A mountain forecast is not a valley forecast with a bigger number for the wind. It is a different product, written for a different atmosphere, and most of the disappointment we hear about “wrong” forecasts comes from reading the wrong one, or reading the right one badly. Here we go through the four numbers that … Read more
Ask a room full of walkers how fast they hike and most will say “about five kilometres an hour”. On a flat towpath with a light pack, that is roughly true. Put the same people on a rocky path that climbs 1,000 m (3,280 ft), add a rucksack, a few photo stops and a lunch, … Read more
Most of the decisions that go wrong in the hills are not made on the hill at all. They are made in the last hour before the summit, by a tired brain that has already spent its judgement on the climb and is now negotiating with itself. The turnaround time is the simplest tool we … Read more
A compass does one thing: it points at magnetic north. Everything useful we get from it, a direction to walk, a way to identify a peak, a line to hold in fog, comes from combining that single fact with a map and a little discipline. This article walks through the full procedure for a baseplate … Read more
Lightning kills a few hundred people a year worldwide, and a disproportionate number of them are outdoors, on high ground, in the afternoon. That last detail is the important one, because it means the danger is mostly a scheduling problem. Thunderstorms in the mountains follow a daily rhythm that is remarkably reliable, and a walker … Read more
Eight weeks is not long, but it is enough. It is enough to turn a person who walks occasionally into one who can carry a pack for eight hours, climb 1,200 m (3,900 ft) and still enjoy the view at the top. It is also enough time to get injured if the plan is greedy. … Read more
There is nothing reckless about walking alone. Solo days are where many of us learned to read ground, keep a pace and enjoy our own company. What changes when nobody else is there is not the terrain but the consequences. A sprained ankle in a group is an inconvenience; alone, 6 km from the road … Read more
The phone in our pocket is a better navigation instrument than anything a hiker could buy twenty years ago. It also fails in ways a paper map never does, and it fails most reliably at the exact moment we depend on it. This article is not an argument against phone navigation; we use it on … Read more
Of all the numbers in a mountain forecast, wind is the one walkers most consistently underestimate, partly because we experience it in the valley where it is tame, and partly because the forecast quotes a speed while the body experiences a force. A 60 km/h gust on a narrow crest is not “quite windy”; it … Read more
Hunger on a hill is not a moral failing and not a matter of willpower. It is arithmetic. A body walking uphill with a pack burns energy at a rate that ordinary meals cannot match, and it can only absorb a fraction of what it burns while it is moving. Understanding the two numbers, output … Read more
