The Ideal Drive To Adventure Ratio

Of course, the ideal drive to adventure ratio is zero. No driving, great adventures. We are lucky where we live as we can have great adventures right out the front door. I am a huge fan of adventuring in your own neighbourhood. Not only does it force some creativity into your adventures - see my recent 50 km day - but it also good for the planet.

Spring ski touring in the North Shore Mountains

In John Baldwin's unrivalled book, Exploring The Coast Mountains On Skis, he has trips in the North Shore Mountains of Vancouver and he highlights that the beauty of these trips is that instead of driving for three hours to get up the Duffy Lake Road, you spend that six hour transit time skiing, or hiking. I think that is a great attraction. I hate sitting in cars, buses, trains, or any other fossil fuel powered vehicle. It feels like such a waste of time and, as I have the attention span of a gnat, I am bored, restless and ready to move within about three minutes.

It does not take much to get me climbing the walls

My attitude was not always so clear. I used to drive a lot when we lived in Nelson as I had this penchant for doing new things, so I was always looking for the next mountain to climb or the next new route I could do.

Climbing a new route in the Valhallas

We did do some adventures from our mountain home. One year we skied from our house to the summit of Red Mountain in the Bonnington Range, a long, but not necessarily worthy journey as the slog up the rutted snowmobile tracked logging road took four hours. We did manage to do a couple of runs while we were in the alpine making the day over 30 kilometres long with 1500 metres of elevation gain.

Nearing the summit of Red Mountain

Once in the summer, we rode mountain bikes up the same road but climbed Copper Mountain instead. This was no mean feat either as I had no suspension at all on my mountain bike and Copper Mountain FSR is exceedingly steep and loose. Our notes indicate that the trip took 11 hours, but I think we spent a couple of those hours searching for the Copper Mountain Hut. In any event, it was another big day of over 30 kilometres and 1600 metres of gain. Those are trips you don't repeat when you just want to get out for a few hours training!

Me and a couple of ski buddies on Copper Mountain in spring

In any event, this entire blog post came about because I was thinking about driving over to the north side of the Bay for my morning run. I would travel some different trails and it is always cool to get up on North Head when there is a big swell running and stormy conditions at sea. But, when I thought about it, I realised that would be about an hour of driving for a two or three hour run and the drive to adventure ratio just didn't thrill me.

North Head view

So, what is the ideal drive to adventure ratio? I think at least 4:1.