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This week we have an interview with an outdoor parent whose children are grown up, so he has the perspective of taking them outdoors through all the stages of childhood. He is also a very experienced at orienteering, which I think is a great way to get kids outside that I haven't tried yet with my kids. He also happens to be my uncle, and when I was a kid I got to go orienteering with them. Enjoy!
Transitioning to parenthood:
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When you decide to be a ski bum sleeping in your car with your family instead of buying or renting out a house or staying in a hotel, it does have an impact on your ability to socialize as easily with friends. You can’t exactly invite people over for dinner at your place, to reciprocate when they invite you over, so it’s easy to feel guilty about that. Here is how we tried to handle it pre-Covid, although working full time and wrangling kids onto ski-teams every two weeks often made things too stressful to effectively follow through on these plans. As always, we’d love more ideas on how to make this work! Pre-covid, we would arrive at the ski resort early, maybe 7:30 or 8 AM, and get a table inside and have breakfast. We had a group of other families that would also get there early that we could talk to (if we didn’t end up spending all our time getting the kids into ski gear and sunscreen and fed). After skiing, we would also hang out at the resort but this time it would be a bit more relaxed. Any of us who were done skiing for the day early would wait in the lodge and chat with other families or play games. We would try to have some extra beers in the cooler in case an adult friend wanted one. The best night was when our friend brought an electric fondue pot and we all shared fondue together. In the evenings we would go to dinner at one of the restaurants in the hotel near the resort, which also happened to be near where our friends lived. Many times we’d see friends there and hang out with them, especially since one of the restaurants had seating in the lounge area of the hotel. We did get to know another family that had a truck camper and we started seeing them more often in the restaurants, which was nice. As a bonus, the hotel had wifi so we could download books to read or movies to watch in the van. Our friends would often invite us over to their places for dinner or après-ski. We would try to bring a bottle of wine or something over to share but we didn’t always remember to have something with us, especially when the invitations were last minute, or if we were worried about liquids freezing in the van. In a perfect world, this is what we would recommend doing:
During covid, we are going to need to focus on making time to hang out with friends outside when the weather is good and before it gets too cold at night. No more invitations to friend’s houses, but we will consider bringing snacks and drinks to share if people are comfortable with it. Unfortunately, we are probably going to need to refocus on how to eat in our van more and socialize within our family, such as more van-movie nights and playing games. But as long as we get lots of good days out there skiing it will be worth it!  Our van, in our favorite parking spot close to good dinner options and friends.
Before we had kids, my husband and I enjoyed backcountry skiing. I wasn’t as good of a skier, but I loved the peace and quiet of skinning up a slope and spending the night in one of the Sierra Club huts with friends and exploring the runs near the hut. We are working to find ways to start doing that again with our kids - we will hopefully have some updates on it this winter as we try it out more. This post is part of our Skiing/Snowboarding page. A note on this section: it is based more on research and less on experience than our average pages. My husband and I enjoyed backcountry skiing before we had kids but as of when this was written, we haven't done much with our kids yet. We have done plenty of tree skiing with our kids and have taken our oldest child on some side-country exploration with the Contour Startup Ski Touring Adapter, along with a friend whose daughter was on telemark. The rest of the information on gear is based on research.
