What Hiking Pace is Right?

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Several hundred feet below the continental divide, I paused at a gravelly bend to glance up and down. 

Bret perched several switchbacks above, calmly waiting for me to catch up. Down below I saw Ned stooped over at a much slower pace.

I suggested we take a break.

This was no easy hike. We were over 30 miles into our backpacking trip in Glacier, a trip with extreme changes in elevation in mid-summer. We were fit enough for the journey, but at this leg it was obvious that the pace we set felt very different to each of us. 

I asked how we each felt on a scale of one to ten. One being “I cannot walk”, five being “this is very hard but I don’t need to stop”, and ten being “I could do this hike a 2nd time”.

Bret said seven, I said four, and Ned said two. And, if my memory serves me, he was out of water. His Powerade bottles were full of huckleberries he had picked on the trail.

We knew hiking ten miles up and down the continental divide would be hard. But the reality was even harder, and our method of setting pace did not help.

We had placed the fastest member, Bret, first. Over time, the result becomes less of a hiking group and more of an atomized string of hikers growing further apart.

So what’s the solution? 

Ultimately, we shared water, took some weight off Ned, and took the grade much slower and as a group. Our minimum speed picked up, and our morale did too.

When setting a pace, there are two main things to keep in mind. 

1. Your maximum group speed is defined by the slowest member.
   
   Hiking isn’t a race, so the fastest doesn’t have to be first. Your days should be planned by what your least athletic member has already done previously. Ned or I had never done a hike this hard, and it showed.
   
2. The expectations of your trip and what you can do in reality are different.
   
   You can’t, in the moment, change the capabilities of your friends and family. You can, however, change the goal of your trip. If that means keeping to a slower pace, or lower grade rapids, or a cooler part of the day, do it.

The excitement of your most athletic group member isn’t as urgent as the cohesion of your group in the wilderness. Trust us.