The Best Hiking Gear for Kids – 2025 Edition

We LOVE hiking with our children. Take a look through our blog and you’ll see we go hiking with kids a lot, both at home in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in the United States and around the world. We know from experience what is essential hiking gear for kids and what stuff is just ‘nice to have’. As you can see from the pictures in this post, we have personally used every single piece of kids hiking gear mentioned and are confident in recommending it to you.

We received some of the products mentioned below on a promotional basis. This post contains compensated links.

Read Before Buying Any Hiking Gear for Kids

When hiking with your kids, we encourage you to resist the urge to go out and buy every single piece of kids hiking gear. Personally, I don’t like carrying a heavy hiking bag full of kids hiking gear that I probably won’t use.

We try to limit the amount of gear we bring while hiking with children for two reasons:

• We don’t like a sore back at the end of the day, and
• We like to teach our kids to be patient and resourceful.

If we need some kids hiking accessory we didn’t bring, it’s a good chance to be creative with your kids to find an alternate solution. Or, we can simply make due without whatever we didn’t bring, which is a lesson our kids don’t get often enough.

Our List of Essential Kids Hiking Gear:

Based on our 10+ years of experience family hiking, we’ve learned that the most important stuff to bring is all related to the fundamentals of raising kids – food, water and safety. The following list of essential kids hiking gear is stuff we never leave behind on our family hikes:

Water Bladder

All parents know that it’s hard to enjoy any outing with a hungry or thirsty child. This is especially true when you are out hiking with your kids. Our first two items of recommended hiking gear for kids are all about ensuring your kids basic needs are met. A well-hydrated, well-fed kid will be a significantly better (and happier!) hiker as a result.

The amount of water you bring on a family hike depends on how many people are coming, the temperature outside and how long & difficult your hike is.

In our experience, we parents typically carry a hydration bladder each in our day packs as it’s the best way to carry large quantities of water. Plus, kids think it’s fun to drink from the tube, making it much easier to keep them properly hydrated.

High Energy Hiking Snacks

Kids need lots of energy on the hiking trails. When hiking with kids, we bring a mix of healthy, high energy snacks like peanuts, raisins, healthy(ish) granola bars, fruit and a fun candy treat to reward good effort.

Sports Sunscreen

Hiking with kids means spending lots of time outdoors, so we need to protect their tender skin from the sun. We use lotion sunscreen for ourselves and bottles of sunscreen spray for the kids. We prefer using spray sunscreen for kids before beginning a family hike as it’s fast and easy to use on fidgety kids.

Swiss Army Knife

If you take our advice and keep your kids hiking gear to a minimum, this is one piece of equipment which comes in super handy. You never know when you’ll need to fix some of your kids hiking gear. A Swiss Army Knife is a versatile tool which is super light and takes up very little space in your day pack.

Hiking First Aid Kit

Kids love to climb, run and explore when hiking. When an accident happens, it’s reassuring to have a hiking first aid kit. They are compact and carry a surprising amount of first aid essentials.

Trash Bags

As the saying goes, “Leave only footprints”.

We have hiked a lot in US National Parks with our kids, and we love that park rangers like to teach kids to pick up three pieces of trash from their hiking trail. Can you imagine if everyone did this on hiking trails all over the world? Taking our trash home with us helps keep nature beautiful for everyone.

Hiking Day Pack

We typically bring one hiking daypack for each of the adults. This allows us to carry the essential hiking gear described above. We like larger hiking bags with 2-3 separate, zippered compartments to keep food away from the rest.

Essential Kids Outdoor Clothing

As long as kids are dressed appropriately for the weather and terrain, they can wear pretty much whatever hiking clothing they want.

Here are the three items we consider essential kids hiking clothes:

Kids Hiking Boots or Shoes

If your kid’s feet hurt, they aren’t going to hike very far. If your family hike takes you on a real hiking trail with rocks & roots, having a good pair of kids hiking boots on their feet is essential to a successful outing. The best hiking boots for kids will be lightweight, waterproof and have good grips.

Kids Hiking Hats

Ideally a kids hiking hat should cover their ears and neck. For smaller kids, the Sunday Afternoons sun hat is an excellent hiking hat – we used them for years. Now that our kids are older, we confess, we often just wear baseball hats.

Sunglasses

Don’t buy cheap sunglasses for your kids. Make sure everyone in the family is wearing sunglasses with UV protection.

