Hiking for beginners can be an intimidating experience as it requires a lot more preparation than normal traveling. Hiking means exploring a place you have never been before on foot. The landscape can be either hills, deserts, beaches, or countryside. If you wonder how you can start, cross-check your list with the suggestions penned down in this article.
Identify the Level of Your Physical Fitness
This is the first question to ask yourself before you start. Be honest with your physical fitness, as you are about to rely on it heavily when you are hiking. An effective way to check that is to take an experimental hiking tour. Choose a nearby and relatively easier elevated spot. Put on your essentials and hike. It will help you identify the challenges you may face and weak points that you need to work on before the real one.
One significant fitness area is that you need to build your cardio strength slowly but steadily. This is crucial if you want to cover a longer and more elevated hiking route. Keep track of when you start losing your breath or struggle to walk. Continue working on improving those areas. Thus, you can anticipate how fit you are or choose particular places you are suitable to hike at. Besides, keep exercising at home or the gym regularly to grow your endurance as well as strengthen your leg or back muscles. Yoga is effective for breathing exercises too.
Preparation Hacks for the Hiking Beginners
As a beginner, an outdoor hike may seem overwhelming to you when it comes to planning. There are a handful of things you should keep in mind. For example,
- Get familiar enough with the hiking location to ensure you do not wander off to the wild.
- Prepare your hiking itinerary and location map ahead of your tour.
- Dressing and footwear should be chosen carefully depending on the seasons and weather.
- Food, medicine, and water should be hike-dependent, i.e., more for a longer track.
- Trained with a first aid course for safety in the wild.
- Ensure listing up relevant contact details of the trail’s associates.
Keep these hacks in mind on the trail
- Make sure you stay on the trail, even if it takes the longer track. Taking shortcuts through less-known terrain can bring unpredicted danger.
- Maintain the hiking etiquette when you meet a group or hike along with others.
- Follow leave-no-trace principles. Keep your waste in your backpack.
- Consider a nap or snack break every time you feel out of breath or your legs shutting down. Do not burn your energy.
- If possible, get a partner in hiking. This is the best support during crisis moments.
Carry a Guidebook or Map Along with Online Resources.
Many of the expert hikers suggest carrying a hard copy of a location map and service guidebook in the backpack while hiking a new place. Particularly if the hiker is new to this kind of tour. This comes extremely handy as commonly phone coverage is weak or dies of low battery. Get yourself familiar with the navigation of the hardcopy resources; even learn to use a compass. At times, it can save you time and help you stay on track.
A Suitable Hiking Trail for Beginners
As a beginner, when you are choosing a trail, certain aspects need to be well thought out. These are distance, terrain, elevation, difficulties, and supports and services around. It is a challenge to figure out these concerns without setting foot in the place.
However, you can contact your outdoorsy friends with hiking experiences for recommendations. Moreover, there are many hiking groups on Facebook and other social platforms where you can join and get tagged in hiking groups. For the first one, group hiking is pretty safe. In addition, hiking solo can be a bit nerve-racking for beginners, given that sometimes you may not come across someone for days. Hiking in a group provides a sense of safety and allows the novice hiker to share challenges with others.
Online resources can be a great help in this case. Download the online apps AllTrails or HikingProject and check the user reviews of your preferred trails. Therein, users rank the trails based on many aspects, including the level of difficulty. This helps the beginner to find a suitable trail matching his/her physical fitness and hiking competence.
Two types of hiking trails are usually something a hiker considers for their tour:
- Easy hike: It is usually a maximum 5-mile track with a lower elevation.
- Moderate hike: The trail is usually 5 to 8 miles long with a couple of thousand feet of elevation gain.
Beginners better start with the easy one and gradually prepare themselves for the longer version of the moderate hike.
A few recommended hiking trails for beginners:
- Golden Canyon-Gower-Gulch-Loop-Trail, Death Valley National Park, CA
- Soldier Pass Trail, Red Rock Secret Mountain of AZ
- Arabia Mountain via Mountain Top Trail, GA
- West Highland Way, Scotland.
- Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China
- Jatiluwih Rice Terraces, Bali, Indonesia.
Keep it simple!
Adept hiker Tyler Tennant advises beginners to “keep it simple.” This is extremely important while planning hiking for beginners. This activity is aimed at partaking in adventurous pleasure. Nonetheless, beginners sometimes get hard on themselves regardless of their mental and physical strength or limited experience. This sometimes makes them lose interest in trying it again. To avoid such disasters, start with a place that is known publicly and safe. Choose a short hike if you are not fit for long. With time, you will be more enduring and confident for longer rides.
Hiking for beginners is equally an emotional and learning experience. However, amidst all the planning hassles and safety concerns, remember to gather memories. Relish the wilderness you discover as you hike, meet and chat with people you pass by, and stop by when you see wildlife to snap a photo. After all, this is the mere purpose of a hiking tour for everyone.
