Itinerary vs. actual walked mileage?

[Kevin Sweere]

Conjecture has most crews actually walk 10-20% more miles than their trek’s Itinerary when all things (pre, on, and post-trail) are considered during their entire Philmont tour.  Besides the quoted itinerary mileage, side trips on trail, visiting the Tooth from basecamp, errors in navigation, I’d also include in total miles a trip to town, gathering and returning gear, the campfires, and other such things.

Might anyone have evidence to back up such claims — like pedometer, fit-bit, GPS, or rigorous map-work?

[Brad Rogers]

I’ve never been to Philmont and don’t  usually take a GPS track backpacking, but I do use my Garmin Forerunner watch on long dayhikes and it generally reads ~ 7-10% more mileage than trail signs or map mile markers.  My thought has always been that they just look at flat miles and don’t take into acount the elevation changes, but don’t know that for sure.

[Brian H]

Had my garmin Fenix with me and it had about 40-45% more mileage by steps(not always accurate to true gps miles). Need to factor in things like walking to activities, water sources, privacy for cat holes or red roofs, swap boxes etc,   Some camps are very large ie ponil.  Could walk .75 to a mile from your campsite to the cantina.  We were trek 23.   Mileage says 68. According to my watch I was closer to 100 miles and that doesn’t include base camp days.  They intentionally walk you from one end  to the other to get you acclimated to the altitude.  I have pics of my step charts for each day but couldn’t figure out how to load multiple pictures.  Hope that helps.

[robert G]

We were on Trek 12 (61 miles) and ended up about 100 miles which included base camps.

[James A]

We had itinerary 18 with 63 claimed miles. We hiked over 90 miles not including base camp days. That doesn’t always mean a full pack, as you will be walking to fill water or go to cons or program or coffee at night. Some of the staff camps had us camping 1/2 mile from the cabin and we would walk back and forth up to five times in a day. Definitely smart to plan ahead so you don’t have so much back and forth. Fill water the night before if you won’t be going by the source on the way out of camp, for instance.

[David Y]

I think the mileage of the various treks is only meant to give prospective bidders an idea of how long and how difficult each trek would be. The mileage is only measured by the most direct distance from point A to point K with no consideration getting lost or walking back and forth to latrines, Program Features or anything else.

I have an app on my phone that tells me how far I walk each day as a health reminder, but I would not compare that to the mileage listed for various trek at Philmont. That would have no meaning to me.

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine

[TAG in AZ]

My rule of thumb is that you’ll end up hiking ~25% more than your itinerary distance.  In 2017, I ran my Garmin InReach the entire time we were hiking.  Our 79 mile itinerary came out to 92 miles of hiking with packs on.  I didn’t track miles in basecamp, program activities, getting water or any other hiking where we didn’t have packs on.

[David Y]

TAG in AZ

25% more miles hiking with packs on than presented. That’s interesting and good to know. Thanks for verifying that with your Garmin.

“Philmont should be enjoyed, not endured.” Moonshine

[J-L]

It’s hard to figure out how far you truly hike since GPS devices can easily overestimate the distance traveled:

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/why-every-gps-overestimates-distance-traveled/

I’ve found even more error when hiking in very steep areas. My Garmin GPS device’s location error will say I traveled a little bit uphill and then a little bit downhill, even though I was contouring >> this leads to it calculating a greater distance than I actually traveled.

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