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Chapter 2:

PLANNING A TRIP

that Won’t End Your Relationship

I love my boyfriend. I love camping. So how is it that in the middle of a camping trip with Gerhard, I found myself so miserable that I was in tears? Let me tell you, he was pretty anxious to find out the answer to that question, too.

After a long day of driving out to the campground in heavy rain and fog, it was pouring rain when we arrived. All through the process of trying to pitch the tent and make dinner in a downpour, he kept bossing me around, telling me how to do every last little thing. After the stress of the drive, and his back-seat driving (from the front seat), it was more than I could take. I was cold, wet, frustrated, and starting to question our entire relationship. Clearly, Gerhard didn’t think much of me if he couldn’t leave me to do the least little task my own way. How could I have a fulfilling relationship with someone who thought I was a moron?

When he cornered me and asked what was wrong, he was more than a little surprised to find out what was going on in my head. It turns out he had no idea I was so bothered by how much he was trying to “help.” I realized then that he couldn’t possibly have known, because I never said a word about it until I burst into tears. Somehow, I was counting on him to read my mind, something we girls do more often than we like to admit. Gerhard agreed to back off and let me do my own thing more.

By the next day, the sun came out, and I felt like an idiot for thinking that our whole relationship was falling apart because I had a bad day. But when it comes to camping, it’s easy to blow things out of proportion.

Ross Morton of Outward Bound agrees that things can get more tense when conditions are not what you’d hoped. “The wilderness experience can make or break relationships,” he says. “It’s an amazing thing to share moments in the bush. But it can be a challenge when you’re stuck on a mountain for three days in the rain.”

Author Kathleen Meyer sees conflict on a camping trip as a kind of litmus test for the whole relationship. “If one of the couple is fearful of experiencing new things, or feeling uncomfortable with sleeping on the ground or whatever, I think if there are other parts of your relationship that aren’t solid, it ignites those parts,” she says.

On the other hand, Meyer says, the problems you face can also help strengthen your bond. “If your outdoor excursion with your partner is at all arduous, and your relationship should survive it, then that bond you create out there can translate into home life and helping you balance things,” she says. “It’s a good way to find out if you’re going to last with somebody. It’s better to find out sooner than later!”

Anytime two people are in each other’s company 24 hours a day, there is a pretty good chance that they’ll get on one another’s nerves and start to fight, even if they love each other. Out in the middle of the wilderness with nobody else around, this could be a real problem—and not just at the time; the effects can be felt long after. You can get into a fight about all kinds of things on camping trips: getting lost, forgetting gear at home, where to go, how long to stay, how fast to travel, what to eat. But there’s no need to let this stuff get in the way of having a great trip together, and staying in love with each other. After all, spending time outside together puts you in new and challenging situations, which give you an opportunity to discover something new to admire about each other. A lot of the arguments that come up can be avoided by planning well.

The Destination vs. the Journey

One of the main differences in the way people envision their camping trips is that some of us prefer to plan for a specific destination, like reaching the top of a mountain or completing a trail, and other people are all about the journey. They’re more likely to be looking for wildlife or stopping to admire the view. If one of you is destination-oriented and the other is not, it might be tough to figure out how you’re both going to get what you want. It’s time for a bit of planning and compromise. Make sure you have plenty of time to achieve the goals that mean a lot to the destination person, whether it’s getting to the mouth of a river or the top of a mountain. If you know you can easily make it in the time you’ve allowed, you’re less likely to feel the need to rush onward all of the time, which the stop-and-smell-the-flowers person will appreciate.

Susan and her husband suffered from this problem for some time before arriving at a simple solution. “My husband is very competitive,” Susan says. “He works in sales, and he’s always excited when he lands a tough customer or he blows his quota out of the water. He’s the kind of guy who has to buy every new gadget before any of his friends have one.”

When it comes to camping, Susan’s husband is the same way, which drives Susan, who likes to take it easy, absolutely crazy. When he came home with a wrist-top GPS, Susan shook her head, imagining how this new gizmo would feed her husband’s minute-by-minute obsession with how far they could go on their outings. “He wants to do everything farther and faster than normal,” she explains. “So if a hike was supposed to take six hours, and we did it in five hours, it was like we ‘won’ somehow.”

