At various times over the years, Alison Minfie and her daughter Kirsten VanMarion have had a number of short-lived opportunities to try out ATVing. But it wasn’t until they began a new friendship with the Denton family that the mother-daughter duo really got a chance to get out and ride.
The pair joined Greg Denton and his two daughters, Sydney and Brooklyn, at that family’s cabin on Chitek Lake in Saskatchewan; but with only two quads between the five of them, someone was always having to stay behind, said Minifie. To alleviate this problem, Minifie decided it was time to go out and get her own machine—in the form of a red Polaris Sportsman 400.
“I call it mine, but Kirsten calls it hers,” laughed Minifie. “And because Greg and his family have given us the opportunity to have a good place to go quadding and a cabin that we can go to and stay at, it made sense that we would buy (a quad) of our own so that everyone can join in.”
As a result, Minifie and her daughter have now become addicted to riding—though, as is often the case with a mother and teenaged daughter, the two have different reasons for loving the sport.
“I love the speed,” said 14-year-old VanMarion, whose first experiences quadding were riding with friends around back pastures near her home in Asquith. “And I love driving in wide open areas where you can go faster and you don’t have to think as much about turns.”
For Minifie, it’s more about the scenery.
“I love the trees and the trails up near Chitek, because there you get a chance to see things that you’d never get to see otherwise,” said Minifie. “(I like) getting onto the quad and just getting into the forest. There are places there that you can’t get into with a regular vehicle, so there are lots of places where if you don’t have a quad or a sled, you would just never get to see.”
Minifie had difficulty expressing why she likes to quad.
“I don’t know,” she said, “it’s just something that you actually just have to get out and see to believe.”
As her daughter ventures into a time in her life when a lot of teens tend to gravitate away from doing activities with their parents, Minifie said she’s glad she now has the ATV in the warmer months—and a snowmobile for the winters—as a way of giving the two of them activities that they can do together.
“Kirsten really enjoys just getting out into nature,” said Minifie. “Whether it’s boating or sledding or quadding, she’s just happy to get out there—so I think being able to join her on these adventures has helped to bring us even closer together, and I like that we have it to share.”
An ATVing adventure in Panama
So excited about her new ATVing skills is Alison Minifie that on a recent holiday in Panama with her partner, Greg Denton, one of the tops things on their to-do list was to try mountain quadding for the first time. Little did she know what an adventure it would turn out to be.
“We were taken back into the rainforest on a tour with rented quads we got from a Canadian couple who have set up shop down there,” said Minifie, “and they first take you up the side of a mountain where you’re driving through the clouds, before taking you back down on these really steep hills. And that’s where we discovered . . . we had no back brakes.”
Minifie likened going down a steep hill on an ATV with just front brakes to riding down a hill on a pedal bike with only front brakes.
It’s not necessarily the best option,” she said.
Discovering they could use their throttle to slow their descent, Minifie and Denton eventually made it down safe and sound.
“I was a little disturbed with the first hill,” Minifie said, “but then once I realized I didn’t have brakes and I re-evaluated what I wanted to do, I’m like, alright: throttle down the hill, use the front brakes lightly and throttle so that I don’t fall and go skidding out sideways. It all worked out in the end—it just added a little more excitement to our trip.”
And what awaited them was well worth the harrowing ride.
“Down at the bottom was a beautiful waterfall that we were allowed to get off and swim in,” says Minifie. “Then we enjoyed a little drink of fresh-squeezed orange juice before getting back on our quads to quad back up over the mountain. It was amazing.”
This was an experience that has whetted Minifie’s appetite for more mountain riding, and for exploring some areas that are a little bit closer to home.
“One of the places that I would like to try is Tobin Lake near Nipawin in the northeast part of Saskatchewan,” said Minifie.
“Apparently they’ve got some really good quad trails there, so we might just have to head over and check them out."
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