Whether you’re trying to catch a weather window, snag parking, beat the sun, or get home to catch the Pat’s game, being able to time your hike is key. There are many factors to the day which might depend on timing:
Parking
The early bird catches the… most ideal parking spot. This general rule of thumb is true. The closer you can get to the trail head for sunrise the better chance you have of snagging a spot. Depending on the length of the routes which stem from that lot, you’ll find another window later on in the day when people who got there early are leaving. Catching this window is a gamble though so make sure to have alternative hiking plans for the day as backup.
Daylight
Whether you’re planning a long trek or seeking one of those midday parking windows, understanding your approximate hiking duration will help you select a trail which you can finish in daylight or inform your packing decisions. In the event where you’ll be hiking after sunrise, you’ll want to pack your headlamps, lanterns, and a light-up collar or vest for your furry friends.
Temperature / Weather
Just as you might plan a hike to finish before the setting of the sun, you might want to see if you can complete your hike before any number of weather events such as a temperature increases, incoming cloud cover, a rainstorm, etc. I find this type of planning important when hiking with a dog. I often want to calculate if I can accommodate a hike in the window of time after sunrise and before the temperature rises above 75 degrees.
Post Hike Plans
My post hike plans more often than not involve getting to a restaurant during non-peak hours so we can ensure we get a seat (4 o’clock is never busy).
How to Calculate Hike Duration
For all these aforementioned scenarios, it’s key to understand both drive time and your estimated hike duration. The best way I’ve found how to guess the duration of my next hike is through analyzing my own historical data. Here’s the play-by-play on how to do that:
- For the hike in question, look for trails you’ve done previous that look to have the same difficultly and steepness.
- Look those trails up on AllTrails and look for the average time to complete in the description.
- Look at your recorded time for that trail and calculate how you compare to that average.
- Draw a conclusion about how your will be similarly varied from the mean time to complete on AllTrails for this new hike your planning.
Here’s an example of me implementing that methodology:
Let’s say my next hike is going to be Mt Potash, one of the peaks I need for completing the 52 with a view list. My first observations about Mt. Potash are that it’s 4 miles in length, elevation gain is 1387 feet, and its steepness varies from 6% to 32% grade and nearly everything in between. Meaning, it’s not consistently steep but does have steep sections.
Other hikes which come to mind that are similar and which I completed under comparable conditions are
Peaked Mountain
And Table Mountain
For Peaked Mountain you can see in the description on the side that on average it takes 2 hours and 17 minutes to complete. For Table, the average is 2 hours and 36 minutes. According to Strava, my recorded times on those mountains were 1 hour and 34 minutes and 1 hour and 30 minutes respectively. Thus for a hike of this length and difficulty for the non-winter season I complete them roughly 45 minutes to an hour faster than average. Applying this logic to Potash, I can expect to finish in just under 2 hours.
Through using the above method for calculating hike duration and layering in drive time estimates using your map App of choice you’ll be able to optimize your hike and your day.
The Wild East 