Don't Pack Your Fears! Backpacking and Camping Gear I Banished from My Repair Kit
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Before we get into the repair gear we use and mentioned in the video, I want to discuss bringing your kids into the risk management conversation. You can skip to the bottom of this page if you just want to get right into the equipment we mention in the video.
You are all probably tired of hearing me talk about risks. Yet, here I went again in this video, talking about risks as probability multiplied by consequence.
I gave a couple of examples in the video about the differences between probability and consequence but really only at a very superficial level. Now, of course, we could do multiple posts on how risks factor into outdoors adventures; and even after all those posts, we’d be no closer to exhausting the topic. It really is the whole game, taking on acceptable risks that are outweighed by the benefits we bring to our whole family as we all get out.
Of course, with kids, the risks we are taking are probably pretty minimal compared to climbing super high peaks or some such; the risks are pretty small as the kids are small. But, let’s be honest, part of what getting our kids out into nature is about is teaching them - yes the joys of it - but also how to carry that love of nature into their own trips that they will undertake on their own as they get older. And they need to be equipped with a process for thinking about risks so that they can make good decisions. In that way, backcountry adventures make a nice little training ground for life, in general. It’s a great place to practice thinking about and then avoiding (not undertaking an activity that exposes you to the risk), mitigating (doing the activity that exposes you to the risk, but working to reduce the amount of risk), or accepting risks (undertaking the activity that exposes you to the risk, and doing nothing to reduce that risk).
With that in mind, talking openly about risk assessment and risk management is an important part of that education process.
We don’t force the conversations, and we certainly don’t try to convey the seriousness of the topic by overemphasizing dire outcomes. To the second point, we aren’t really doing anything with the kids where dire outcomes are probable (although, they can happen even when top rope climbing if proper safety precautions aren’t followed). To the first point, our kids are curious enough to have questions that invite the conversation in a non-threatening way. A frequently recurring theme of questions are around gear: “What is that?” “Why are you taking that on our trip?” “How do you use this?”
Kids like “toys,” and outdoor endeavors come with a lot of toys. Each one of these questions about gear are a front door to talking about why we bring a risk mitigating piece of gear and how we use it… as well as the limitations of the gear to keep us safe and how we potentially avoid certain risks. A classic example would be climbing with a rope. My kids are endlessly fascinated with why I bring a certain length or thickness of rope for a certain climb. This lets me talk about making sure we have enough rope for the length of the climb, and allows us to imagine a scenario where we had too short of rope, and how that would be complicated to deal with. The conclusion is that we mitigate the risk of having to do those complicated maneuvers by having enough rope (note, ropes can be misused or potentially cut, so this is risk mitigation not avoidance). Simultaneously, taking that scenario to the extreme of climbing without a rope, we can talk about how the risk of falling without the safety of a rope is a risk that we avoid in our family.
Starting our kids out thinking about risk is important to their future as outdoors enthusiasts as well as humans navigating a complicated world. So, as I - say - take my complicated wet adhesive patch kit out of my repair kit bag and add in Tear-Aid, I have ample opportunity to talk to my kids about why I’m making that decision, what the Tear Aid can help mitigate, and why the potentially more robust repair option of a wet adhesive patch kit is less optimal for what we are planning to do.
Now, as far as the four items we showed in the video and which we currently have in our repair kit: