After attending the World Tour Paddling Film Festival in our hometown of Saskatoon last night, naturally my husband and I went home and began making plans for our next white water canoe trip. With our busy last summer of travel (5 week Yukon road trip), we couldn't fit in any river trips. However, we sure enjoyed trying new BC lakes and we're looking forward to our next white water adventure.
Although running rapids is still relatively new for us, our passion has continued to grow as we gain more skill and confidence, allowing us to run harder rivers. We had our first experience with white water five years ago on a day trip down Montreal river which had mostly class I rapids. We then started doing some longer multi-day and week long fly-in trips with many class II rapids and even a couple class III sections. A few summers ago we took a weekend white water canoe course which was paramount to us learning correct skills, techniques, and tips on reading the water and making good decisions. It also helped us with the safety aspect of water activities as we practiced water rescues, throws, and canoe over canoe rescues which are important safety assets for future canoe trips (but will hopefully never need to be used).
So, although we love adventuring with our kids (and they are with us the majority of the time), we have two major reasons for doing kidless adventures:
1) We feel it is important as a couple to connect, enjoy, and invest in our relationship without the distraction of our kiddos. Adventuring has always been our favourite past time to do together, so it's fun to experience it without our kids once in a while. It also allows us to do harder, and relatively more risky trips than when our kids are present, filling our "adventure" bucket.
2) Gaining skills and confidence through practice is essential for increasing your comfort level when bringing kids along. We believe that if you don't have the physical or technical skills to confidently do trips on your own, you should not be bringing your kids on similar trips. And the only way to develop and strengthen many of these skills are by pushing yourself past your comfort level, which should not be done with your kids in tow! Pushing your limits a little more on kidless trips allows you to gauge your own skill and comfort level, but without the added risk of having your kids.
*One thing to note is that we do not replicate the same trip when our kids come. We adjust our difficulty level to be lower, allowing for some of the difficulties that kids add to the equation. Because, let's be real, everything is harder with kids! For instance, a kidless 10 day paddle with multiple rapids and portage sections in my mind is similar in difficulty to a 3 day flat water (no rapids!) paddle with kids and only one or two portages.
So whatever adventurous activity you love doing with your family (or plan to do in the future), here are my two pieces of advice: make sure to keep practicing those skills (your family will benefit from it!) and adjust your difficulty level to account for all the added challenges that kids will add to your trip!
Comments