What are your daily hiking mileage goals?

>"I like the almost "meditational" aspect of walking for hours at a time."

Todd,

Me, too. It takes me 5-10 miles just to leave all the work, honey-do, and logistics behind me, mentally.

I find solo hikes to really help clear my head. I also enjoy hiking with others and having long, engaged conversations. Each add to my mental health in different ways. And the longer the hike, the better for me.

Ugh. I envy all you west-coasters.

The only time I truly dislike hiking by myself is in winter. The evenings/nights are just way too long. All that darkness by yourself gets really lonely.
On one of my first backpacking trips it got dark at 5:00 p.m. and I didn't get to sleep until 1 a.m. (all by myself). Would have been much more tolerable with friends.

Thanks again all of you for the opinions and suggestions! One of my group's members has generously volunteered to organize somewhat shorter hikes (say 30 miles over two days) to encourage "beginner" participation.

My goal for this group is to section hike the PCT over a period of 4-5 years doing long weekend and longer trips. This is one of the reasons for the higher daily mileage expectations.

I agree that a mixture of solo and group trips is a good strategy. I'm not looking to organize large (>8 participants) groups, but just to build a base of like-minded backapackers I can trust. Any group larger than 3-4 can become unwieldy for reasons covered by other posters.

So, as suggested by several of you, I'll continue to plan the hikes I'd like to go on, and see who else would like to come along.

Have you considered exactly how you're describing these prospective hikes to the members? Terms like "big miles," "20+ miles/day," "covering lots of ground" – those sorts of phrases sound intimidating, especially to newbies or casual hikers. Who wants to participate in a forced death march?

But look at how you described your actual hiking style earlier in this thread: "I hike from about 7am until 10:30, cook/eat breakfast; hike on until about 2pm, cook/eat "dinner"; and hike until 1 hour before sunset; set up camp, have a snack, read my Kindle for an hour, then sleep." Where's the death march? That sounds like a positively civilized outing! Just leisurely strolling along, with regular breaks for meals, until it's time to make camp. What's hard about that? Same hike, same mileage covered – but the description of the day makes it sound much more inviting. (For a general group, I'd push breakfast back to 8:30 or 9 AM and add a real dinner at the evening camp site, but those are easy changes, and wouldn't affect the day's mileage one way or another.)

Perhaps de-emphasizing the actual daily miles covered in favor of "just strolling along from sunrise to sunset, with regular breaks for meals" will generate more enthusiasm in your group.

Thanks for the good ideas! I don't emphasize the "negative" aspects of the hikes in the Meetup, but I could certainly more clearly explain our hiking style and daily schedule. Maybe I'm too "honest" about the expected level of exertion. I could do a better job "selling" the mileage in a more palatable way. We'll see what happens.

Don't take this wrong, but why do folks want to hike in groups? I find going alone offers solitude and enhances my wilderness forays. A hike with my wife or son is the exception. I have broken this rule a couple times each of the past 3 years, and the trips have been very enjoyable, but I have kept them to a minimum of 2 per year. The solo trips are much more fulfilling.

I too don't mind hiking alone. However, there are a couple of reason I like a small group:

1. Putting cars at each end of a point to point hike.
2. Safety in case of injury or illness.

Since most of the PCT hike we plan are point to point, I need to go with at least one other person. If I really wanted solitude, we could start at opposite ends and exchange keys at some intermediate point…

I use a rule of thumb of 1.5 mph on my hikes. That pace includes my rest breaks, lunch break, picture taking, scenic views, etc. Sometimes I'm much fast than that. Sometimes, I'm slower (doing off trail stuff). If I'm on a long hike (e.g. JMT), I shoot for about 12 miles/day. That's 8 hrs – start @ 8am and stop @ 4pm. If, for example, I need to put in more mileage, I consciously take shorter breaks and hike longer. My overall pace will quicken. The longest I've ever backpacked is about 19 miles. And I'm doing this with a base pack weight of about 20 lbs. One of these days, I'll get down to uber-lite weight and be able to 'fly' on the trails. :)

Great Thread, and thanks for posting it Todd. For me, the challenge is my feet. You can put it in miles, or change it to hours, but my challenge is being able to cover the distances over days without pain a major challenge. I've gone through two set's of orthotics in less than two years trying to find the magic combo (orthotics / shoes) and have I have yet to find the right set. So, while I'm physically able to cover distance in hours/miles, my feet seem to suffer as a result if multiple days. I know, it's a product of conditioning them as well, but suffering from pronation and the ability to condition / train during the week is still a challenge. I've had to pass on an epic trip due to this fact alone. 72 miles in four days while possible , is not in the cards until I get the feet working comfortably.

