My mother still tells a story of going backpacking with us kids for a week when my brother was 5 (and I was 6). The weather was glorious, so we never set up the tents - just slept under the stars. Until the last night, when it started raining in the small hours of the morning. There was no way to make a fire or have warm food for breakfast with the rain pouring down. They just woke us up at 5 in the morning, threw some cereal at us while they loaded everything haphazardly into packs, and set off down the mountain. We docilely complied for a while, and then my brother sat down in the trail and refused to move. They tried for a while to get him going again, and eventually my father carried him and his pack out. (In addition to a 70-pound pack - they hadn't been trying to balance things in packing to get out, and dad ended up overloaded.)
My mother was outraged. Furious. She looks back at it now and wonders how on earth she ever thought it was a good idea to even go on a long hike with kids that young, let alone take them backpacking for a week and expect them to hike down the mountain in the rain with no breakfast.
