Why go fast? Why go slow?

[Todd T]

I see no reason to need any reason to go however fast/slow/far/not I want.

[Bob Moulder]

I see no reason to need any reason to go however fast/slow/far/not I want.

Same here.

Mostly solo so I set my own pace which is sometimes fast or sometimes moderate but hardly ever slow, but never hesitating to stop for photos or whatever if I want. On occasion I have found myself literally running to try to make it to my planned campsite in advance of an approaching thunderstorm.

When hiking with others, however, it’s important to me to have the ability to hike faster and the mental flexibility to slow down to others’ pace and still be happy. I have one friend who is very slow and I must admit that this is sometimes a challenge! :^)

[Sam C]

Interesting.  I had always assumed that hiking fast meant to hike at a higher-than-normal-for-you rate yet it may include as many stops as wanted.  That is to say, when you are moving you are moving faster.

Now, it seems that to many hiking fast simply means to stop, for what-ever reason, less frequently.

I hike faster than some, slower than others, and will stop as often as I feel like; sometimes to do nothing more than to observe local flora or the ecosystem around a vernal pool.  That is largely why I hike; others can have the vistas and views.

[Adam White]

Nick said:

Managing Your Recreation Inventory is more important because there is a finite number of days we each are given the day we are born, and none of us know what that finite number of days is.

Here’s a follow-on to that thought; a post on Wait but Why?

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html

The summary is that we only have so many weeks in our lives, and we can visualize each of those weeks as a box:

How do you want to use your boxes?

If each trip is a week, how many of those boxes do you want to have spent in the wilderness, when all is said and done?

The tough part for me is compromise. I love being out in the wilderness; I love the Sierra. But I also have kids now, and they are young. I love being with them.

It’s also an undue burden on my wife if I disappear for too long. If I’m gone for a day, two days–even three days–it’s okay. She knows I need it, and we’re a team.

But trips that are longer than that start to get difficult for her, and it gets pretty non-linear after three days. At some point–too many trips; too long of trips–I’m being selfish. I don’t know exactly where the line is yet. It’s not zero trips, but it’s not twenty either.

I think I’ve struck a pretty good balance this year and last: A handful of 1-3 night trips to the Sierra. They’re brief, but they leave me sated: they have challenge and splendor and new places; this year, I stood atop 15 new (to me!) Sierra passes, and traveled more off-trail than I ever have before. It’s enough to keep me satisfied, and content that I’m visiting places and seeing things that–when all my boxes are filled–I’ll be quite happy to have visited.

So for now–and back to the original topic–I go fast. I don’t have to go fast, but I want to; I like to. I like to be able to go far, and have it be easy; to float over passes and peaks, and glide down descents. That ability comes with fitness and a light pack. But I’ve gone both fast and slow; I know what I’m missing when I go fast, and I know that I’m not missing much when I’m on-trail; I walk with my head up, absorbing the surroundings as I walk (although, stumbling quite frequently, like a poster above–but that’s what poles are for). However, when I’m off-trail, sometimes I do miss more–too much. It’s not so much about speed as it is about focus on route finding and navigation and individual foot and hand placements. Hopefully I get better at those things, and hopefully I get better at taking it all in.

Last tangent, I promise: I’m always surprised when I hear critics of fast packing or running in the wilderness. The line of questioning I’d like to ask is:

1) Do you get why some people like to run? Does it make sense to you?

If the answer to that is no, the conversation is probably over–or at least, there’s a much more general conversation to be had. However, if the answer to that is yes:

2) Where would you rather run? On a treadmill? On bland suburban streets? Or in the spectacular backcountry of the Sierra?

The answer is obvious to me. Of course people run in the backcountry. It’s the most spectacular place on earth. If you’re going to run, where else would you do it?

Wow, quite the ramble-fest of a post.

[ben .]

adam, thanks for pointing me towards waitbutwhy. great site.

[John Rowan]

I think it really depends on how one conceptualizes “speed.” One of my hiking partners and I were routinely doing 30+ mile days on the PCT, but rather than mashing out those miles at a fast clip, we got up early (usually 4-4:30, usually hitting trail about 10-15 minutes before there was enough daylight to ditch the headlamps), and would hit camp at 7-8PM. In the middle of those days, we’d take long lunches, stop for naps, explore things that looked interesting, and otherwise enjoy the trail. Our daily mileage might have been on the relatively high side, but things were never rushed. “Fast” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “fast” and I do think that we got kind of a best of both worlds approach.

