Back to Alice Lake, Five Years Later
We are no strangers to Alice Lake Provincial Park. The park hasn’t changed much since our full review in 2021. The campground reservation is still hard to get, the shower facility and flush toilets are still deluxe for camping, the lake is still popular with paddlers, and the pump track is still buzzing with bikes and scooters.
Our family changed quite a bit though. Baby Bro has joined the crew, and the bigger two brothers have grown up by five years, going from toddlers wandering around camp to big kids on mountain bikes and full-face helmets. Alice Lake felt familiar, but the way we experienced it this time felt very different.
What warranted a new blog post to commemorate this May Long Weekend trip was a collection of little milestones. First, this was Middle Bro’s first one-on-one camping trip with me. It was originally planned as a full family camping trip, but Big Bro’s baseball team was short of players, so Tina stayed back with him to bolster the lineup. Baby Bro was not ready for a camping trip without mom, so he had to stay too.
That left just Middle Bro and me.
Middle Bro’s Turn for a One-on-One Camping Trip
These father-and-son camping trips are extra special. Big Bro has done a few with me already, including Golden Ears and Widgeon Creek, and he likes to brag about them to his brothers to get an “oh, not fair!” response. Well, this was Middle Bro’s turn.
On these one-on-one adventures, I feel we are more fully present, connected, and responsive to each other. It is much easier to satisfy one kid’s needs and wants than three. They don’t need to negotiate with, compromise for, or dominate over their siblings to get what they want. We can do what he wants, for how long he wants, and go as fast or slow as he wants.
And we ended up doing a lot.
On the first day, we set up camp easily and went straight out for a bike ride to explore the park. We checked out the campground loops, cruised around the familiar paths, and played “walkie-talkie hide and seek” at the playground. It was simple, low-effort camping fun, exactly the kind of thing that works best when there is only one kid to follow around.
My First Open Water Swim, With Middle Bro as Coach
Then Middle Bro wanted to paddleboard, so we pumped up his board. This led to the second first-ever milestone of the trip: open water swimming.
The setup was simple and very effective: Middle Bro was my swim coach on a paddleboard, fully geared up for immersion and fully comfortable on the board. I swam in front, with an ankle tether attached to the front of his paddleboard.
This was synergistic in several ways and fixed a few crucial problems. Middle Bro can’t paddle straight, and I can’t swim very well. Together, me pulling in front kept his board mostly straight, and him following behind gave me a floating rest station whenever I needed a break.
It was also a surprisingly good confidence-building setup. For open water swimming, the biggest challenge for me was not simply fitness. It was the feeling of being far from shore, not being able to see the bottom, and not having the comforting micro-breaks that come with touching the wall every 25 or 50 metres in a pool. Having the paddleboard beside me turned the lake from a scary open space into a manageable training environment.
Why Open Water Felt So Much Harder Than the Pool
The distance from the boat rental north beach to the swimming docks near the south beach is about 400 metres. Round trip was 800 metres. On paper, this should be doable for me in a swimming pool. In reality, open water was a completely different beast.
The water was colder, the visibility was poor, the wetsuit felt tight, the wind was blowing, and there were no walls to touch. Middle Bro was also zigzagging or outright paddling backwards for fun, creating enormous drag for me. My sense of distance in the open water was distorted too. The 400 metre destination looked equally far away for the entire swim until the last 25 metres. As I got tired, panic started to rise when it felt like I was not making any forward progress.
That was the most useful lesson of the swim. In the pool, I can measure progress one length at a time. In open water, progress is harder to see, and the mental side becomes much more important. I needed to slow down, breathe calmly, look up occasionally, and remind myself that even if the dock did not seem to be getting closer, I was still moving forward.
Training Notes From My First Open Water Swim
I took as many breaks as I needed by hanging onto the paddleboard, and slowly inched my way to the swimming docks. We took a nice long break for my heart rate to settle, then swam back.
Total elapsed time was 44 minutes for the 800 metres, with 22 minutes of moving time. In other words, my resting time was equal to my swimming time. We repeated the swim/SUP combo again the next day. This time, total elapsed time was 48 minutes and total moving time was 24 minutes, again almost exactly a 50/50 split between swimming and resting.
That was humbling, but also very useful. My current open water training priority is not speed. It is comfort, calmness, and the ability to keep moving without needing frequent long breaks. For my first open water triathlon, I do not need to swim fast. I need to be able to start the swim, settle down, keep breathing, and finish safely.
My training takeaway is that pool fitness alone is not enough. I need more practice with cold water entry, wetsuit tightness, sighting, swimming without a wall, and staying calm when the destination looks far away. The goal is to gradually turn the open water from an unfamiliar environment into a normal training space. Alice Lake was a perfect place to start because the distance was manageable, the shoreline was visible, and I had the best possible support crew: one very happy kid on a paddleboard.
I still have a long way to go before I am ready for my first open water triathlon race, but this felt like an important first step. Not a pretty step, not a fast step, but a really fun one with a goofy cooach.
Paddleboard vs. Swimmer Tug-of-War
On the second swim, Middle Bro lay down on his board and relaxed on the return leg. Then he popped up and started messing around with random paddle strokes again. We were about 25 metres from getting back to the north beach, so I came up with a new game: paddleboard vs. swimmer tug-of-war.
I switched my leash to the back of his board, and he paddled out toward the lake while I swam toward shore. It was a fun and silly battle that I ultimately won. A group on the beach was watching the spectacle with interest and gave us a big round of applause.
I am not sure this counts as proper triathlon training, but it for sure will pay memory dividends.
Trail Biking in the Squamish Estuary
Besides hanging out in the park and paddleboarding, we also went trail biking in the Squamish Estuary. The trails were flat, narrow, and just the right amount of bumpy and rooty to keep things exciting. It was not technical mountain biking, but it was perfect kid adventure biking: enough roots, turns, mud, and narrow sections to feel like an expedition without being too much.
We took a break and turned back when Middle Bro had enough, and biked 11 km in just over one hour. If Big Bro had been there, we probably would have pushed further out of Middle Bro’s comfort zone. That is one of the nice things about one-on-one trips. The adventure can be calibrated to exactly one kid. We did not need to go farther just because someone else wanted to. We could stop when he was done and still feel like the ride was a success.
The Wrap Up
After two nights of camping, we left bright and early on the last day to get back in time for Big Bro’s last baseball game. Middle Bro had no trouble getting up at 5:30 am and waiting in the car while I packed up camp, a marked contrast to his usual bed-loving self during the week when we try to wake him up for school.
Such is the difference between camping days and school days.
He was a little sad that our one-on-one adventure was ending, but we were also excited to rejoin the family. It was memorable in many ways: his first solo camping trip with me, my first open water swim, our paddleboard-swimmer tug-of-war, and a weekend where we could simply follow his pace.
I think more alone time with each kid, on top of our regular family outings, would be a very nice thing. Family adventures are wonderful, but these one-on-one trips have a different kind of magic. They give each child a chance to be the whole focus, even just for a weekend. And for the parent, they are a reminder of how much easier it is to notice the small moments when you are not trying to manage everyone at once.
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