Trailblazing Adventures

Helen Olsson’s definitive guide takes the guesswork out of camping with kids 

By Wendy Swat Snyder

If you’re looking for the ultimate tome on prepping for a family adventure in the wild, you needn’t look any further than the updated edition of Helen Olsson’s exhaustive book, The Down & Dirty Guide to Camping with Kids. Released in April, the book informs, with authority and a touch of humor, on everything from setting up camp to big animal safety and provides extensive lists of must-have stuff to pack. An accomplished author and camping expert, Olsson reflects on the adventurous paths she’s traveled—career and otherwise—and the exotic trek that inspired her book. 

You’re happiest tromping through woodlands, sleeping under the stars. What set you on this path?

Girl Scout camp was my first camping experience, and despite the soggy New York weather, I fell in love with the outdoors. My parents started taking my five brothers and sisters and me camping. We’d all cram into the tent out in the woods, go exploring, sticking our heads in caves—there was so much wonder. It really informed me as a person—I don’t think I would have ended up at Skiing Magazine, where so much of my job involved being outside. I think those early camping experiences made me the outdoorsy person I am today.

What led you to a career in journalism?

I was an English major in college, and after graduation, I became a ski instructor in Utah. Then, I traveled the world, all over Southeast Asia, bumming around with my brother. When I came back, I worked in PR for a couple of years, but I’d always wanted to be an editor at a ski magazine. A friend of a friend introduced me to the executive editor of Skiing Magazine at that time, and it eventually led to me getting the job I’d always wanted. It was a dream job. When I had kids, the full-time track was too much, so I went freelance, writing and editing, with stints at different magazines as editor-in-chief.

You tackle intensive writing projects while juggling editor in chief responsibilities, currently, with Modern Luxury Peak Magazine. How do you find time to explore the outdoors?

It’s a busy lifestyle for sure, but the key is that I combine the two. So much of our travel is research for stories. When the kids were little, I wrote for the Travel and Escape sections of the New York Times. I had an assignment to float in a canoe down the Niobrara River in Nebraska. So, we’d take the kids and go on this trip, and it was research for the story—that’s the fun part of it.

Writing a camping guide, and now the updated edition, seems like a natural progression considering your life experiences. What was the initial spark?

In July 2009, we took our three kids on a llama backpacking trip near Silverton, Colorado. The llamas carried our gear. It was an amazing experience for the kids—complete with llama drama—and a really novel way to camp. I wrote about the trip for the New York Times, and that story was the inspiration for my camping with kids book.  

Tell me about some of the other places you’ve explored.

I started my career at Skiing Magazine in 1993 in New York, and when the magazine moved to Boulder, my husband and I moved to Boulder too. I did a lot of travel for the magazine and was very fortunate to do things like heli-skiing in Alaska and British Columbia, and trips to Europe covering ski destinations. Once we had kids, we stayed closer to home and did a lot of camping trips in Colorado.

Are there any future camping trips on your radar?

I’m planning a backpacking trip with my two boys, now 23 and 20, to Lone Peak in Colorado. It’s 14 miles round trip and we’ll camp at Crater Lake. I love camping with my kids now that they are adults (adults-ish). Partly because they can now carry all their own gear, but mostly because they’ve turned into fun people. I got the idea for the Lone Peak trip because I featured an image of the peak on the inaugural issue of Peak Magazine, and I’ve been determined to go since then.

Teaching campers to respect the ecosystem of the natural world is a key part of your guide.

I’ve always felt it’s so important to be a good steward of the land and it’s great to pass that on to your kids. When the kids were little and we went hiking, we’d bring a little plastic bag in our backpacks, and we taught them to pick up garbage on the trail. It taught them to leave the place better than you found it. It’s the nature of this commodity that is in peril right now—if you see the value in it, you’re more inclined to protect it. It’s hard to care about something if you just lie in bed on your phone all day, scrolling through TikTok.

Helen Olsson
Editor in Chief, Modern Luxury Peak Magazine

Author, The Down & Dirty Guide to Camping with Kids

maddogmom.com; @helen_burns_olsson

» Hometown: Boulder, Colorado 

» Education:  Hamilton College, Clinton, New York

» Family:  Husband, Jeff; Kids, Quinn, Aidan, Anya

» Favorite Pastimes:  Skiing, hiking, camping, travel