Quantifying the Outdoor Family

Posted inTips & How-To
What does it look like to keep doing big adventures with your family after you have kids? What is the secret to success? What is "normal" in outdoor parenting? I think many people wonder what other families do, either because they feel it's impossible and don't know where to start or because they feel inadequate with how much they are doing. There is so much data out there about what is "normal" in other parts of parenting: sleep, learning, etc, but not much for outdoor adventuring. I have been doing interviews for a few years, but those are just snapshots…

Bike touring routes for families

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This week we have a big update to our biking page - we created a list of recommended bike touring routes. It is inspiring us to get out on a tour this year and we hope it does the same for you! This list was created with help from the families in the Bicycle Touring with kids Facebook page - we highly recommend joining that group for more info on bike touring with kids. This list can also be viewed directly in the Google Sheet. If you have more routes to add, fill out this form to have them added.…

When to Start Doing Outdoor Activities With Your Kids

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When we had our first kid, we didn't have a good roadmap of when we could start doing outdoor activities with kids. Many times I felt like we were winging it and also that we were pushing to do it faster than society suggests. We've been lucky to meet many people over the years who also took their babies on outdoor adventures as we did. Here is a summary of what I wish we knew when we had our first kid - it's part of our General Advice page in the When to Start section. Hiking: Start hiking as soon…

Balancing Outdoor Adventure with Work and Kids’ Activities

Posted inTips & How-To
How do you balance outdoor adventure with "normal" life? I've been struggling with that for almost 11 years. Here is what I've learned, from my experiences and from what my friends have taught me. It has also been added to our General Advice page, Outdoor Life Balance section. Fall hiking near Mt. Reba, Bear Valley, CA (Washoe Land) ​One of the biggest challenges of outdoor parenting is setting up our schedules to keep going on trips and getting outside, despite the pressure of sports teams, school events, friends’ birthday parties, and demands from work. Additionally, it’s important to balance between…

Backcountry Skiing with Kids

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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…

All-Weather Camping

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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…

Hiking Food for Kids and Babies

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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…

Different climbing disciplines, with kids

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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…

Choosing Camping Gear for Families

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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: Packing for car camping is a lot faster if you are not filling up every square inch of your car when packing. If you…

How to pack up from camp quickly

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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…