9April2000
How To "Time" A Tough Hike
A ready response for when someone asks, "Aren't we there
yet?"
Steep terrain can slow your progress to a crawl, and shrink daily
mileage totals
to single digits. That can put you in a bind if you have to make
up lost time,
or get back to the trailhead at a specific time.
By knowing the upcoming elevation gain and
distance you'll travel, you can
estimate what your hiking time will be through the tough sections.
Several rules of thumb apply. The typical backpacker travels at
2 mph on a level
surface, and expect to add 1 hour of hiking for every 1,000 feet
of vertical
gain. Here's how this simple formula looks:
miles traveled / 2 mph + elevation gained / 1,000 = travel time
So, using the King Ravine Trail in New Hampshire
as an example, here's how to
figure travel time to the top:
.5 mile/ 2 mph (15 minutes) + 1,100 / 1,000
(1 hour, 6 minutes) = 1 hour, 21
minutes
Of course, this is only an estimate and it'll
be affected by all the variables
backpackers know so well, like weather, time of day, and amount
of food in your
belly. The precision of your calculations increases by knowing
your actual speed
of travel in the flats, rather than relying on the 2 mph figure.
Or you could
just go ahead and hike the mountain and come to the same conclusion:
"Man,
that was hard."
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