Susan felt guilty on their trips, as if she were holding him back. One day, she couldn’t handle it anymore, and she told her husband she never wanted to go camping with him again. “When he asked why, I couldn’t believe it!” she says. “It turned out he had no idea that I didn’t share his enthusiasm for ‘challenging’ ourselves.”

Then he asked her why she had never said anything before. “I guess I was just trying to keep him happy, at my own expense,” she says. “Now we plan our trips to alternate one easy day for each ‘challenging’ day, and I actually enjoy myself—at least half the time.”

Outward Bound’s Ross Morton acknowledges that Susan’s story is not that unusual. “Guys tend to want to get on with it,” he says. “They want to just throw on their packs and get moving. Women tend to be more cautious. They want to talk first and make sure they understand (the plan).” It’s as if our camping lives mirror our sex lives. Typically, men want to get straight into the action, while women are more willing to relax into things if they get to talk about it first and have some “pre-adventure” foreplay.

For some campers, the challenge of accomplishing their goals in record time is half the fun. If you’re one of these people, allowing extra time to enjoy the scenery is just annoying. If you have tough goals that your partner doesn’t share, it may be worth saving them for another trip with a friend who shares the same goal. It’s never a good idea to force your partner to do something that he or she thinks is too difficult or dangerous. You’ll just end up with a tired, crabby, and potentially scared-to-death partner on your hands. And who do you think is going to get the blame?

Make some time to talk about your route before the trip, so that you can both point out what’s important to you. One of you might be dying to do some climbing on a well-known rock face, and the other might want to spend some time at a spot that’s perfect for seeing rare birds. Plan it so that you both get to do the things that are most important to you, even if you think bird-watching is stupid and boring, or that rock climbing is a foolish risk of life. That way each of you can take a turn at compromising, and each of you comes away from the trip having seen or done what you most wanted to see or do.

Couples therapist Esther Perel says that there are times, both in our sex lives and in our hobbies, when we’re better off keeping our more extreme behaviors for our own time if they aren’t shared by our partners. “If you’re into something, before you share it, you have to ask yourself if there’s a certain fit,” she says. “Will the other person be open to it? Will they be threatened or turned off by it?”

When it comes to playing together, the lines can blur between what happens during the day and how you feel about each other later on. So if your partner feels like you’ve been making unreasonable demands on him or her all day, chances are you’re not going to find them very anxious to please you that night. Sometimes it may be best if your life partner isn’t always your sports partner.

Jaime and her partner Harris are a bit of an unusual couple. Even though they’ve been together for eight years, they each live in their own homes in different suburbs. “We’ve both been married before, and we think this works better for us—the independence of being single combined with the companionship of having a partner,” explains Jaime. So it’s a bit of a surprise that they get along so well on camping holidays, where they’re together 24/7 for as long as four weeks. It’s a lot of time to spend together without a break, especially for two people who don’t have all of the same interests.

How do they do it? Jaime says they usually make separate lists of things they’d like to see or do, and then they compare the lists and make a rough itinerary. “I know that he’s a stronger backpacker than I am (Harris used to do some mountaineering), so if he really wants to do a climb somewhere, we’ll just plan it so that I have a rest day while he goes on his own,” she says. Sometimes recognizing that you don’t have to do everything together is the best approach. “I’m happy to have a day of solitude and do some gentle walks on my own, while he gets to reach the summits he likes so much,” Jaime says. “So both of our needs are met.”

For Dimitri and his wife, camping together has been a lesson in compromise. “It’s made us more aware of each other’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses,” he says. “It’s made us more tolerant toward each other. It’s made us realize the joy of doing and sharing things together.” Not only are these important qualities when they’re in the woods, but he also finds that they can cope better with tough situations in their day-to-day life. If you’ve experienced getting lost in the woods, it’s not going to seem like such a big deal if you get lost driving in a new city. If you’ve learned to survive in a tent, there’s nothing scary about a power blackout.

Some compromises may be less of a choice and more of a necessity. Are you both at the same level of fitness? Can your partner keep up with your ambitious plans? Can you both get the same amount of time off work for the trip? Do you both have the right gear for the activities you are planning? Being physically ready and properly geared up for a trip is a key part of your planning. Halfway up a mountain is a bad time to figure out that one of you isn’t fit enough to go on.

