Planning one real hike, start to finish
We've covered water, storms, socks, the map, the pack, gear you don't need, injuries, late starts, and keeping a group together. Today we put all of it into one exercise: picking a real trail and planning it start to finish, the way I actually do it at my kitchen table.
This is the lesson where the spreadsheet finally makes sense as a whole thing instead of pieces.
Step 1: Pick the trail and pull the numbers
Get the mileage and the elevation gain. Not just mileage. If a route is four miles with 2,500 feet of gain, that's a different hike than four flat miles, and I want you looking at the profile before you look at anything else. Mileage lies. Gain per mile tells you the truth about what your legs are in for.
Write both numbers down. This goes in your log before you do anything else, the same way I write down jar counts before I even start canning.
Step 2: Work backward from the weather
Figure out your start time by working backward from when you need to be off anything exposed. In summer, canyon thunderstorms build almost on a schedule from July into September, and I want you off a ridge or summit by early afternoon. If the trailhead is 45 minutes from your house and the hike itself is five hours, that tells you what time you're getting up. Not what time you'd like to get up. What time the math says.
Step 3: Water, sized to the route
Water first, everything else second. Figure your mileage and gain, then add more than the number in your head tells you. Our air here is dry, you'll lose more water than you notice, and I'd always rather carry the extra weight down a trail than run out going up. If you're not sure, round up and then add a little more.
Step 4: Check your fitness against the route honestly
This is where I want you looking at your own training log, not a fitness app. I tried one of those apps a while back to get ready for a longer route and gave up on it inside a week. It wanted me logging things that had nothing to do with what I'd actually be doing on a trail. What worked instead was walking the hills in my own neighborhood before work, with a loaded pack, and paying attention to what left me winded and where. That told me more about my real fitness than any app screen ever did.
So before you commit to a route, ask yourself: have I walked anything with this much gain lately? If the answer's no, that's not a reason to cancel the hike. It's a reason to pick something a little smaller first, or spend a couple weeks on hill walks with a pack before you go.
Step 5: Build the pack list around this specific hike
Pull your standard pack list, but adjust it for the day. More water if it's hot or the gain is heavy. An extra layer if you're starting early and it'll be cold at the trailhead. The paper map for this specific trail goes in before anything else. Always.
Step 6: Write down your turnaround time before you leave the house
Not "we'll see how it looks." An actual time. If you're not at the summit or the ridge by that time, you turn around, no debate, no matter how close it feels. Decide this at your kitchen table, not on the trail when everyone's tired and wants to keep going.
Step 7: Tell someone where you're going
Trailhead, route, expected return time. Text it, write it on the counter, whatever works. This costs you nothing and matters more than almost anything else on this list.
Putting it together
Here's what the whole plan looks like for one made-up hike, the way I'd write it in my log before I leave the house:
- Trail: 5.5 miles, 2,100 feet gain
- Start time: 6:30 a.m. (back below treeline by 1:00)
- Water: 3 liters, maybe more if it's warm
- Fitness check: walked my neighborhood hill loop with a loaded pack three times this month, felt good
- Pack: standard list plus an extra layer, paper map, ibuprofen
- Turnaround time: 11:30 a.m., no matter what
- Told my neighbor where we're headed and when we should be back
That's it. That's the whole plan. It takes maybe fifteen minutes at your kitchen table once you've done it a few times, and it's the difference between a hike that goes fine and a hike where you're the one making decisions on the fly at 2 p.m. with a storm building.
Before next time
Pick a real trail you'd actually like to do this season and build out this whole plan for it, on paper. Bring it to class and we'll look at a couple together.