That said, I think that doing a trip that focused on low daily miles would drive me nuts, because I do really like to move and I get antsy.

[Bob Moulder]

I know what you mean—I hate wasting good daylight “in camp” and want to be up and about for every minute of it. I especially love being on the trail at sunrise and the 1 to 1/2 hour before.

I don’t know how people can still be in their tents at 8:30 on a summer morning, but that’s me. Many times last summer I walked past tents where people were still sleeping and I had already covered 6-8 miles at a leisurely 2.4mph or so.

[brian H]

i am a “stop & smell the roses” type…VERY type B…mostly hike solo…not setting any records…and while i have respect for those who go for speed-hiking records…at the same time I don’t understand it. For me there is a colossal disconnect between absorbing the Awe of the high sierra backcountry for example, and the idea of racing along the JMT.

I can sit & read Muir’s grandiose descriptions of a sierra sunrise and nod & agree with every word. I wonder what he would have to say about speed hiking lol. Reminds me of this quote: “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” -JM

[Adam White]

brian H said:

…and while i have respect for those who go for speed-hiking records…at the same time I don’t understand it. For me there is a colossal disconnect between absorbing the Awe of the high sierra backcountry for example, and the idea of racing along the JMT.

I think that all too often in discussions like these, we skip a first step that can be quite helpful.

First, ask the question: “What is this person’s goal on this particular hike?”

So, let’s take the FKT–it’s an extreme case. What’s their goal? It’s to establish a FKT–to do something faster than any human has before. You can question that goal (why would someone want to set a FKT?) if you don’t understand the allure of it, and if you did that, it would probably lead to a productive and illuminating conversation with FKT’ers about human psychology.

If you accept the goal, then examine their trip, my suspicion is that you will now have a better understanding of it. For example, the primary goal of these trips isn’t to absorb the awe of the high sierra backcountry. No; a trip with that as the primary goal would be conducted entirely differently–perhaps with notebooks, much photo gear, and maybe even a few volumes of Thoreau. That person might not even hike every day!

I’m guilty of “not questioning the goal”, although I’m getting better about it. “Why are they bringing camp shoes? Makes no sense! Completely unnecessary!” …Wait, what are their goals? What do they want out of the trip?

When I reset with their goals in mind, a lot of their decisions make much more sense.

And at that point, the ones that still don’t make sense are typically the ones that are most helpful to discuss.

I’ll speak for myself as an occasional “speed hiker”; on trips where I am “speed hiking”, my goal is often to balance exploring new places in the High Sierra with the physical challenge of covering significant ground each day, often constrained with the requirement that I am only away from home for 2-3 days. These goals are not entirely discordant: My version of “fast” 3.0 – 3.5 mph, and I might cover anywhere between 30 and 40 miles per day if I’m on trail. At such “blazing” speeds, believe it or not, the world is not a blur; I have plenty of time to gaze and stare and ogle and absorb the world around me. I stop and break whenever the scenery demands. That pace strikes a nice balance for me; I could (try to) go faster, but I might not be physically able to and sustain it for days, and I also might sacrifice some enjoyment of my surroundings if I went faster. I could go slower, but I’d sacrifice visiting as many places as I do, and I’d lose the physical challenge that is so appealing to me. I’ve always participated in endurance sports–if I weren’t doing long, fast hikes in the Sierra, I’d be doing something else, I suppose: triathlons, centuries, road marathons. But to be honest, none of those hold a candle to spending time in the Sierra, in my opinion. So I don’t do those things. Instead I do speedy hikes in the Sierra. It’s great exercise, and the remote, beautiful, and wild Sierra offers so many rewards for those who explore it.

So, what would John Muir say to someone like me? I’d say: “John, I want to go do something physically challenging. I want to walk, and climb, and jog from dawn until dusk; until I’m exhausted. Then I want to lie down and sleep on the ground, under the stars; then I want to wake up and do it again the next day. Is there some place I could do this, amongst fantastic scenery, with almost limitless options of spectacular high basins to explore; subalpine lakes to visit; passes to traverse and peaks to stand atop? Is there anywhere on the planet like that?”

I think I know what he’d say.

I understand people who want to go slow, but I don’t understand people who don’t understand people who run in the Sierra. Where on earth else would you want to run, if you could run in the Sierra?

[Author]

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