Incorporate What You Love to Do

You and your partner probably each have your own hobbies at home. It’s important for the health of your relationship to give one another the space to take part in those interests, separately if necessary. The activities you include in your camping trips are no different. Photography, bird-watching, rock climbing, sketching, and swimming are just a few of the things that people pursue to make their camping trips more interesting. These activities are a big part of the appeal of camping, and if you’re denied the chance to do them, it can seem like the whole trip was a waste of time. Ideally, you’ll still enjoy everything else you’re doing, like spending time with your partner and getting away from the city for a while. But for some people, a trip where they don’t get to do their favorite thing isn’t much fun.

If you’re lucky enough to have the same hobbies as your partner, you’re all set. But if you want to stop and sketch, and your partner is left sitting around waiting for you, it can lead to unnecessary tension. You end up feeling guilty every time you indulge in your hobby, and your partner gets bored and impatient. For instance, I like to take pictures, while my boyfriend prefers to take naps. So I tend to make frequent stops along our route whenever I see anything I want to photograph, while he would rather carry on through and get to our destination early enough to fit in an afternoon snooze. It takes some compromise for us both to get what we want. But I’ll try to limit my photo stops to the most breathtaking vistas (or fit them in when we’ve already stopped for a break) and then use the time while he’s napping to wander around playing shutterbug.

Getting to Know the Real You

As a lifelong outdoorswoman, I have always been attracted to guys who share one of my outdoor interests. Not only is it great to share an activity I love with a guy I’m attracted to, it’s also a good way to get to know the guy. When you’re in a challenging environment, it’s tough to “act,” which means that if I still like the guy after we head outside together, chances are it’s the real thing. The corollary to this is that I can also find out quickly whether the guy is a dud.

Several years ago, I was dating a guy I met at the climbing gym who wanted to take me traditional climbing—the kind of rock climbing where you place your own gear in the rock and scale the cliffs all on your own power. I was a fairly novice climber and had climbed outside only a handful of times, and only on single-pitch, bolted routes, so I was both nervous and excited to try “trad” climbing.

I felt confident that my new boyfriend was a capable climber, so I put my fears aside and joined him and two of his friends on a climbing trip to Red Rocks, outside of Las Vegas. Our road trip down from the San Francisco Bay Area was long. The car broke down, and even though I was worried it wouldn’t get us to Vegas and back, my boyfriend insisted we keep going. That was my first sign that something wasn’t right.

That night, we camped in Red Rocks and woke early for the climb. My boyfriend led the route, and when we got to the first anchor, I realized I should have talked to him about my concerns before we started climbing. I had no idea what I would do if he fell or got hurt, since my experience was limited to the comparatively safe gym environment. But instead of talking to him about my fear midway through our climb, I clenched my teeth and continued to belay for him.

As it turned out, the climb was fine, and I started to relax when our two friends, AR and JS, caught up to us at a ledge, where we took a break to eat. Once we reached the top and started our long walk to the car, my boyfriend announced that he was going to run back. I’m not sure why he was in such a hurry, but I had a nice chat with AR on the walk back, and I realized I didn’t mind my boyfriend’s absence.

The next day, we climbed some more, and on the third day, AR and I had to fly back early to return to work, while my boyfriend and JS stayed on to climb for another day. On that day, they had an epic: On their rappel down the cliff, they encountered a pair of climbers whose rope had gotten stuck. As they traversed to retrieve it, one of the climbers fell right near JS, who initially thought the climber had fallen to his death. Fortunately, he suffered only a broken ankle, but JS was so shaken by the sight of him falling that she clung to the anchor point to regain her composure.

When they finally got down from the climb, it was 1 or 2 in the morning, and my boyfriend and JS were so full of adrenaline that they decided to make the long drive home. When he told me the story later that night, he complained to me about JS holding onto the anchors. Recalling my own fear and inclination to grab the anchor after my first pitch, I told him I would have done the same thing.

Then he lost it. He started telling me I was irrational and that holding the anchors was stupid, and he finally concluded that he would never be able to climb with me again. We had been out plenty of times, but it wasn’t until we had an outdoor challenge together that I saw his true colors, and we broke up that night.

The happy ending to this story is that I also saw the true colors of another guy on that trip, and AR and I have been together ever since. He is my favorite partner for climbing and skiing and all of life’s challenges.

