Planning to do a lot of hiking sometime, help me get ready

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s say that I want to take a hiking tour of Europe* wherein I will travel as the ancients (or medievals) wherein I will walk from this town to that town, distances of not more than 15 miles or so per day, ending each night at a new town where I will spend the night (so no need for a tent). The trip would most likely be no more than ten days of hiking.

Anyone ever done this? What will I need to start training? I presume that beginning to hike a lot is a requisite. How long should I expect 15 miles to take? What would I need to carry with me aside from a change of clothes?

The trails would be hiking trails, not along the side of a highway and in late spring/early summer most likely maybe rain but not snow. The route is undetermined as of yet. I’d like to focus on the training aspects, but if anyone’s done this and has suggestions of where to go or any cool stories, please share.

  • Well obviously not all of Europe, maybe one country that has yet to be decided.
2

Yeah, that’s it exactly. And carry with you what you will be carrying in Europe. You’ll need to get used to your load as well.

Too many variables, such as climbing hills and mountains, stopping to gaze at beautiful sites, etc. But you should be able to handle 15 miles a day without too much difficulty.

Money, water, credit cards, water, maps, water, water purification kit, water, phrase book, water, rain gear, water, first aid kit, water, cooking kit, water, food, water, emergency phone numbers, and water. I’m sure I missed a few things.

Head down to your local library, try to find books on hiking long trails. Karen Berger and Ray Jardine have both written excellent books on the subject. Try to find some outfitters in your yellow pages, too. They can be helpful in selling you the gear you’ll need as well as suggesting places to go.

And don’t forget the water.

3

Fifteen miles with roughly 50lbs of weight on flat terrain should take you less than four hours.
It will take longer if you stop for rest or sight seeing. But you can use that as a guideline. Big hills and rough terrain will take longer of course. But generally, 15 minutes per mile is a good base to start from.

Important Tips:

Never leave town without at least six quarts of water.
Top off before leaving each town.

The second most important thing is your boots. You have to have proper fitting boots that don’t slide around on your foot. Get rugged leather hiking boots with a tough sole and a comfortable insole. Make sure it is the proper insole for your type of foot. The salesman can help you determine your foot type if he is worth a damn. You’ll want to hike with a pair that is broken in, but not worn out. Since you need to start training now anyway, go ahead and get a new pair of boots, and start breaking them in. Good shoe polish should be adequate to help you do this, but there are all kinds of great stuff you can buy to help soften the leather.
If you going to be hiking in the winter, get some boots that are slightly bigger than you normally would wear. It will allow you to wear extra thick socks.

Get a decent pack and carry your heaviest items higher on your back. Don’t stuff your portable microwave in the bottom of your pack, put it as high as possible. Think like your packing it the opposite of a grocery bag.

Socks. Thick wool socks. Not cotton. You can spend a lot of money on special socks out there. It’s up to you. I’ve found that simple wool/polyester socks are fine. But you can get them with everything from polypropelene to teflon. Bring pleanty of socks! If you are planning on being gone ten days, I would pack at least five pairs. Ten pairs of socks if you dont expect to find decent laundry facilities. If you’re not going to wash anything for the whole trip, it would probably be worth it to you to buy ten pairs of socks. Change them each day and just throw them away after each use. Unless you buy a twenty dollar pair of socks that is. The rest of your clothes isn’t as important. Two sets of outter clothes and maybe five tshirts or show, even without laundering, should be fine. Unless you plan to pick up hot chicks in each town.

Take care of blisters and hot spots immediately. Expect to get pleanty when you start training. Especially if you’re breaking in a new pair of boots. If you can get your hands on Mole Skin[suptm[/sup] then take some with you.

That’s about all I can think of. When you start training, make sure you’re practicing OFF the road or sidewalk. Walk in the dirt or the grass. It’s much easier on your feet. Don’t ruck on the road until your feet are ready for it. And even then, you should avoid it.

