So, What is A Multisport Adventure, Anyway?

If you’re not already an Austin-Lehman Adventures traveler, you may not be familiar with our approach to active vacations. At ALA, we’re no strangers to multisport adventure travel. In fact, we’ve been blazing new trails that help our travelers enjoy some of the world’s most beautiful places in the most exciting and invigorating ways possible since 1985.

An active vacation is a natural antidote to the monotony of everyday life. But take a look at the itineraries offered by most adventure travel companies, and you’d think that they’re trying to bore you with a dauntingly monolithic schedule of biking day in and day out. To truly get to know a place, sometimes you’ve got to get off the beaten track. And that usually means slowing down and getting yourself of out toe-clips. Sea lions and otters look way cooler up close from a kayak, and exploring glaciers is more comfortable (not to mention safer) on two feet rather than two wheels. 80-mile bike rides every day of your vacation isn’t the way we like to do things at Austin-Lehman. That said if you’re into that sort of thing, our guides are happy to help you peddle to your heart’s content!

At ALA, variety is the name of the game. Most of our trips are organized around two activities that our travelers love most: hiking magnificent trails through unspoiled nature and biking some of the most spectacular byways you’ve ever seen. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Depending on your destination, we add other activities that allow you a true taste of the local flavor. From paddling your way around the Galápagos Islands and the waters of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, to safari excursions through the Costa Rican jungle or savannahs of South Africa, you can’t get any closer to the action than traveling Austin-Lehman style.

We us the term “adventure” loosely here at ALA. To us, an adventure isn’t necessarily something that sends adrenaline coursing through your veins (although there’s no shortage of that sort of thing on any of our trips). We believe you’re just as likely to find adventure visiting the ancient Anasazi ruins in the American Southwest, watching a local artisan practice an age-old craft in a village in Oaxaca or sipping a glass of local wine in a chateau in France’s Loire Valley. For us, adventure is anything that gets you going, gives you a taste of local flavor and makes you look at the world a little differently.

Over the course of 20+ years of leading the pack in multisport travel, we’ve helped more than a few people discover their own sense of adventure. In search of a different way to see the world, Charlie Wiggins of Campbell Hall, New York made his first foray into adventure travel on ALA’s Glacier and Waterton Lakes trip several years back. While Charlie has long been avid cyclist, neither he nor his wife had ever taken a multisport trip before. Fortunately, their hunger for a new approach to travel paid off. Charlie tells Austin-Lehman, “That trip was the best trip I had ever taken. It lifted our spirits, woke up our senses, and gave us a whole new sense of adventure we never knew was inside us.” Austin-Lehman’s multisport approach made sense to Charlie, too. “We loved breaking up the activities like biking in the morning and hiking or rafting in the afternoon.”

Since their first trip with ALA, Charlie and his wife have been on several more adventures, including visits to Alaska and the Canadian Rockies. In fact, you might say they’ve been bitten by the adventure travel bug. In the past couple of years, Charlie and his wife have, as he tells us, have gone “native.” “We’ve gone kayaking and camping in the backcountry of Lake Clark in Alaska, just the two of us. Last summer we backpacked in the Canadian Rockies and I took a 14-day rafting trip on the Kongakut River to the Arctic Ocean in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. I can’t get enough of that adrenalin rush or ‘pucker factor’ as one of our former guides used to say.”

To be honest, we’re a little jealous of all the fun that Charlie and his wife have been having, but we couldn’t be prouder that it was a fateful Austin-Lehman trip all those years ago that sparked his sense of adventure. As he tells us, “We are thankful that the first outdoor multisport adventure trip we ever took was with Austin-Lehman. Any other company may have made our first experience our last.”

Charlie isn’t the only person whose life took a distinctly more adventurous turn after getting to know the Austin-Lehman way of traveling. Since his first multisport experience on a visit to Glacier National Park, Ken Lyons of Ringwood, New Jersey has been on several trips with ALA. Although he is a lifelong outdoors enthusiast who has enjoyed camping, backpacking and the sheer joy of being in the woods since his time as a Boy Scout, Ken had never considered an active vacation until an ALA catalog came in the mail. He tells us, “When I got the catalogue in the mail, my heart started pounding. There were pictures of destinations that I had remembered seeing through a View-Master as a child. Scanning the catalogue, I knew right away that this kind of vacation was something I would love to try. I had done my share of hiking and biking, had done some horseback riding and white water rafting. To do all of these activities in one week in some far away destination was something I had dreamed about doing.” Fortunately, Ken’s was not a dream deferred, and he was off to Montana shortly thereafter for his first multisport vacation.

About a minute into his first bike ride with Austin-Lehman, Ken knew this was the experience he was looking for. “After biking about 200 yards up the road, I felt a rush of elation – this was exactly the kind of trip I wanted! The rest of the trip was one series of highlights, one after another…from rafting the Lower Flatbrook River to bicycling part way up Going to the Sun Road…to horseback riding, great hikes, great guides and great guests. This trip was in August of 1995 and I remember it still like it was last month. The next to the last day, I actually felt sadness that the trip would soon be over. And when I got home, I felt like a new person – like my spirit had been rejuvenated and I was ready to take on whatever came my way. I love this kind of a vacation so much that I have now been on seventeen of them! Each is special in its own way and I remember every one and the people I shared them with. When I’m stressed out by life, I simply go back in my mind to these trips and it raises my spirits and gets me thinking about my next adventure.”

Neither Charlie nor Ken knew what they were getting into when they first signed up for a trip with ALA, but for these two intrepid travelers – as well as hundreds of other Austin-Lehman alumni – multisport travel has become not only a great way to vacation, but also a new way to see the world. We invite you to visit our website or contact the office to find out more about our upcoming multisport adventures. After all, with summer just around the corner, a biking-hiking-rafting-riding-cultural-dining adventure may be just what the doctor ordered to shake off the last of those winter doldrums.