How Many Miles Do You Hike in a Day?
I recently hosted a live Q&A session on Instagram about hiking in a bigger body. I’ll be addressing the questions I received on my blog over the next several weeks. This week’s question is about daily mileage when tackling a long hike.
Q. How do you estimate how many miles you could hike in a day? Is the number of miles always the same each day when you're planning a hike or a through hike?
A: It’s tempting to plan your distance per day based purely on the total number of miles you have to hike divided by days you’ll be hiking, but that’s not always rational when you find yourself on the trail.
This summer I hiked 100 miles of The Long Trail, a 273 mile trail that runs the length of Vermont, from Massachusetts to Canada. I wanted to average 10 miles a day, but there were some sections of trail that were so challenging, 5 or 6 miles would have been a better mission on those days.
The most important thing you can do is take a good look at the topographical map for the section you’re planning to hike. Of course, you can use a paper map of the trail, if you have one, but I’ve found a couple of apps that are super helpful. For The Long Trail I used the Guthook app. It not only has a GPS to track where you are along the trail, it also has points of interest and reviews from other hikers on things like shelter and water sources. Guthook has a topo section that shows you what you can expect in terms of upcoming ascents or descents and where you are along the way.
Another good option is All Trails. This app (and website) has plenty of trails with reviews and maps as well as a GMP to track your location.
A quick look at Guthook helped me decide if, based on the hill profile for the day, it was going to be a 6-mile day or a 12-mile day, but I learned it the hard way.
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There was one day when we had planned a 12 mile hike and we were feeling really strong. It had been a gorgeous, rolling hike with views of Bennington, VT and we only had a mile and a half to go. I hadn’t checked the topo map, and it turned out the last stretch was a brutal, rocky descent from the ridgeline to the road. Those who have hiked The Long Trail will know the section I’m talking about (I’m looking at you, Route 9 in Bennington).
I can go uphill all day long, but with my knees being fragile, and being in a larger body, going downhill is so challenging. So, this mile and a half, it must have taken us two hours to just go down on these wobbly rocks. There's a great picture on Instagram of me navigating this terrain, and you see this close-up of me on the rocks, but it was just like that for a mile and a half.
A post shared by Kara Richardson Whitely (@kararichardsonwhitely)
So, when you're estimating how many miles that you're trying to manage in a day, you have to look at the terrain, how you're feeling, and the weather conditions. And all of those help determine how many miles that you can do.
Don’t forget the value of training hikes. When I was training to hike Havasu Falls, which is 12 miles in and 12 miles out with 8 miles of additional hiking in between, I was training with a minimum of 8 mile hikes. As you're doing practice hikes, you're going to get an idea of how much you can do.
I’ll be answering more questions here over the next few weeks. If there’s something you would like to see me write about, let me know by shooting me an email.