—ED

Creating a Sketchy Memory

“ I have a little sketching kit that I bring along on every camping trip. It has my pencils and sharpeners and paper. To me, it’s like a history of my outdoor experiences. I’ll write little notes on the bottom saying where I was, and what time of year—maybe even a note on what colors things were. But it’s mostly my impressions of the places we’ve been, and I keep them all in a box at home. My husband doesn’t sketch, so I do it while he has a little rest. He’s very big on scheduling sleeping times at least once per day while we’re camping. It all works out well for us, except that I don’t end up getting as many naps! ”

—HT

Sometimes even having the same hobby can pose challenges. Lana and her husband both like to take pictures, so they’re always fighting over the camera. “Not serious fighting, of course,” Lana explains. “But we did have to go buy an extra memory card, because on longer trips we’d actually fill up our camera’s memory, and neither of us ever wanted to delete any of our beautiful pictures.” Lana’s solution to their camera woes was simple: “Actually, my husband doesn’t know this, but I’m getting him his own camera for his birthday so I can stop sharing mine.”

Try to find some way to incorporate what you both like to do into the trip. If you’re going to stop and sketch, plan to do it somewhere with a side trail for your partner to explore, or on a beach where your partner can go for a swim. If your partner feels the need to stop and identify every bird in the treetops, you can take those moments to check the map, have a drink, or take a few pictures. Standing around getting bored and angry won’t help anything, so go out of your way to enjoy yourself. If your partner has indulged one of your hobbies, be sure to say thanks—either with words or, better yet, with actions.

Making sure you both get to do what you love involves planning. Don’t set tight timelines if you need photography or bird-watching breaks 10 times a day. If you need to go for a swim every day to be happy, make sure your campsites will all be on the water’s edge. Making all of the “extra” activities part of your plan also lets your partner know what to expect. If he or she knows from the start that you want to spend half a day rock climbing in a specific spot, then you won’t be arguing about it when you get there. Your partner can plan for it ahead of time by either joining the climb, or having something else to do, like reading a book or going for a hike.

Share Your Dreams—and Your Concerns

Obviously, communication is the key to planning a trip that will make both of you happy. One of the great things about camping together is the chance to share your dreams. If you’ve always wanted to see the aurora borealis, or stand on top of Mt. Rainier, then it becomes all the more special to do it with the one person in the world who means the most to you. Talk about the things you’d like to see and do, and find out which ones you both share. If you have a lot of dreams in common, make a list and every time you take a camping vacation together, you can cross something off.

If you’re just getting to know someone, communication is even more important. You may be excited about your new partner who loves going on canoe trips as much as you do. But on your first trip together, you may discover that the serene weekend on a lake you had in mind is not a match with the whitewater adventure she had in mind. Clearly, more discussion was needed before the trip.

By deciding ahead of time what you each hope to get out of the trip, you’re much more likely to actually accomplish those things. Surprises are fun, but they can also lead to disappointment if your partner doesn’t react the way you had hoped.

The dreams you share can take on many forms. They can include places you’d like to see, activities you’d like to learn, or even new additions to your love life. If you’re bringing camping into your relationship in hopes of spicing up your sex life, that’s something your partner should understand before you head out. If you have outdoor sexual fantasies, for instance, it’s a great idea to share those ahead of time so your partner will understand what you have in mind. You can even bring along helpful props or costumes. Have you always wanted to play Adam and Eve? You won’t need much for that one, except maybe an apple. What about “seduced by a mermaid” or ”captured by a pirate”? All you really need is an isolated spot and your imagination. But if it would help to bring along an eye patch, well, why not!

Sharing your dreams and goals is a great step toward making your trip memorable, but it’s also important to share any concerns you may have before you go. If you think the route you are looking at is beyond your skills, speak up before you get too far into your preparations. It might be your partner’s dream to kayak down the Colorado River, but if you aren’t ready to handle the rapids, then maybe that dream will have to be put on hold until you have enough experience. It’s tempting to agree to what your partner wants, just to make him or her happy. But if you are in the middle of the trip unable to continue, or angry with your partner for putting you in this uncomfortable situation, then you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.

