Becoming an Adventure Dad

As the due date of our first child approached ten years ago, I remember that feeling of pure fear, similar to the roar of a large, unknown rapid ahead on the river, with no way to get out of the stream to stop and look before dropping in. Life is changing with the arrival of the new baby. It marks a progression point for your life, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of outdoor adventure. Quite the contrary.  A new adventure chapter is opening before you.  Ten years into the experiment, I am happy to report that there are some technical changes, but the adventure life is fully accessible to those who set up a plan and go for it. 

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Are you a first time parent with a long life of outdoor adventure sports, and a new baby on the way? Or maybe you are ready to revive adventure pursuits after letting them slip away as family focus scaled up. The right mindset, strategy and tactics can keep you on the slopes, the trail, and the river while keeping your relationship intact, and enjoying a new dimension of the outdoors with your kid(s). 

There are three components to  the Adventure Dad (or parent) approach: (i) Continuing your own adventures, (ii)  Adventuring with your family, and (iii) Making sure your significant other also gets their adventure fix. 

Continuing your own adventures
Other notable adventure parents continue their expeditionary outdoor lives after having kids. Climber Tommy Caldwell of Dawn Wall fame has opened up about having kids and climbing. Jerremy Jones, the backcountry snowboarder still rips with, and without his kids. Explorer Mike Horn has a family and still gets after big expeditions, and alpine and rock climbers  Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger provide another strong parental and outdoor model. Many outdoor adventurer parents have made this shift, and you can too.

Some new parents use kids as an excuse to end their active, adventurous lives. If they didn’t have action and adventure in place before, they can now claim a socially accepted excuse for not living an adventure-inspired life.  It is never all or nothing. Some new dads  pretend that nothing has changed, ignore the new arrival, and carry on the expedition life without interruption, at the expense of the family. There is a middle ground where you can be there for your partner and kids, while also pursuing outdoor adventure sports to create a wonderful life.  

LIfe with kids can resemble a long expedition where your mindset, planning and consistency are tested to the limit. Kids are the ultimate test of a relationship, an individual, and an adventure plan. We can use the concept of Anti Fragile in this moment to come out stronger and better because of the new arrival. 

Adventure Dads have to take care of themselves and continue their outdoor pursuits to maintain the strong mental framework required to be a good partner and parent. The recovery, stoke, and satisfaction that outdoor sports provides makes us better at these challenging family tasks.

This next life chapter is opening us up to a new adventure that involves some time-frame shifts, but does not have to limit your action. In fact, positive boundaries and constraints can force us to move toward higher quality activities and adventure planning choices, to accelerate our fitness, achievement, and enjoyment in the outdoors.

Having kids is undoubtedly hard. It is the hardest thing that I’ve encountered in life so far. It is also a direct and constant portal to a hard and worthwhile challenge, the type that we seek as adventurers. Stoic philosophers talk about moving toward obstacles to orient life toward something worthwhile. This type of “Obstacle is the Way” thinking is an excellent companion to the Adventure Dad mindset. 

Adventuring with the family
Children go through distinct developmental phases as they move through the years toward adulthood. Each of these phases offers adventure opportunities for you and eventually the outdoor adventure crew that you are raising.

Ages 0 to 1 - Sleep deprivation is the biggest challenge for parents during  this time period. Look at it as expedition sleep deprivation training, common to adventure racing or special forces training. Once sleep normalizes, your new arrival is very portable and can do short hikes in a backpack. Until sleep stabilizes there is not much expeditioning to be had. Continuing training where possible and being around to help where you can is the right move. 

Ages 2-4 - Sleep can still be hard but the baby is heartier and can ride in the backpack for longer hikes. Trading off between two parents or a babysitter becomes more possible for shorter burst expeditions.

Ages 4-6 - Additional mobility is possible but backpack riding ends, this is a tough stage where they don't have the endurance for longer efforts and you can’t get them in the backpack. Beach activities such as surfing, and water sports like canoeing are good for this phase. 

Ages 7-10 - Kids are starting to ride bikes and getting more strength. Short bike rides, hikes and light bordering/top rope climbing becomes an option.

Ages 10-18 - We are just entering this phase but I’ve seen friends work toward greater focus in outdoor sports for their children in this age range. Mountain biking, surfing and climbing can accelerate based on the kid’s aptitude and interest. Your outdoor crew is getting stronger, and more standard type adventure options of backpacking, climbing and paddling trips await. The future is bright.

The key  is to identify the type of activity that will be conducive to your child’s phase, and dial up those endeavors for maximum adventure. For example,  before kids, backpacking was a big part of my outdoor pursuits. We shifted that to trail running, river paddling, and surfing, activities that are equally or more enjoyable but have a base location for the kids and shorter timeline bursts. Kids in the early years require a shift from long term expeditions to short bursts of activity from a home or basecamp of operations in the right location.

The Basecamp approach means finding a location that offers fun for the entire family (whatever your configuration). For us this means renting a house on a beach, inside a  mobile recreational vehicle, on a river, a snowy mountain, or a car/truck camping location with places for the kids to play, or even friends and relatives’ house. With the base camp established you can build out your adventure plans. Is it bagging a local peak? Is it running a local river, or completing a new local trail route? 

Setting up your home base to have on site training equipment such as a weight set, climbing hold hang board, pull up bar, bike trainer and treadmill is also essential. These items allow you to maintain conditioning in shorter bursts and don’t require transit to the mountain or gym to get your fix.

Choosing the right adventure location as your home base can go a long way towards being an active Adventure Dad. Scheduling in the early years means that you will have space to train and adventure, but it will have to happen in blasts of hours or short numbers of days rather than the unbroken weeks offline and in the zone. Condensing your time means locating yourself and your family around an adventure zone where you can quickly access your sports without major transit time. Our current base in the Shenandoah mountains of Virginia gives us access to paddling, biking, trail running and hiking.

As Adventure Dads, we desperately want our kids to share our love of outdoor movement in nature. The laws of parenting say that kids will naturally go the other direction of your desire. Focusing on having fun outdoors and never pushing them to the edge of endurance or fear can gradually associate good times, friends & family, and outdoors in the same mental space. Pushing too hard too early can turn them off of adventure forever, so keep a light touch.

Ensuring your partner also gets their adventure fix
The smart and active Adventure Parent spends just as much time and focus ensuring that their significant other also gets out for adventures with the kids, and also for solo recharge sessions. Their solo expeditions might look more like a spa than single track (or perhaps vice versa), but that component is equally as important as any of your adventure endeavors. Enabling that solo recharge for both of you at various times makes it possible to continue your own adventure pursuits with the satisfaction that everyone in the family is getting what they need to survive and thrive. 

Tactics
Kids require dedicated gear for daily existence, and some additional items for the adventure life. The same gear considerations that apply to you, from layering the right clothes, sleeping, eating and moving also apply to the kids. Some gear is required, like a canoe big enough to fit everyone, bikes, and the occasional stroller, but adventure is accessible with the bare minimum that gets you into the outdoors. 

Further dialing in your own gear organization and functionality makes it easier to create the conditions for a Powder Day, or to take advantage of micro adventure time frame opportunities when they arise. 

The takeaway: Making it work for you
The path to adventure is different for each of us. Family and kids often present challenges, but they have  only enhanced my adventure life.  Adventure Dads understand how to create the right mindset, put in place a strategy that works with their disciplines and environment, and get after the good adventure life. 

How do you structure your adventure life? Send along your tricks and tips to [email protected] or leave a post on the blog. 

Happy trails!

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