First, safety: your kids cannot rescue you from an avalanche, except maybe if you have older teenagers, so you must be very careful about where you take them. The minimum age I’ve seen online for AIARE Level 1 classes ranges from 10-13, however I don’t feel my 10 year old would be strong enough to dig fast enough to rescue me and I would never want to put that responsibility on her. You know your kids best though, so make the decisions that are best for your family. For younger kids, see if you can attend an avalanche awareness presentation for kids such as the ones given by the Nikolay Dodov Foundation. These sorts of presentations get the kids to start thinking about where avalanches can occur and what causes them, and the risks of getting caught in one. Always bring a first aid kit and enough food and warm clothing to be prepared to handle the weather, especially when you’re hiking in tougher terrain such as in snow. Backcountry touring setup options: (I have very small feet - 22.5 boots - so finding gear that fits small feet has been a battle for me since I started backcountry skiing)
Non-skiing/boarding options:
DIY options:
How to start:
As I mentioned, we currently don’t have much personal experience backcountry skiing with kids. Here are some of the other helpful links I have found on backcountry skiing with kids:
Our monthly post to highlight the best writing and most useful tips written by Outdoor Parents over the past month. You won't typically find gear reviews or travel guides here - on this site we focus on the skills and inspiration to help you get outside and stay outside with your kids. We also believe that everyone should feel welcome in the outdoors, so we share articles by parents and outdoors-people of color to make sure everyone is learning each other's perspectives. Hopefully, this encourages you to plan your next outdoor adventures, reflect on what you were able to accomplish over the past month, or what you learned and would do differently. Enjoy!  Upper Kinney Lake, on the Pacific Crest trail, Humbolt-Toiyabe National Forest Washoe Land Activities to try with kids:
Books to Read:
General:
Inclusion:
School/Education:
Travel:
For this week we have an update to our camping section, with tips on camping in weather. You may wonder what we know about camping in the rain since we live in sunny California, but we both grew up on the east coast and have plenty of experience camping and hiking in the rain! Unless you only camp if the weather is perfect (like summertime in California) you’re going to have to have contingency plans to deal with weather when you’re camping. When you’re an adult, it’s a lot easier to just wing-it when the weather is bad but with kids having a good plan can make all the difference. Here are our recommendations to keep everyone happy when the weather isn’t perfect: Cold:
Rain:
Wind:
 A cold night of camping: we forgot our son's warm jacket, so he had on long-underwear under his hiking clothes and soon he had on his dad's jacket before he got in his sleeping bag.
This week's post is a new section for the Hiking Page that covers the topic of what food to bring while hiking. As always, this is intended to be a living document and we'll add in any new tips we get from comments or from any interviews we do, so please give us improvement ideas! Having the right food can be the difference between a joyful hike with kids and a miserable slog. Kids don't understand "powering-through" when you're running low on food and almost at the trailhead or don't like the food you bring. They can often just refuse to hike, even if the sun is setting and it's starting to get cold. So plan ahead with lots of options to make sure you have an enjoyable hike! Here are our tips on what food to bring: Babies:
General:
Winter:
 The most important thing about hiking food - finding a good spot for a snack break!
For this weeks post, here is our first page for the climbing section. We haven't been very successful in getting our kids to go climbing, probably because we mostly did multi-pitch trad climbing before kids. Here is what I wish I knew before we had kids: If you loved climbing before you had kids, the good news is that there are lots of ways to keep climbing after you have kids. The bad news is that you may have to change which disciplines you do. And if your partner was your primary climbing partner, you may have to get better at finding extra adults to bring with you. Here’s the rundown on the challenges associated with each type of climbing when you have kids:
Multi-pitch trad:
Bouldering:
Sport climbing:
Top roping:
In general, consider doing hikes ahead of time to the crag to check out the “kid-friendliness”. Set low expectations for that hike and don’t bring all the gear with you - if you happen to be able to boulder around a little then consider it a bonus! Even if you remember a spot being kid-friendly it might not be - if you didn’t bring your kids with you the last time you were there, or if it was a long time since you were there with your kids your memories might have faded about the difficulties. If it’s one of your first times out with kids on real rock, note that climbs need to be really easy for the little kids - and even 5.2’s can be too reachy! You may end up setting up a top rope or finding a boulder problem that’s not in the guidebook because it’s too easy, and that’s fine, the most important thing is that the kids have fun and enjoy climbing. The final tip: if there’s only one climb the kids can do and it’s a busy area, have someone go early to set up so that you get the climb you need. And when other people show up, please share the rope with them or take it down as soon as the kids lose interest. We need to find ways to support other outdoor parents as much as possible because it can be challenging even as it is rewarding. This week's post is a new Gear Selection section of the Camping page. We hope it's helpful, and as always, we love feedback! This section is a summarization of the gear tips for camping that are included in the different camping sections, with some additional tips added. Since the philosophy of this website is to not recommend certain specific gear band instead to give criteria of what to look for when selecting gear, that is what you'll find here. General:
Sleeping:
Personal Gear:
Cooking:
Extras:
Hiking Gear and Clothing:
Extra Car Storage:
 Because good camping trips often include frog catching.
