Archive for the ‘hiking tips’ Category
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How to Train for a Long Hiking Trip
So you’re finally ready to do it: heading out to the Grand Canyon in a month or two, you feel excited for all of the views you’re going to see. But are you ready for all of the exercise you’re going to get? If you need to shake off your hiking rust, this article will help whip you back into hiking shape so you can concentrate on the nature – not the nuisance.
There’s No Training Like the Real Thing
You might be putting in extra hours at the office in order to make sure that you can have this extended hiking trip, but that doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze in a few hiking jaunts on your own. If you can, bring your spouse on these hiking trips so that you both receive the benefits. If you venture out alone, make sure you don’t venture far off the beaten path – your goal is simply to re-acquaint yourself with the experience of hiking. If you must have adventure, make sure you bring equipment like a compass and GPS device.
There is no training like the real thing: hiking up and down hills will help you not only build up the leg strength you’ll be requiring, it will help you work out the details of your own trip. What did you forget to bring on this hiking trip that you’ll need on your hiking trip? What was uncomfortable about your hike, and what can you buy out there on the marketplace that will help you feel better?Training Near or At Home
Of course, it’s not always possible to get out there and hike in the woods. How should you exercise and prepare today?
First, take a look at your daily routine. Whether you’re sitting on the couch all day or simply taking a daily walk, you might want to change things up to better reflect what you’ll be doing on your trip. If you’ve been avoiding that big hill on your walk, it’s time to take on the challenge. If your treadmill has an incline feature, be sure to make avid use of it.
Second, make sure you feel okay about leaving indoor civilization for hours at a time, even if your exercise routine keeps you on the treadmill. Ask yourself what you’d need to feel comfortable: plenty of water and snacks, sure. But also remember that on your hiking trip, you’ll want to bring gadgets like binoculars and a digital camera. Most importantly: be cautious and safe, and you should have plenty of fun.
Photo Credits: tricky â„¢
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5 Ways to Get Your Feet Ready for a Hiking Trip
If you plan on going on a hiking trip, you’ve probably made some of the preparations: you have an idea of where you’re going and how long you’ll be there. But when it comes to the “crunch time” of really packing up and being totally prepared to head out, many people find that they’ve put off too much until the last minute.
That’s why you’ll want to start getting your feet ready today. With these five tips, you’ll build up both foot muscle and skin strength so that you can enjoy the hiking trip for the fresh air and views without thinking about your feet.
1. Walk barefoot as much as possible going into the trip.
Many of us walk around with socks and sandals, even around the house, and while this makes us more comfortable, it doesn’t exactly put a lot of stress on the feet. Why is this a bad thing? You want to put a little stress on them to get them stronger and work them up to a toughness that you’ll need once you finally hit the outdoors.
2. Trim your nails and check for possible ingrown nails.
Toenails grow slowly, so it’s sometimes tempting to ignore them. But before you go hiking, trimming your nails will help you to avoid jamming them and breaking them. Check for ingrown nails as well – if your toes look clear and are pain-free, chances are you don’t have any. Get your toenails round and short.
3. Exercise with your feet.
Even a little bit of walking every day will help you get your feet used to activity. For the more ambitious, you could try small hikes and jogs, but as long as you’re working out and using those feet muscles, you should be pretty good.
4. Wear comfortable, thick socks.
This can go without saying, but it’s worth the reminder: socks are crucial to keeping your feet comfortable. Test out a few before going and make sure they don’t hole up easily. You might even test them by going outside and using them – just make sure to wash them again!
5. Make sure your shoes are comfortable.
This will depend on your feet type and the type of terrain you plan on tackling, but if you have a pair of shoes or boots that you’ve taken hiking before and don’t put unnecessary strain on your feet, you’re off to a good start. Don’t bring a brand new pair of shoes on your hiking trip, as these sometimes need “breaking in” time and can give your feet blisters.
Photo Credits: David Plotzki
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The Hiking and Camping First Aid Kit
While the hiker who’s a trained doctor is a rarity, most doctors would agree that it’s better to self-treat when out in the wilderness and encountering an emergency medical situation, rather than not to treat at all. For this reason, when you’re hiking or camping, constructing a quality first aid kit that adequately prepares you for the challenges of the outdoors will be one of the most important stages of your preparation.
First aid kits can only carry so much, but if you know what to carry and how to use it, you can help those materials make the greatest possible impact on the positive health and safety of yourself and those you’re travelling with. Here are some items to include in your hiking or camping first-aid kit.
-Bandages.
Covering up cuts and scraps will be crucial for preventing infection and promoting the healing of your dings and dents, and will be especially crucial for deeper knicks and cuts. Carry a variety of bandages, including a bandage roll for taping, triangular bandages, butterfly bandages, and an assorted variety of adhesive bandages, in a range of sizes.
-Disinfectants and alcohol swaps.
Again, preventing infection is often one of the highest priorities in outdoor medical situations, and treating cuts or marks the proper way will go a long way toward preventing infection. Before even dressing a wound, being able to apply disinfectant of some sort, fighting against bacteria, will be a key issue.
-Medicine.
This seems obvious, but what kind of medicine? Many recommend Aspirin or ibuprofen, so those might be good to carry. But also consider a possible attack of diarrhea or other stomach sickness that will require some ideal digestive medicine to help ease suffering and get the recovery process going more quickly. Consider medicines for treating diarrhea, especially, as an essential element, even if you carry small amounts of that medicine.
-Gauze and wipes.
Gauze and wipes are important to carry because you don’t exactly want to clean wounds with leaves while you’re out there. Gauze is very lightweight, so it makes sense to carry plenty without adding any burden to what you’re carrying on a hike, and it might just come in handy.
-A Swiss Army knife.
A Swiss Army knife already has plenty of tools for working in the outdoors, but scissors can prove especially useful in medical situations, helping cut through clothing to get to a wound, or helping to dress and replace the bandages on a wound.
Be sure to look at first aid kits and check out the local situations of each hiking and camping opportunity to make sure that your first aid kit is customized to your needs.
Photo Credits: gregor_y
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Three Steps for Packing Your Backpack
Unbeknownst to casual or first-time hikers, the weight and quality of your backpack – not to mention what it contains – can be one of the most important predictors as to whether or not you’ll have a good time hiking. Why is this? Because backpacks that are too heavy or drag on the shoulders will wear you down, making you expend more energy than you need to and ultimately making it an uncomfortable experience. Here are three steps for packing your backpack in a way that won’t slow you down.
#1. First, make sure you have a decent backpack.
For the hiker, the backpack is the best “expense” to take an opportunity to really splurge on something of high quality. Backpacks with steel frames that rest on your back, distributing the weight of their contents can be highly helpful, and it might feel like you’ve got some extra support from somewhere as you carry it. A simply school backpack that only drags on your shoulders, pulling them tight and hurting them, simply won’t do here. If you’re going to overspend at any point here, spend more money on quality on a backpack.
#2. Plan in advance.
Planning in advance to fill your backpack with the essentials will help you make sure you cover your bases. Do a mental walkthrough of your planned hike and ask yourself what you feel like you’ll need. A cell phone or not? How much water? Some emergency food, or a meal? Depending on the length and quality of your hike, these answers will be different for everyone.
Planning in advance will also help you to pack more tightly, as you’ll be able to fit items better if you plan them out rather than simply “stuffing them in.” Stuffing them in will lead to an uneven weight distribution and will drag you down while you’re out on the hiking trail.
#3. Review and remove.
The key is to pack as light as you can, while not sacrificing any of the materials you know you’ll need. Water is kind of heavy, so that might be a necessary evil for you (unless you carry your own water filters). Do you want navigating electronics, or can you do without the technology? Review what you’ve got, try out your backpack and see how heavy it is. Try not to imagine how heavy it is now, but how heavy it will be after an hour of hiking. What can you afford to lose? These are important questions to consider – the key is to do most of the preparation and thinking before you take your hike so that later you don’t have to.
