Last month, 4-year-old Lydia Pearson broke a record to become the youngest person to hike the New Hampshire 48.
The preschooler from of Webster, New Hampshire, started hiking with her mom when she was only a couple of weeks old.
“We did our first 4,000-footer by the time she was 2 months old,” says her mom, Whitney Pearson, 31, who chronicles their journeys on Instagram.
As an infant, her mom hiked with her in a backpack. Lydia hiked her first mile on her own two feet before she turned 2. She did her first summit on her own two feet when she was 2 years old. And just after she turned 3, she started hiking 4,000-foot mountains.
“I like sharing time with her outside,” her mother says. “I also like the value of, especially in today’s world, of disconnecting, just getting outside, no screen time, getting away from your phones. I think that’s hard these days, and I think we try to do as much of that as we can.”
White Mountain Wanderers
On June 16, Lydia officially finished hiking all 48 of the 4,000-plus-foot mountains in the state, a.k.a. the New Hampshire 48.
The young boy who was the record holder before her actually accompanied Lydia on her final hike, “which was so cool,” her mom says.
Lydia’s little sister, 17-month-old Demi, was along for the big moment.
“She was in the backpack for all of Lydia’s hikes. She always goes with me,” Whitney says.
As they climb, the proud mom loves watching her daughter overcome obstacles on the trail.
“The best part is when things are a little bit hard for her, and she has to work through that a little bit, and then she realizes the reward,” she says. “I really think it’s cool when she does have a little bit of that struggle at times and it’s hard for her because I think that’s the most rewarding for her. So just being able to see through her eyes, ‘Wow, I did that and that was hard.’ ”
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Lydia is an active, busy girl. She plays softball, dances, takes swimming lessons and wants to play soccer in the fall. She’s even hiked mountains in her swimsuit, stopping at the top for a pizza lunch.
Now that she’s met her first goal, she and Mom are summiting mountains in Vermont.
“They’re tough trails and some of them are pretty long,” Whitney says. “She’s like, ‘This is so cool!’ ”
Her mother loves ultra-running. When she goes alone, she tries to go fast.
“But going with Lydia now, I’ve had to slow down a lot,” she shares. “So all the trails that I’ve done, now doing them at her pace … I’ve seen so much more. So that’s been neat, slowing things down some.”
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