Our monthly post to highlight the best writing and most useful tips written by Outdoor Parents over the past month. You won't typically find gear reviews or travel guides here - on this site we focus on the skills and inspiration to help you get outside and stay outside with your kids. We also believe that everyone should feel welcome in the outdoors, so we share articles by parents and outdoors-people of color to make sure everyone is learning each other's perspectives. Hopefully, this encourages you to plan your next outdoor adventures, reflect on what you were able to accomplish over the past month, or what you learned and would do differently. Enjoy!  Bouldering at Columbia State Historic Park in Columbia, CA Climbing:
Backpacking:
School & Kids Books:
Paddling: Hiking: Travel:
Inclusion:
General:
On a final note, I want to link to this article: I was specifically impressed by Rue Mapp's quote: "I love birds and wildlife. I love identifying them. But if I were to say we’re going birding today, I don’t know if anybody would show up unless you already were a birder. But if I say let’s go to Lake Merritt for a stroll and a potluck, people are going to show up. And guess what? I’m going to still bring out my binoculars, my spotting scope and my bird ID book." Names and words have significant power, and we need to be careful with the words we use. They can be used deliberately or inadvertently to exclude people. They can be used to draw people in - like when we tell our kids we're going exploring when we actually mean we're going hiking. Names specifically have power when settlers come to a country and give new names to the mountains, rivers, plants, and animals even though most of the natural world already had names given to them by the indigenous people. There is also power when climbing routes are named with offensive or sexist names that we wouldn't feel comfortable talking to our children about. Let's all think about the words and names we use to go play in the outdoors, both to make everyone feel welcome but also to respect the long history of the land everywhere we go. This week's post is an update to our Simple Packing section of the Camping page. It has been updated to include our tips for unpacking and some clarification to packing. Here are our tips on unpacking: As we have optimized our car camping system over the years, more and more I think the key to fast packing and unpacking is carefully picking what you bring with you. This means being honest with yourself about what you actually will use and understanding how many comfort items you need to still have a good time, without going overboard. This means that you do have to spend some time thinking about this ahead of time and occasionally reconsidering your packing list, as most of us can get sucked into camping lifestyle inflation over time. One philosophy that has helped me with this is minimalism. This doesn’t mean to bring the bare minimum for survival, it just means to be intentional about each item that you bring with you and don’t toss in a ton of extra stuff that you likely won’t use or won’t use very much. For more reading on the idea, I suggest the blog Becoming Minimalist. This philosophy is especially important if you’re only staying a night or two, but if you’re staying longer it can be worth it to indulge in bringing more stuff if you’re more likely to use the items or it might be worth it to you to bring items that make camping more comfortable for you. The other key technique for us is to develop systems that support fast packing and unpacking. This means:
Note on the dishwashing system: When we have to wash the dishes at home, often those dishes sit around in the kitchen for a while before we get around to putting them away in the camp kitchen, or the kids use them again and then they stick around even longer while you wash them, or the special camping spatula ends up in the regular kitchen stuff so when we go camping there’s no spatula! Finally, get home with enough time to unpack the vehicle. If you have a fast system, unpacking isn’t much of a burden so you don’t have to get home much earlier. Additionally, unpacking the next day is never fun when you’re all back to work and school, especially if you forget and leave stuff in the cooler and it goes bad. This is our fast unpacking system:
We can unpack in 30 min with this plan and with good teamwork.  |
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OKHTwo Silicon Valley engineers who have had a love of the outdoors since childhood. Parents of two small kids, spending our free time exploring the outdoors with them. |
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