How Young is Too Young to Hike Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire?

We live in a fantastic area for hiking whether you want a quick flat hike in a nature reserve or a more challenging 4,000 footer in the White Mountains! We also live within driving distance to Acadia National Park which is pretty sweet. The drive is too long for just the day but a weekend trip is totally feasible!

Hiking is a hobby I developed in my late 20's, early 30's so I am always so impressed at the amount of children I see on hiking trails. I think it's a wonderful thing to do with your kids and it's awesome to instill the importance of getting outside and moving your body at a young age.

I'll never forget the traumatic experience which was hiking Precipice Trail in Bar Harbor, Maine. I didn't realize the difficulty of that hike which was a foolish oversight on my behalf. Looking back, I'm grateful I didn't get seriously injured or worse. But I remember as clung to those iron rungs for dear life, there was a couple ahead of us with two young boys. These kids didn't have a fear in the world and were scaling these rain covered rungs like two little monkeys swinging from a tree. Watching them put me at ease and I thought if they could do it, I could do it.

Obviously not all hikes are created equal and if you are going to take your wee children on a hike, it should be the appropriate level of difficulty.

In the story mentioned above, the two boys I saw were probably 10 and 12. They seemed well seasoned and completely capable of conquering a hike of that magnitude, more capable that myself! That's for sure!

Did you know Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire is the second most hiked mountain in the world?

The mountain is 3,165 ft in elevation is labeled as "hard" on Alltrails.com. The trail is typically completed in a half a day and is very steep in some areas.

A woman on Reddit said that she remembers taking a school field trip to hike Mount Monadnock in the 5th grade. That feels young to me, but then again children notoriously have more energy than adults! She wanted to know if other schools did this field trip too and if so, at what age level.

One woman said they did it in either 7th or 8th grade and she remembers kids were dropping like flies, left to wait sitting on rocks or logs along the trail until the rest of the class finished. Not a good field trip for the asthmatic.

According to site called places.travel, children between the ages of 9-12 and younger kids who are natural climbers can handle hiking Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. However, the White Dot trail is know to be very difficult and is not recommended for children under the age of 11.

Did you hike Mount Monadnock as a child? If so, at what age?