Photo Credits: richardmasoner
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5 Hiking Etiquette Tips That Will Prevent Any Possible Rudeness
If you’re starting out as a hiker – or as an avid follower of any outdoor activity – you’re probably not aware of some of the finer rules and unwritten regulations that govern day-to-day activity. Which is another way of saying that you might make dumb mistakes and make people mad. But, thankfully, this article will help explain some basic hiking etiquette tips that will take away any of the guesswork and have you looking like a pro quickly.
Tip #1: Mind Your Environment. When you’re out hiking, it’s tempting to use new gadgets and equipment to make nature more like the indoors – and in doing so, we sometimes “mess” with the natural setting that so many people enjoy. Even if you’re not an environmentalist, it can be polite to make sure that you leave most of the wildlife the way you found it, so clean up after yourself. This also includes littering – littering is a big no-no: people don’t come out hiking to get a view of the latest junk food wrappers that have scattered on the ground.
Tip #2: The path isn’t a restroom. This might seem like a no-brainer, but you might be surprised how many people find it funny to use the path as their personal restroom. Instead, make sure that when nature calls, you’re well out of sight and won’t be making a mess that could get in the way of other hikers.Tip #3: Use soap discriminantly. What does discriminantly mean? Well, many soap products can actually get into water supplies and make them bad; so make sure that you’re either using a public place that has drains to do your washing or in a source of water that’s far off the beaten path. If you’re soaping up your hair in a small waterfall that leads to a small stream that other people might use for various reasons, this could be considered rude.
Tip #4: Monitor your noise levels. One of the big irritants for many people isn’t necessarily the sight of another person, but the sound that person might bring with them. Don’t treat a hiking ground as a campsite where you can pull up your trailer and start blasting your tunes; instead, make sure that you mind other peoples’ experience. Control your noise and make sure that you don’t go above and beyond the unreasonable levels.
Tip #5: Notify rangers and supervisors about litter or vandalism. Sometimes, you might come across signs that have been vandalized or damaged – make sure that you keep a mental note of them and make sure to tell the local ranger. This will help maintain the site and will keep the signs fresh for other hikers.
Photo Credits: rcoder
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The Differences Between “Regular” and Snow Hiking
If I ask you to picture a hike through the woods, what do you imagine? Green leaves, plenty of bugs, and a sunny day? For many people, those might be the first images that come to mind, but for others, their view of hiking might include some very different scenery.
Snow hiking can be very popular during the winter months, and if you plan on becoming a year-round hiker and live in a northern state, you’re going to want to learn how to do it, too. So let’s take a look at some of the differences between “regular” hiking and snow hiking.
Difference #1: The obvious – snow!
It’s one thing to walk in the mud in a hike after a summer thunderstorm, but to walk in the mud and in the snow during the winter months presents an entirely different set of challenges. The difference between a “dry” ground and a “snowy” ground is apparent for anyone who has ever tried to hike in the snow. Sure, you can bring special boots that will make it easier to grip the ground and stay dry, but these boots will also add weight to your burden. For snow hikers, learning how to navigate the snow, stay dry, and still keep moving is one of the toughest challenges.
Difference #2: The mercury on the thermometer
One of the real potential dangers of snow hiking, however, isn’t always the snow – it’s the temperature you’ll read on the thermometer. While a summer hike will warm you up, a snow hike can easily cool you down too much. You’ll still sweat, but unless you’re properly protected from the elements you might want to stay inside. Protecting your extremities will be vitally important, as will keeping yourself dry.
Difference #3: The equipment
As already mentioned, snow boots will suddenly become a necessity on a snow hike; these snow boots will typically add a lot of weight to your stride. Other equipment will also be necessary – you’ll want lightweight material that insulates well while keeping you dry. You don’t have to think about covering skin on every summer hike, but on a cold winter hike, it can be a very different story.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll find that there are actually plenty of similarities between summer and snow hiking. A year-round hiker might even grow to view the changing of the seasons as a good way to mix up their routine and keep them feeling sufficiently challenged every time they head out.
