When the De Anza Outdoor Club had a lesson in kayaking at Baylands, May 17, 2026, we also did a tent pitching lesson.
Both were proof to the participants that they can join a group of people they do not know and work together cooperatively.
We always either have people standing on the dock holding the end(s) of the kayak while people step into it:
OR a partner already in a kayak can hold cleat built into the dock
People figure out fairly quickly how to have the front ( bow) and rear (stern) paddlers matching their strokes in and out of the water at the same time:
A paddler can try paddling by themself if their partner holds their paddle up out of the water:
Having a try (successful) at strapping a kayak on the trailer:
Details about all the De Anza College Outdoor Club kayaking lessons are at: Baylands kayaking
For the tent pitching lesson, the team pitched a tent they had never seen before. Everyone agreed that the manufacturers instructions with the tent were not well written and they would advise anyone borrowing a tent before a camping trip to set it up before they go. (Hmmmm, and then they can find out if it has missing parts, or just the tent is in that bag, without the rain fly.)
Not every camper knows how to put together tent poles that are shock-cord loaded:
once the poles are slid in the tent fabric, you need to figure out which slots or grommets on the tent to put the ends of the poles in:
figuring out the rain fly internal pole:
Success!
On the 2017 winter Outdoor Club Yosemite trip these people pitched their tent incorrectly. (Many tents have instructions printed on the bag, did they read them? If they borrowed it from someone did they ask for instruction on how to pitch it? Did they try pitching it before the trip?)
When they were having difficulty with it they did not ask other more experienced campers they were traveling with for help. In the dark, from a distance, it looked to the other campers as if they were okay. They were found trying to sleep in their car in the morning and complained that their tent was “unstable,” as if to say it was a fault of the construction/design of the tent, rather than their failure to properly put the ends of the rain fly tent poles into the ring pins at the base of the tent. As far as the rest of the group could tell, it looked as though they had just stuck the ends of the rain fly tent poles in the snow.
No good tent should have the ends of the rain fly poles in the ground or in the snow. All good tents will have tabs at the corners with grommets or pockets or ring pins for the ends of poles to go in to, as in the example below from Don’t Buy A Cheap Tent
Everyone who participated in this lesson demonstrated, by the end of the day, more than enough kayaking skill to go on the between-summer-and-fall-quarter trip to Grand Teton National park in Wyoming and paddle on each lake or river we usually do.
These same kayaks are also used on our trip to Grand Teton National park,
Grand Tetons kayaking
The two women in the center of three photos above, and some people in the top photo of a paddle at sunrise on the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River
are using waterproof binoculars provided for Teton trip members.
(Notice the clip-on flotation device made from recycled De Anza swimming pool lane lines in the photo below – the club advisor made these just-in-case a pair of binoculars falls overboard.)
Below, a mid-day paddle, that we sometimes do more than once, on String Lake to Leigh Lake, where we have found a beaver dam and seen elk along the shoreline:
Going kayaking at sunrise on the Grand Teton National Park trip requires getting up while it is still dark to hook up the kayak trailer for towing:
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