Optional Kids Hiking Clothes

Once you take care of the essential kids hiking clothes listed above, you can pick and choose from the rest of these the rest of these options. All of these kids hiking clothing options are great, but not essential:

Kids Hiking Pants

Ok, ok… even though I love them and wear them a lot, I admit convertible hiking pants can look tacky on adult tourists. But, truthfully hiking pants look super cute on kids.

Good quality hiking pants for kids are lightweight, quick drying and offer UV protection. Convertible hiking pants for kids are excellent for variable weather conditions as they can be worn as full hiking pants or shorts.

Kids Hiking Backpack

As a general rule, when we hike with our kids, we try to leave our kids hiking packs at home to help keep their energy up. But if the hike is short, or they want to bring a bunch of toys, then we’ll let them wear their own kids hiking backpack.

Kids Hiking Sandals

When the weather is nice and the hiking trail isn’t too challenging, our kids prefer to wear closed-toe hiking sandals on their feet. Kids enjoy the refreshing feeling of getting air on their feet on a beautiful day. We love our Keen hiking sandals for kids – they are great for adults too, we’ve been wearing them for over a decade.

Kids Fleece Jacket

One thing we’ve learned hiking with kids is that the weather is always changing, which makes it really hard to dress our kids properly. Packing a lightweight fleece jacket for the kids is an excellent option to help keep them warm in the mornings or when a cold wind blows in unexpectedly.

Kids Rain Jacket

Hiking with kids in the rain can be a lot of fun, but if there’s a chance of rain, make sure everyone has a lightweight rain jacket. Good quality rain jackets for kids roll up super small, making it easy to bring along in your day bag.

Explorer Vest

Visit any US National Park and you’ll see tons of kids proudly wearing explorer vests. They are mesh, lightweight and have tons of pockets for the treasures kids find while hiking.

Optional Hiking Gear for Kids

Now that we’ve covered the essential hiking gear for kids, along with the proper kids hiking clothing, now we get to the truly optional stuff. These kids hiking accessories are mostly to enhance your kids enjoyment of your family hikes, but they may also learn something and not even know it!

A Camera

We enjoy letting our kids take pictures on our family hikes. It’s fun to see what they find important or beautiful enough to take a picture of. We’ve had mixed results with toy kids cameras, but you can always let them use an old cell phone or a shock-proof sports camera.

Camelbak for Kids

If your kids are old enough to carry their own day pack, then consider having them carry their own water supply with a Camelbak backpack for kids.

Picnic Blanket

This is the one piece of hiking gear we always kick ourselves for forgetting as we love having a picnic while hiking with our kids. If your family hiking plans involve eating lunch on the trail, having a clean & dry compact hiking picnic blanket to sit on is a real luxury.

Hiking Poles

Many people consider hiking poles as essential hiking gear, but we tried trekking poles once before a trip to Nepal, and to be honest, we didn’t like them. But tons of hikers swear by them to improve balance and the reduce impact on their knee joints. Kids likely won’t need hiking poles for health reasons, but they may prefer to use them if they see their parents using them.

Binoculars

Kids love using binoculars, but we’ve found through experience that they stay in the day pack unused over 90% of the time. Our advice is when hiking with kids, bring a pair of good small binoculars if you have a good chance of spotting wildlife, otherwise leave them at home. Alternatively, get your child a pair of quality kids binoculars so they can carry them and use them as they choose.

A Compass and a Paper Map

Chances are that we all have a compass and hiking trails apps on our phones. If you are hiking a less popular route with your kids, we recommend bringing a compass and paper map. It’s a good chance to teach your kids a fun & valuable survival skill and it’s a good backup in case you drop your phone on a rock or in a creek. (Learn how to use a compass)

Walkie-talkies

Kids love walkie-talkies and hiking in the forest provides great opportunities for kids to run ahead and use them. Make sure you buy a good quality pair as ‘toy’ walkie-talkies for kids are usually junk.

An Insect Viewer

We bought our kids a bug viewer while hiking in Shenandoah National Park and they loved it! The kids loved the challenge of capturing bugs, and then they spent hours looking at the bugs through the insect viewer’s magnifying glass. It’s fun and sneakily educational.

Outdoor Adventure Kit

Smaller kids will enjoy having an outdoor adventure kit on family hikes. Don’t expect great quality stuff, but it’ll give your kids the tools to start enjoying and learning from nature.

And that’s it! We hope that you found the right hiking gear for kids which will make your family hiking trips the best they can be!

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