Photo Credits: footloosiety
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Habits for the Serious Hiker
If you’ve been a serious hiker for some time, or if you’ve been hiking but want to step your game up, this article is for you. It will help explain the ins and outs of hiking on a habitual basis and will set you in the right direction to make hiking a long-term hobby and great form of exercise that doesn’t only treat the body, but the mind. Here’s not only how to hike seriously, but how to take yourself seriously.
First, time management is the key principle here. You’ll never be a habitual hiker unless you’ve got the time for it. Many people often use the excuse of “I’m too busy for one more habit or hobby,” but that simply isn’t true. We’re as busy as we make ourselves, and besides, you’re really just admitting that you’re bad at time management. Instead, make hiking a priority and making it an important one.
In “Ultramarathon Man,” Dean Karnazes explains the process he undertook to hold a full-time job while training for ultramarathons – running long distances of 50 miles or more. He loved running so much he did it in the morning, during lunch breaks, and after work. Does this mean you have to start hiking during your lunch breaks? No, but it means you will have to pursue hiking seriously if you expect to get out of it what you put into it.This means saying no to friends on occasion, and maybe even saying no to family. Hikers sometimes live a dual life – they have the ability to stop and smell the roses by getting out and enjoying nature, but they don’t have time for anything else. If you’re going to be a serious hiker, give time management your earnest attention.
Second, you’ll want to have the right – and the best – gear. This doesn’t mean you have to be a walking cyborg of GPS systems and hydration technology. In fact, you can be a minimalist if you want. If you’re a cyborg or a minimalist, though, be prepared for both – do your research up front for the kind of equipment you might want to bring along, and once your purchasing decisions have been made, live with them and get out there, and leave it at that.
A key theme here is how you spend your time, and if you’re a serious hiker, you want to take the strategy of “hike first, ask questions later.” After all, you don’t know what gadgets or equipment you need unless you’ve been out there and experienced a few discomforts that could easily be eradicated. You also might learn what you enjoy doing out there, such as walking without a hiking stick or backpack, and this will help you make some informed decisions, as well.
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Hiking with GPS
Many people want to make hiking a permanent hobby for them, but are usually thrown back by a few excuses. What if it’s too cold or too hot today? Won’t it be uncomfortable? What happens if I get lost? What will I do?
There are answers to these questions, and if you’re serious about being a habitual hiker, you might even just ignore them. But here’s one question that has a definite answer you can find right away: “will I get lost?” No, you don’t have to. If you want to do some deep-words exploring, you can go hiking with a GPS to help you find your way, and leave “bread crumbs” through the forrest to not only get you where you’re going, but to get yourself back to where you came from.
Of course, there’s another mental hurdle. “Isn’t GPS hard to use?” Well, of course, the answer is no. GPS devices including GPS watches can be like mobile computers, but that doesn’t mean you have to be computer literate to handle one. Instead, you can either ask someone who knows, consult the sales team where you buy your GPS, try it out yourself, or some combinatino of all three. It’s not like you haven’t learned anything before and, believe me, it will actually end up being much simpler than you’re making it out to be.
Once these mental hurdles are gone, you’ll be able to go hiking worry-free. You’ll feel free to explore and try paths you wouldn’t have tried otherwise if there was a fear that you might get lost. Instead, you’ll be able to simply put “one foot in front of the other” on your journey, keeping your focus off of your navigation. the GPS will handle navigation for you, and besides, you can’t enjoy the mental benefits of hiking if you’re too worried about getting back.For many people, hiking is about the freedom of the open woods, about climbing obstacles and conquering hills. The best way to do this is to keep things simple, and by keeping close watch on your path and your navigation, you lose some of the intense foccus that gives many hikers such an intense natural high. You want to be full y present when you’re out there, and having GPS on your wrist can often give you the peace of mind to do just that.
Keep one thing in mind, however: GPS does strip some of the mystique away. You might even want to keep your GPS covered or in your backpack during the trip yourself to add to the reality of being in the wilderness with only yourself and your wits with you. You’ll always know that you’re leaving that metaphorical trail of bread crumbs to get back, but you’ll also experience the reality of living totally natural, if only for a while. It makes for a great escape from civilization, and once you’re ready to come home, fire up the GPS and find your car. It’s that simple.
