford and Gorman Chairback involves individual cabins, not shared bunkhouses like so many other backcountry huts!
Eventually, the last little whimper gives way to still lips and closed eyes.
It’s 3 AM. The moon is painting the snow outside in a ghostly blue hue, bright enough for the dancing hemlock branches to cast fleeting shadows on the drawn curtains. I’m drenched in sweat; it must be 85°F in here. It seems Christine must’ve loaded up the woodstove when Elliot woke up crying about an hour ago. Somehow, I hear three distinct gentle breaths echo around the room—everyone else is still asleep.
I reach over and give the window crank a quarter turn—just enough of a crack to feel a breath of icy air waft in. Ahhhhh, lovely. That’ll take care of my physical discomfort, but unfortunately, my brain is wide awake now, so I let it spin—I’ve learned there’s no use fighting it.
A sauna on its own, at least for me, is a pleasant but not fully satisfying experience—not unlike this steamy cabin I’m lying in. It is the contrast with the cold plunge, cold shower, or icy air—a shocking and arguably unpleasant experience on its own—that gives the sauna its full cleansing quality. Life, too, I feel, relies on a balance between lows and highs to feel the full breadth of emotions. A chapter that is too safe might not be difficult, but it can never offer the euphoria of challenges overcome.
I take stock of the trip, just hours away from concluding now. I wouldn’t say it was easy. There were blown-out diapers and midnight wakeups that surely could’ve been avoided in the comfort of our home. Meltdowns that never would’ve come to pass in the safety of a carefully structured schedule. But there were also the highest of highs—giggle fits on the bed, the joy of watching Elliot’s pure wonder at seeing the forest whizz past from the seat of the Chariot, and the sense of accomplishment we parents felt at the end of each day.
I’m brought back to a line from dinner the first night: “Start ‘em young, that way they’ll keep taking you to places like this even when you’re old!” If I can leave Elliot with any inheritance in this life, I hope it is an undying curiosity for the world, a love of the outdoors, and a thirst for adventure. I’d say we’re on the right path.
For a look at what gear helped make this trip feasible, Christine put together a packing list here:
