Hiking Efficiently

Trekking Poles - You may have seen people using what look like ski poles while hiking sometimes.  These are called trekking poles.  When used properly, they serve many purposes - they can help you maintain your balance on rocky or uneven terrain, they can help you set a pace for hiking, they help propel you forward, they help take strain off of your knees while descending, they can help you dig a hole to go potty in, and if you have a tarp or tent designed to use them they double as your tent poles.  Our family uses them on all of our backpacking trips and I use them on all of my hikes with friends.  If you are just walking on flat terrain, they aren't much help.  They really shine when we go up and down.

It is important to use the poles correctly for maximum efficiency.  If you just plant the poles in front of you and walk up to them, they won't be doing you much good besides stabilizing you - they are really just weights in your hand.  If you want them to help propel you forward, plant the poles behind where your feet are (not inline with your feet, just somewhere to the side and behind your feet) and use your shoulders and triceps to push.  You will know if you are using them correctly when you upper body feels like it has had a good workout at the end of a hike.  Use the opposite approach to take strain off of your knees while coming downhill.  Plant them out in front you and use your arms and shoulders to put weight on the poles so your knees don't carry as much as you descend.  To do this, it usually helps to extend the poles by about 5 cm (most poles have markings in cm on them already) while you are going downhill. 

How to Walk - OK, not really how to walk, but more like how to walk efficiently.  Let's revisit our favorite subject physics.  We know that force (or weight) times distance = work or energy.  We also know that work or energy divided by time is power.  Let's see how this applies to hiking.  Let's say there is a log going across the trail.  I have two options, I can step ONTO the log, stand up on it thereby lifting all my body weight plus the weight of my pack, and then step down off of it while using my muscles to have a controlled decent of my body weight and pack.  The amount of work we did is (body weight + pack) times the height of the log.  Makes me tired just writing that.  The other option is to step OVER the log.  The work or energy involved with this is just the weight of a leg times the height of a log.  It may not seem like a huge difference, but do this again and again and again for miles and miles, and you will feel a difference.  Let's go back to power, which is energy divided by time.  The path in front of me may present 2 options (even though it is just one path) - I could choose to take a big step up onto a rock and gain a foot or two of elevation at once, or I could choose to take a series of smaller steps adjacent to the big rock that gets me to the same place.  If you want to be efficient (which means you don't get as tired as fast) go for the most gradual, ramp-like approach that goes up, not the "one big step all at once up." 

How to stick with it - Sometimes hiking is pure joy and a thrill.  Other times, it can feel like a slog.  Like a lot of stuff in life, it is important to know how to stick with it when it feels like a slog so we can experience the joys and thrills.  I'm going to call our ability to stick with it resilience.  We build our hiking resilience in two ways: (1) - by preparing physically, which means doing practice hikes, and (2) - by taking control of our thoughts.  Resilience is more likely to be there if you have paid your dues (i.e., practiced) on the front end.  The mental side of resilience is just as important (possibly more important).  Sometimes this mental resilience looks like sheer will power - like making yourself do the dishes even when you don't want to.  It is the ability to endure some present discomfort for a future reward.  Other times, this mental resilience is better used to divert our attention from the slog at hand to other subjects.  In our family, we may play the Only 3 Challenge - such as if you could only eat 3 dinners everyday for the rest of your life, what would they be?  If you could only watch 3 movies the rest of your life, what would they be?  We all take turns and it diverts our attention from the hot, dusty, unremarkable trail at hand to other things and it lets us get to know each other better.  That is just one example.  Practice your physical resilience and your mental resilience before your next microadventure.