If I missed anything, let me know.

4

Dang, that’s a lot of water. 12 lbs of it. I might carry that much if I were hiking in a very hot or desert region and there was no chance of a refill during the hike.
One thing I’d consider is that there’s a huge difference between hiking with a small rucksack and a full backpack containing all your gear. A normally fit person could get off the couch and walk fifteen miles with no real preparation and wind up with no more than sore feet and legs the next day. Throw in a 50 lb pack and it’s a different story.

There might actually be tours that will send your stuff on ahead to the next inn while you stroll along unencumbered. That would be vastly more pleasant.

Speaking of packs, make sure you buy a good one with lots of padding and back support. Try it out on various short hikes to get the fit right. The middle of a long hike is no time to find out that one of the straps is chafing the skin off your shoulder.
It would be helpful if you’d give some indication of where you’d be hiking, remembering that Europe is pretty big and 15 miles for 10 days doesn’t take you very far. So a hiking tour in the Alps or the Lakes region of England would be reasonable options, but the terrain would be very different, as would your opportunities for stopping at intervening towns for lunch and refreshments. (If you’re going to be hiking in the moors in the north of England, it’s apparently very important to look out for werewolves, by the way.)

5

Sounds like a great trip, and I think you’ve got some good advice so far.

Not only should you make sure it fits ok, but you should also know how to adjust it - I’ve never checked a backpack on any flight without having to readjust it when I landed. If you’re buying a new pack, make sure you understand how it should fit and break it in along with your boots; if you’re using an older one, bring it to the outfitter’s when you buy the boots and ask them for help. If you’re not comfortable with that, tell them you’re thinking of buying a pack, pick yours out of the display, and have them show you how to fit it. If your pack doesn’t fit right, you’ll be working a lot harder than you should (and enjoying the trip less).

I’d also recommend looking at some topo maps. If you’ve never used them, get some for the areas where you’ll be training and learn to read them while you’re hiking - you’ll develop a feel for what kind of slopes the contour lines represent and what kind of time you can expect to make. It makes planning a route a whole lot easier if you have some frame of reference for what those lines mean, especially when they start to get all bunched together.

Zip Lock Bags! If you’re hiking in the rain, you’ll be the happiest guy in the world when you can change into warm, dry clothes at the end of the day. Like Bear_Nenno, I’m pretty conservative on the water. At the very least, I’d take the six quarts the first day and see what the trail is like. If you’ve got a map that shows streams or other water sources, talk to the locals to make sure it’s accurate before you set off with just enough water to get you to what used to be an old well. I always carry obscene amounts of water, but I live in the desert.

6

More words on boots and socks, from someone who has done their fair share of hiking away from civilization:

Boots only need to be broken if you buy leather boots (which, by the way, also tend to be more expensive). If you buy boots with fabric/leather uppers, they ought to be comfortable from the moment you put them on. You wouldn’t think of buying sneakers that had to be broken in, so don’t buy fabric/leather boots that way. I’ve worn both Merrell and Vasque boots very comfortably, and the boots wear well.

When you buy your boots, the kind you get will depend on what you plan to do with them. Are you planning to hike along paved roads, or do you intend to follow marked trails across the countryside? Going cross-country definitely requires a medium-weight fabric boot or leather boot with ankle support and a more rugged sole for better grip. That’s even more important if you are going to carry a heavy pack. Leather boots have very rugged soles that are overkill for hiking along paved roads, though, medium-weight fabric boots somewhat less so… so if you’re traveling along paved roads and carrying a day pack only, you can get away with a light-weight hiking shoe rather than a boot. (I would still get a hiking shoe rather than wear sneakers because of the extra support they give.)

