Sounds like a perfect plan to me.

The harder it is, the better the stories will be in 30 years.

When I started backpacking 50 years ago, I had to carry my brother so the shoes he was going to hand down to me wouldn't wear out.

It wasn't so bad except when the bear chased us. You should have seen it. There I was -- running up the trail and my brother was whacking the bear on the head with grandma's old iron skillet. Luckily, he managed to break one of the bear's teeth, so he only got one hole in his butt. After that episode, everyone called him bear ass. We couldn't tell my mother my brother had a hole in his butt or she would have punished us and blamed my father for letting us go. We did have a hard time explaining the claw marks on Grandma's skillet.

Just a thought. Do you have a bicycle you could ride to the trail?