How to Even Things Out

We all like to think that we’ve got a good balance in our relationships. But for a lot of couples, there is an imbalance of some kind that comes into play when you’re outdoors together, and it has nothing to do with a bad relationship. Maybe one of you has been camping forever, and the other is a beginner. Or one is significantly taller than the other, or stronger or more fit. All of these things can get in the way of enjoying the same trip, but there are ways to help even things out.

The previous chapter covered a number of ways to help out a beginner. Generally, it’s up to the more experienced person to make sure the less experienced person will be comfortable with what’s going on. But there are some ways to help push things forward a bit. If you have a lot of trust between you, the less experienced person may be OK with letting the more experienced one navigate a difficult route. Or on a canoe trip, the more experienced person can offer to do all of the steering, so all the beginner has to do is paddle. If you go out together often enough, the beginner’s skills will eventually catch up, and you can go on more challenging trips. It takes a bit of patience, but just keep telling yourselves that nobody stays a beginner forever.

That’s all fine, but if your partner is a foot taller than you, there’s not much chance you’re ever going to catch up. (Although, between you and me, I’m still hoping for a midlife growth spurt.) I know it’s not politically correct to say so, but size matters, particularly on hikes or backpacking trips. Taller people have a longer stride, so they generally go faster than short people. They also have an easier time climbing up or down slopes, because they can simply step over things that a smaller person has to climb or scramble over. This often leaves the smaller partner working harder, getting more tired, and struggling to keep up. Or it means the taller partner is constantly waiting.

Rock climbing also depends a lot on your build. Having a longer reach can be a huge advantage when holds are scarce. People with a heavier build find climbing much more tiring than their leaner counterparts. And your differences will be hard to ignore if you’re roped together.

There are some ways to get on more of an even pace with your partner, even if a growth spurt never materializes. For backpacking, the taller partner is also usually heavier. When you pack, most people assume that it’s fair to divide the weight of your gear evenly between your two packs. In fact, this isn’t fair at all. The weight should be divided in proportion to your body weights. Most people who backpack can carry about 25 percent of their weight in a properly fitted pack without too much difficulty. Try to use that as a guideline for how much each of your packs should weigh. For instance, a 200-pound man should be able to carry a 50-pound pack, while his 120-pound partner shouldn’t have to take on more than 30 pounds. If you can’t pack that light, you’ll have to work out who is in better shape and let that person take on the extra punishment.

The Grumpy Mountaineer

“ When I met Jay, I was really excited because he was a mountaineer. I wanted to do more outdoor stuff, and I thought, ”Now I’ve met a guy who’s into that, who will teach me.” But when we went out hiking together, he acted bored and miserable. He felt like he was wasting time doing easy stuff with me, when he could be up a mountain somewhere instead, if only I wasn’t so inexperienced. He was so hard to be around that I broke up with him after a few months.

Then I met Mike, who was outdoorsy but not so hard-core. He didn’t seem to mind “wasting” a weekend hiking with me and giving me advice. Even though he could do much harder stuff, he thought it was OK to take a break from it sometimes. I’ll probably never be a mountaineer, but I’m much more confident outdoors than I used to be—but Jay will never know that. ”

—RW

If weighting your packs by this method still leaves the smaller person trailing behind, then make the difference even greater. Carrying around extra weight will automatically slow you down, and taking weight away will speed you up. Eventually, you will find the balance between the two of you and get yourselves moving at the same pace. Remember that the weight each of you is carrying will change over the course of a multiday trip as you use up some of your food and fuel supplies. So if you are carrying a lot of the food, you might have to add other gear to your pack to keep things fair as the trip goes on.

It can be tough for us women to admit that we can’t carry as much weight as our partners, but for our own safety most of us eventually swallow our pride. Like me, Justine has had to face the harsh facts. “I’m 5’2”, he’s 5’9”, so he carries more,” she says. “I’m always staunch about us being equal, but when you’re two hours into a five-hour slog up a hill—sexual politics don’t exist!”

Terrain makes a big difference as well. I’m a lot shorter than Gerhard, but when we’re on flat ground, I can keep up with his pace if our packs are weighted correctly. But as soon as the ground is more challenging, it all goes out the window. It takes a lot more effort for me to climb up, down, or over things.