Regards-
A

In terms of mileage targets, Naismith's rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naismith%27s_Rule is a good place to start

While this might suggest 7-9 hours walking (depending on elevation change) for 20 miles, it's worth looking further at Tranter's Corrections, which takes account of fitness and fatigue. While most people can keep up for 2-3 hours, you don't have to drop many fitness levels for fatigue to start becoming a major and limiting factor when you start talking 6+ hours of walking.

Man I need to get in shape, and get out more… I usually plan for about 5-8 miles per day on moderate to challenging hikes with a lot of elevation change.

Years ago I was leading lots of group backpacking trips. Back then, the rule of thumb was that we could travel at a speed of two miles per hour with an extra hour allowed for each 1000 feet of elevation gain. This was typically some trail in Yosemite at 8000-10,000 feet elevation. It also assumed that each pack was no more than 25% of the person's body weight. Well, I found that the group would beat that speed slightly.

Now we are carrying packs that weigh a fraction of what they were in the old days. This speeds us up, especially on the uphills. Still, if you are only good for eight miles, then I guess eight miles is what the limit will be.

I find that as I get older, I can still do 15-20 miles per day, but only with a light pack (10-15% of body weight).

–B.G.–

Just found this thread whilst researching for the PCT – In NZ we only talk about hours hiking. The terrain is so varied – no switchbacks down here – we go straight up the ridge. We budget 1 hour per 300 meters of elevation gain. Usually we hike (we call it Tramping) for between 6 and 9 hours a day. A really big day can pan out to 12/14 hours. We never measure kilometers travelled. All of our trail signs are in hours and tend to be on the cautious side. Usually strong fast hikers can knock off a quarter of published track times especially on our "Great Walks" trails.
As you guys deal in miles per day I am trying to figure out average PCT times to plan efficiently.
I did the JMT a couple of years ago and we averaged 21ks a day with one re-supply at Muir Ranch. My pack weight was 10 Kgs. Our biggest day was 27ks. So by my calculation and reading this thread. I could comfortably average 12/13 miles a day without busting my guts.
Appreciate your feedback

Robin: +1 on tracking the vertical. On steeper trails, yes, it is all about the vertical. Day hiking, I figure vertical x 10 = equivalent horizontal. i.e. 2 km trail miles to the ridge 300m above you: 2 km horizontal + 10*300m vertical = 5 km. For day hiking, I average 5 kph equivalent miles. So we agree, that would take 1 hour. Backpacking with 10-12 kg, I'd average 3 kph in the hills.

If I've been hiking a lot recently, if I'm thinking of it as a training hike, or if I'm only going out for 3-4 hours, I can do twice as many vertical feet per hour. But for a long mileage day, day after day, carrying a pack, then 3-4 kph of horizontal + 10*vertical.

For Americans: double the 1000s of vertical feet and add them to horizontal miles. e.g. Half Dome round trip: 9 trail miles each way, 5,000 vertical feet each way. Total equivalent miles = 9+9+2*5+2*5 = 9+9+10+10 = 38 equivalent flat miles. You may get it done sooner than 38 miles at 3 mph if you've been doing lots of hill work. But if you haven't, 12 hours is a good estimate, and you'll feel as tired as if you did 38 flat miles.

Most trails have you start off going up 1000 ft. minimum but many times even more. The up needs to be accounted for. Depending on knee problems, so should the down.

What are my daily mileage hiking goals?

My hiking goal every day: To hike as few miles and as few hours as I can to get to a beautiful place to take off my pack and enjoy.

If you want to enjoy goals… set some.
If you want to enjoy the mountains, leave the goals at home.

Bill

Although I am in complete agreement with Bill D, I do recall Colin Fletcher (The Complete Walker) pointing out one should have daily hour goals, not mileage goals. I.e. you should plan to hike a certain number of hours, not a certain number of miles (not always possible, I know). This accounts for variations in weather, terrain, fitness, beauty of the scenery, unscheduled navel-gazing stops, etc.

I suppose some people thrive on mileage goals, I'm not one of them.

It depends on the trip. I like picking one longer trip, usually the JMT, to push myself and see what I am capable of doing. I usually range anywhere from 22-32 miles a day on those trips. When working out during the winter months, I need to have a personal goal to work for or I lose motivation quickly!

I also plan at least 2-3 shorter trips where I am exploring new terrain, usually mixing in some cross country and fishing, where mileage means nothing! I pick my destinations from other trip reports or just plop down where I'm at if its that nice!

Goals are good as long as one does not become obsessed. I spent 25 years racing, meeting checkpoints and reaching time cutoffs….now that I am older and not racing my goals are different. I like to have goals still but they are much more relaxed, life has a way of interrupting man made goals.