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What is the Purpose of Hiking Poles?
You might have heard of skiing poles and understand their purpose – after all, if you’ve ever been on a pair of skis, you know that you can’t just “shake” your way downhill if you’re still on a flat surface. Sometimes you need poles for extra leverage, and to give your hands access to the ground in order to gain needed support. If it makes so much sense on a ski hill, why not bring poles to the hiking trail when you’re exercising during the summer?
Hiking poles can be just as useful as ski poles, even if you don’t need them to slide across the ice in the summers. Here are a few of the purposes many people find hiking poles serve:
-Easier traveling.
Believe it or not, hiking poles really can have a tangible difference on your overall experience. This doesn’t just mean the short-term experience or the quality of the hike, but the long-term effects of walking up and down hills for a long period of time. Hiking poles will help support your weight, reducing the stress placed on your legs, knees, and ankles.
It’s not simply about making it easy on yourself during the actual hike, but making hiking as a lifelong hobby easier on you. If you’re looking to become a long-term hiker, you might want to look into skiing poles.-Stabilization.
In addition to carrying the load, hiking poles serve another useful purpose: leverage. Like ski poles, hiking poles will give you more adaptability to adverse weather conditions, such as when it starts to sprinkle, or when the previous winter’s snow is still melting. You can’t always rely on your own two feet when you’re out and about on the trail; there might be mud or other difficult terrain that you don’t want to risk slipping in. A hiking pole or two will give you added leverage, making you feel like you have three or four legs instead of just two.
-Flexibility.
In addition to providing leverage, the hiking poles are an instrument that prepares for the worse. What if you’re coming up on a stream in which there are slippery rocks? A hiking pole can be dug into the bottom of the stream, giving you something to use as leverage when there’s nothing else around. It also gives you a greater range because of the reduced pressure on your back, as well as an increased ability to trek uphill.
To many, hiking poles are simply ways of taking the hobby too far – but if you’re like me, you see the value in “going to far” for the sake of a healthy, long-term hobby.
Photo Credits: Rick McCharles
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Hiking: Should You Bring a Light Backpack or a Heavy Backpack?
When someone is going for a hike, they inevitably run into a decision to make: should they pack heavy and be sure they have plenty of supplies, or should they strip down to the minimum and carry a lighter load? It doesn’t take much thought to imagine that the heavier your bag is, the more supplies you’ll want to keep (such as food and water to remain hydrated and fueled). Is either strategy better than the other one? Let’s take a closer look.
Bringing a heavier bag will sometimes be necessary. If you’re going on a long hike, there are certain supplies you’ll need that you wouldn’t carry on a short hike. If you’re going on a weekend backpacking trip through the hills, you’ll want to carry supplies for camping at night, as well. If you’re just going for a quick jaunt up the hiking trail, you’ll only need a first aid kit, and some food and water.
But what if you want to strip down your backpack for a light experience even when you’re on a long hike? Can you still enjoy a light backpack?General wisdom amongst minimalists who like light backpacks suggests that the lighter your load is, the less you’ll need to carry. To consider the alternative of wearing a heavy backpack, we’ll have to consider the benefits that adding extra supplies might carry with it.
Ultimately, the things you bring in your backpack should either be necessary for your survival - first-aid, food, water, etc. - or should make your life easier in some way. This brings us to the idea of technology.
Some gadgets, such as GPS navigation devices, can really make your life easier. However, they aren’t always totally necessary. The decision ultimately comes down to enjoying the convenience of a heavier load against depending on yourself with a smaller amount of supplies.
It’s recommended that you bring everything you need to keep safe, and work to keep it as simple and light as possible. For example, a GPS watch is easy to carry. Make a list of all of the things you’ll want to bring hiking, and then narrow it down to the bare necessities, or the excellent conveniences that don’t add too much weight to your load.
Ultimately, experience and skill will help determine how little you’ll be able to carry. Even if you want a very light load to carry, try going on a brief hike to see what kind of supplies are and aren’t necessary. Good hiking starts with you.
Photo Credits: rebonnett