Once, when we were on a four-day trip around a volcanic area of New Zealand, we faced a long climb up a mountain trail that was littered with boulders. Gerhard was ahead of me, and about halfway up, he stopped for a break and let me catch up because some other hikers had gotten between us. “You go up first,” he suggested (probably so he could take a longer rest!). As he followed me, he noticed that for every step he took, I had to take two or three to climb over the rocks. Sometimes, I had to use my arms to pull myself up on top of the next boulder.

When we got to the top, he acknowledged that I have to work harder because of my size. “You’re at a real disadvantage,” he admitted. Now that he has seen me struggle on rough terrain, he respects the extra effort I make whenever I tackle those trails with him.

Paddling a canoe or kayak may seem to be unrelated to size, but that’s not entirely true. People with longer arms have a longer, more powerful stroke, particularly in a canoe. If you’re trying to match your stroke timing, which can be helpful in a tandem kayak, the person with shorter arms will have to resist the temptation to paddle faster because their strokes are shorter. Sometimes it helps to give the shorter person a slightly longer paddle to compensate. If you each decide to paddle your own boat, you can decide for yourselves how important it is to go the same speed.

Size also matters when selecting a kayak paddle. Women tend to have smaller hands than men, and over a long period of time, it can be very uncomfortable to kayak with a poor-fitting paddle. A paddle with a narrower shaft helps to make things more comfortable for women, or even men with small hands.

Round and Round We Go

“ My husband and I rented a canoe while we were staying at this beautiful resort in Northern Ontario. Neither of us had used a canoe in years, so we were really wobbly, and I thought for sure we’d end up tipping over. But the most frustrating part was that he has so much more arm strength than me, that with each of us paddling on one side of the canoe, we kept turning toward my side!

I’m sure there’s an easy way to make it go straighter, but, like I said, we hadn’t done this in years. So he had to keep switching sides while he paddled so we could go in something close to a straight line. I kept trying to match his power, and the next day my arms and shoulders were just killing me. There has to be a better way! ”

—OB

You should also take your weight into consideration when you pack a canoe or tandem kayak. If one person is lighter, that person should have less of the heavy gear at his or her end of the boat. Use your gear to balance out the load from front to back so the canoe or kayak is as level as possible in the water. This will help to stabilize the boat, particularly if you hit rough water or high winds.

Working as a Team

One of the great things about being in a couple is knowing that someone’s got your back. Nobody is just going to stand around while the one they love is getting swept away by a river or is slipping off a cliff. There are many occasions during hiking, camping, paddling, or engaging in other outdoor activities when couples must act as a team, whether they’re fording a river or climbing up difficult slopes. By working together, you can keep each other safe and keep an eye on each other at the same time. In fact, building your teamwork skills can be one of the most rewarding parts of camping with your partner. Everything you learn about working as a team out in the wilderness can make you work better together in your everyday life.

Working as a team begins with understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Dimitri, a camper from New Zealand, is great when it comes to the technical challenges of backpacking. If he and his girlfriend encounter a tricky route section, he takes charge. “She thinks all trees look alike, and we’ll go back along a trail just a few months later, and she won’t remember the way at all,” he says. “So when there’s a question of which way to go, she just defers to me, even if she thinks I’ve got it wrong.” Dimitri also makes a point of showing his girlfriend where they are on the map so that she feels comfortable with the route.

Dimitri may be great at the technical skills, but he’s hopeless at logistics. So when it comes to planning and preparation, his girlfriend is chief. She gets all of the gear together, buys the food, and then packs everything neatly and efficiently. “If it was left up to me, I’d be scrambling around at the last minute, trying to cram stuff into packs,” Dimitri says. “I even forgot the map once. So now she just makes her lists and checks them twice, and I do whatever she tells me until we leave the house.”

It took them a while, but Dimitri and his girlfriend finally developed a system that allows each of them to employ their talents. “We have learned how each other interacts and reacts, and our individual strengths and weaknesses, so we know each other better,” he says. “And we encourage each other in the areas we need to strengthen.”

They’ve learned to accept their skills differences and work together. But it can be difficult for many of us to admit we’re not so good at something. If your partner is a hopeless navigator or a terrible camp cook, try not to be too judgmental. Hurt feelings can ruin a trip, and aren’t really necessary. At the same time, it’s important for both of you to be open to honest criticism from your partner. Being defensive about getting lost isn’t going to help anything, so if you’ve made a mistake it’s best to admit that you’re not perfect.