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Some minor adjustments

With a few tweaks, children can enjoy pursuits of parents

Cindy Hirschfeld, Special to the News

Published October 14, 2006 at midnight

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During a four-day boat trip on Idaho's Salmon River this past summer, Jen Rieke, of Grand Junction, said her 10-year-old son found his inner river rat.

"He swam the rapids and learned to paddle his own ducky. It was a life-changing experience for him," she said.

Rieke, a former mountain bike racer who runs Mountain Sprouts, a children's outdoor clothing company, is a member of what could be called the active families' club; that is, parents who share their love of the outdoors with their children and have come up with strategies for providing enjoyable, child-appropriate outings.

Doing so is easier - or sometimes harder - than you might think. But with modifications, there's no reason for parents to give up the active lifestyle they had before having children.

"All the other parents around Durango that we were hanging out with were doing these great things with their kids, and that kind of surprised me," said Scott Graham, father of Logan, 9, and Taylor, 12. "There was so much more we could do with our kids than I thought we'd be able to do, and at younger ages."

When the children were toddlers, Graham and his wife, Sue, started taking them on overnight river trips, which he calls "a way to car camp away from the car."

In the raft, "my wife and I assigned ourselves one kid each and kept that kid at arm's length."

While Sue Graham and Logan walked around the one Class III rapid on the first trip, Taylor had so much fun, he ran it twice.

Since then, the family has become such veterans at outdoor adventures - mountain biking, climbing, kayaking, skiing, backpacking - that Scott Graham wrote a book about it, Extreme Kids: How to Connect with Your Children Through Today's Extreme (and Not So Extreme) Outdoor Sports, newly released by Wilderness Press. In it, he shares advice on how to make everything from peak-bagging to flatwater canoeing safe and suitable for children.

"If you're into taking a nominal amount of risk," Graham said, "you can have a great time, and your kids will be far healthier as adults than if you were afraid of letting them into the outdoors and instead having them sit in front of the TV and eat potato chips."

Any parents who are avid athletes hope, of course, that their progeny will fall in love with the same sports. But savvy moms and dads realize that subtly guiding their children into certain activities is a much better way of building enthusiasm than, say, forcing a hut trip on them.

"The key is waiting until they're ready," said Kir Newhard, of Basalt, who, with her husband, Penn, regularly takes their three children hiking, climbing, rafting and skiing. "I wait until my kids are begging me, 'I want to go on a hut trip' or 'I want to hike up Aspen Mountain.' "

"The best thing you can do is offer up a bunch of different outdoor sports to your kids and see what turns them on," Graham said. "The worst thing you can do is say, 'This is my sport, and this is what you're going to do.' "

Patience and flexibility are essential.

"Be aware of how far you can

really hike or go out with your kids," said Kristine Carey, marketing manager for Louisville-based Sierra Designs and mother of girls ages 1 and 4. "Normally, we can hike all day as adults, but with kids, we have to stop, have snacks and be a lot more patient."

Carey and her husband, both enthusiastic backpackers, would take their oldest daughter on trips into the backcountry, with one parent carrying the child in a pack and the other toting the gear. But with two children, she said, they've had to dial back their outings, with a base car camp serving as the hub for shorter day hikes.

When hiking or biking with her sons, "you learn how to scale back your pace and move at the rate of the slowest person," Rieke said. "I have to remind myself that it's a different kind of trip."

There are distinct advantages, though, to slowing and viewing your surroundings from a child's perspective. "The kids are the ones taking it all in and noticing the details," Rieke said.

Adjusting your expectations also can make the difference between an outing that's fun for everyone and one that just raises the bar to a new level of crankiness.

"Remember that kids really do change things," Graham said. "It's tempting to think that you'll be able to do everything you did before you had kids.

You'll continue to do these things, but you'll be doing them in different ways. Think of it as exploration rather than going out and hammering out a mountain bike ride."

And be willing to beat a hasty retreat if a situation warrants it.

"If the weather turns bad, if the mosquitoes are out, if a boot is giving your child a blister, any of those are acceptable reasons to turn around," Graham said. "As adults we're so goal-oriented, and we really have to work to leave that behind. Sometimes it was a success just to make it to the trailhead. The term my wife and I use is 'the process.' "

Nonetheless, it's possible to structure trips so that parents and children get a suitable level of challenge, especially as the young ones get older. The New- hards have taken their children, ages 5 to 9, on several multiday climbing trips to City of Rocks, Idaho, which, Kir Newhard said, has lower-level and more difficult climbs in proximity.

She and her husband will set up a top rope and belay the children on an easier route ("they can do the same climb 25 times," she said), then, while the children are resting, snacking or just playing at the base of the rock, the couple will tackle a challenging climb right next to it.

"The kids get to climb a lot at their level, and we get to climb a lot at our level, too," Newhard said. "But you have to choose your places wisely."

Pack plenty of food, drink and appropriate clothing for an outing, but don't feel that you need to cart along the entire toy chest to keep your children amused outdoors. Part of the experience is enabling your children to find creative ways to interact with their environment. Carey fondly remembers how her family played pine cone baseball, with sticks for bats, during a recent three-day camping trip near Crested Butte.

"I don't bring games or coloring books," Newhard said. "It defeats the purpose if you're providing all this other entertainment. The kids run around in the woods, and Lacey (age 7) will make little figures out of sticks and leaves."

A final bit of advice from Graham involves pitching the excitement and adventure of a trip well in advance, to get children psyched and motivated.

He recounts a five-day backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon the family took when the boys were 5 and 8: "We knew it was going to be pretty tough, and we had talked it up to the boys for weeks beforehand. On the last day, they blasted up the trail and got out so quickly. We had promised them we'd have a fancy meal (at a nearby lodge), and we ended up having a white-tablecloth breakfast."

Three weeks later, Graham and his wife were taken aback when the boys started immediately complaining on a hike into Dark Canyon in Utah. "We realized we hadn't set them up for this trip like we had for the Grand Canyon, and it was turning into a complete failure. We immediately started talking up the trip and, as a result, everyone ended up having a good time."

Bringing children on trips into the backcountry might be more of a challenge than some parents are willing to take on. Kir Newhard, for example, chalks up the success of her family's frequent outings to her role as a full-time mom, a high energy level and being superorganized.

But, she said, the payoff of instilling a love for outdoor activities in her children far outweighs the work.

Jen Rieke echoes the sentiment: "When I get to share (mountain biking and skiing) with my kids and see them get excited about something that resonates for all of us, that's the coolest thing in the world."

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