My mother in law broke her back in the summer, then had a stroke four weeks ago and since hubby and I are caring for both his father and his mother (they are 87 and 93) this necessitated my scaling back my pre imposed goals of this year a bit until I could hire nurses to care for them at home.
Previous to this I was training five miles every 48 hours of mountain climbing and hill work, plus extensive heat training, which was very successful, I managed to drop 40 pounds and improve my cardio and endurance. Now I am forced to scale back to two times a week of my five mile loop and do one hard day a week of 15-20 miles, usually on weekends. This is all in preparation for a thru hike in 2014.

Interestingly enough I began to see my hikes as not in terms of milage, but in terms of getting to a particular place with no thought to time other than maintaining a good average pace, including rests to take care of my feet and to eat and test out gear. I found my contentment increased as I got away from thinking in terms of mileage mainly because where we live, the terrain can be pretty strenuous and very rocky and frankly quite brutal if one gets obsessed with "putting on the miles". All that does is damage joints and wear one down, and there is a fine line between gaining fitness and tearing oneself down.
So I go by the 10% rule, never do more than 10% more in time or distance per week. And it seems to have worked well when I desire to do more should the opportunity present itself, like two days ago when I did 20 miles of the roughest terrain down here and felt the glow of success reached when I got to my particular "goal" place of my planned exit spot. I am elated! The mileage did not matter, the area where I ended did. It did not matter that I was forced to average 1.5 MPH, what mattered was that in 12 hours I completed my goal.

In one day I made it to the mountains you can see thru the pass on the right.

Over perhaps 100 trips of 3 to 40 days each, over the past 30 years, we have consistently averaged 18 or 19 miles per day on trail. That's 9 to 10 hours of hiking, and an hour for lunch, and arrival in camp with a few hours of daylight left. On days when we need to travel 22-24 miles, I feel like pushing and it doesn't feel leisurely. When we walk 18 miles it feels relaxed. For me, there's a big difference between 18 and 22 miles, the extra 2 hours of hiking means I feel rushed through lunch, don't set up camp in time to take a sponge bath while the sun is still shining, etc.

When hiking off-trail distances are irrelevant, as it all depends on the terrain and obstacles. And trails with no maintained tread (say the northern 100 miles of Vermont's Long Trail, or the description earlier in this thread of trails in New Zealand) — those are slower and variable.

I think of it this way —
A leisurely walking pace on a good trail is 2 or 2.25 mph. A fast pace is 2.5-3.5 mph. That's assuming a good trail tread, so you can just stride and not worry about footing.
A full but not long walking day is 9-10 hours of walking (start at sunrise, hour off for lunch, end 1-4 hours before sunset, depending on season).

So a full-duration leisurely-paced day is 18-20 miles (9-10 hours at 2mph).
Or a short-duration fast-paced day is 18-20 miles (6-7 hours at 3mph).
Either way, 18-20 miles is a very reasonable target for somebody who has reasonable cardio-vascular fitness and hikes enough that all of their leg muscles are used to the effort.

People who want to sleep late, cook breakfast, stop often for breaks, stop early, or any combination of those — if they also want to walk at a leisurely pace — then 20 miles per day will be impossible.

For Jim and me, our sweet spot is 18 mpd, taken in the all-day, leisurely-pace style. We start walking at sunrise, walk at about 2.25 mph, but have brief frequent stops for birds, flowers, vistas, such that our actual pace is 2 mph of walking. We stop an hour for lunch, and walk until 2-3 hours before sunset. For us, that a is leisurely, comfortable, no-stress, no-rush, no-pain day.

This thread reminds me of something of Skurka's I read recently — his comment was that the way to cover a lot of distance in a day is not to hike faster (hard for most to do) — rather it is to hike longer. He also commented on his goal — he likes to *hike*, so camping is only an incidental he does to recharge so he can hike again the next day.

It seems to me that he has a point — you need to decide what your goal is. If you mainly enjoy the actual hiking, then long hours make a lot of sense. I doubt that is the main goal for many, though, as a number of people in this thread have already said.

Fitness — it seems to me that to do long days you need to be fit enough for two things:

1) You need to be able to keep walking at a reasonable pace for many hours per day. Perhaps a nice lunch break, but not a lot of other total stop time.

2) You need to be able to maintain a good effort on the uphill stretches. If you are slow on the uphill stretches, it is just about impossible to make it up on the downhill stretches. If you doubt that, do the math. Here is where a light pack really helps.

Getting going anecdote — I spent one summer leading canoe trips for 13-14 year old boys. We had no trouble getting going in the morning once I made their already packed pack be their ticket to breakfast. Groups can work … you just have to figure out how to motivate them.