*Guest Post* Toddlers in the Wild

This week we welcome Tanya of Family Adventures in the Canadian Rockies to the blog.  She hails from beautiful country and abounding opportunity for adventure.  And she takes full advantage! I love reading her stories and often find myself longing to go on their family (or just MOM) adventures!  Make sure you read her bio at the end (including a link to her blog!)

 Our family makes it a priority to get out to the mountains almost every weekend for what many would say are big adventures given we have a toddler.  We’ve taken our son backpacking since he was one and have another trip planned this summer where we are hoping he’ll walk the 2 miles to the campground on his own.  He’s already reached several of his first summits with Daddy carrying him up 3000 feet or more and we regularly complete long day hikes of distances up to 10 miles.  We transition to cross country skiing and light backcountry ski touring in winter with my husband pulling our son in a ski pulk.

It might sound fabulous and amazing to be doing all these adventures with a young tot in tow but more often than not we have to listen to our son screaming, “out!” from the ski pulk when my husband isn’t going fast enough and we just wait until he falls asleep for some silence.  Big adventures are anything but easy with toddlers and often we wonder why we bother.  Honestly, I’m pretty sure my son would be more than content with a 1 mile toddler jaunt or a day trip to throw rocks in a lake.  We also have many amazing natural areas in our city so could save all the gas we spend driving to the mountains and just explore our parks close to home.

We’ve all heard of the expression, “use it or lose it,” and honestly, that’s one of our motivations for getting out so often with our son.  We stayed active throughout my pregnancy, going as far as to travel around Peru in my second trimester, and were determined to jump back in as soon as my son was born.  We had a brief set-back during his first year when I experienced health complications from labor but by my son’s first birthday we were back in the saddle.  If you put something off, saying you’ll start hiking again when your children are older, or you’ll pull the skis out again when your children are old enough to ski with you, it will often never happen.  If you put something off, it gets intimidating and overwhelming to start again.  An object in motion stays in motion, right?  Once that object stops, it takes a lot of energy to get it moving again.  We didn’t want to get stuck having to dust off our skis or remembering how to pack for a backpacking trip.

The other big motivation for us is thinking ahead to the future and the kind of life we want to have as a family.  We are hoping that by the time my son is ten, we will be doing easy glacier traverses together, easy scrambles, rock climbing, and decent overnight backcountry trips.  The skills required for those activities don’t develop overnight.  The character and mental preparation required for backcountry travel takes years to develop.  Most families with toddlers think of milestones as their child’s first words, their child learning their ABCs, or the completion of potty training.  We view milestones as our son’s first mile long hike or first self propelled backpacking trip.  We’ve gone hiking with children that can barely hike 4 miles and I’ve hiked with toddlers that I’m pretty sure could hike 8 miles.  You can’t take a child out for a first hike and expect them to climb a mountain.  Hiking is like anything; slow and steady wins the race. 

We are planning this summer around our son’s interests; toddler hikes in abundance, easy car camping trips, nature walks, and outdoor play dates.  However, that doesn’t mean that we won’t continue to pursue big adventures as a family.  Getting out every weekend often feels like a big adventure in of itself!  We have made mountain adventure our passion and lifestyle.  Having a child hasn’t changed that and though we fully expect we’ll have to start slowing down this summer, we won’t be turning our adventures into nature walks.

Tanya loves hiking, camping, cross-country skiing, and on occasion mountaineering or backpacking a few times a year. Above all, she enjoys family adventure in the Canadian Rockies with her husband and son.  Tanya can be found at her personal blog:  Family Adventures in the Canadian Rockies, on Twitter at @MountainMomYYC, or on her facebook page, the Calgary Family Adventure Community.