When you shop for your boots, make sure you are wearing socks of the same weight you plan to wear while hiking - no guessing as to whether the boot will fit or stretch later! Also, make sure that you get some waterproofing on your boots. If you buy leather and they aren’t already treated, get yourself some beeswax and polish up. If you’re buying fabric/leather, make sure that one of the fabric layers is waterproof (such boots are usually clearly labeled). By the way, waterproofing doesn’t mean that your feet will stay dry if you wade through a stream - it just means that your feet will stay pretty dry against the rain.

As for socks… I ditto Bear Nenno’s recommendation for wool or wool blend socks. Even the cheap wool socks you sometimes see in a display bin work well; no need to get Lands End socks at some ridiculous price per pair. NEVER wear pure cotton socks unless you enjoy blisters. If your laundry plans are minimal, one way to cut down on bulk to carry is to bring just 2-3 pairs of wool socks and wear a very thin polyester sock underneath (sometimes called a sock liner) that can be washed out and hung to dry every night. Yes, the wool socks will get a little stiff, but as long as the layer next to your foot is clean you’ll do fine.

I also found that dusting my feet with Gold Bond medicated powder before putting on socks in the morning helped keep my feet drier and more comfortable during the day, in addition to being something of an athlete’s foot prevention measure. And at the end of the day, it’s great to be able to massage your feet with a foot cream to help cool them. I found a great foot cream with mint extract in Australia that unfortunately isn’t sold here, but Nordstrom seems to carry something similar (Gehwol Foot Cream, ignore the fact it’s labeled as a women’s product).

Sounds like it would be a great trip. Have fun!

7

I think that’s pretty optimistic. Sounds more like a forced march than a ‘hike’.

YMMV :smiley:

Silly side thought. Make sure you have cliped your toe nails. And maybe take a pair of clippers. I had my little toe nail cut into my next little piggy on a long walk once. Hurt like hell, and the damage was already done.

8

I agree. That’s damn near jogging. I recently did 130 miles across England (the Coast-to-Coast walk across the North York Moors, the Yorkshire Dales, and the Lake District, skipping some of the miles in the middle), and most days, we did 10-12 miles with all of our gear on our backs. In the rolling dales, we did more than 12 miles, but in the Lake District, a typical day was 8 miles, and included 2000 feet of elevation gain and loss (from one valley over to the next).

Even at that, those were fairly full hiking days, and we were pretty foot-weary by the end of each day. It was a middle-aged group (40-52), but all in good shape, and most were VERY experienced hikers. Remember, you’re doing this for pleasure, not as an exercise in self-flagellation!

Your backpack shouldn’t weigh more than 30 pounds. If it does, you’re taking too much stuff, and need to leave something home. BTW, skip the water purification kit - in most places, the tap water is plenty safe to drink, you’ll have ample opportunities to refill along the way, and/or bottled water is plentiful.

And six quarts?! Not in Europe. Two quarts will be plenty. I’ve never carried more than that on any trek, other than true desert conditions. Less, usually (like a one-quart Nalgene bottle and a 20-ounce bottled water).

Besides the all-important boots, I’d say the most critical items are good Goretex-type rain gear (jacket and pants, and definitely no ponchos, which are useless when it’s windy), and the zip-loc bags, already mentioned by Enginerd. Put everything in zip-locs. Not only does it keep everything dry, it also makes it way easier to go fishing in your backpack for something without making a complete shambles of it, and having to spend a lot of time repacking.

Didn’t see any werewolves on the moors, but the real danger is stumbling into the middle of a grouse shoot on a foggy day (we did!).

9

I’ve done my fair share of hiking, and 4 mph is pretty damn fast IMO. When I take walks, I figure on 3 mph for standard walking (ie, not climbing any mountains, but not completely without hills either, and walking comfortably - not pushing to go fast or anything like that) with no pack.

10

I was thinking after I posted, that it might seem a little fast. I’m forgetting that people actually do this for “fun”! And you can’t enjoy the surrounding when you’re hauling ass. And, yes, if you’re not going that fast, then you don’t need that much water.
15 miles usually takes me about 2.5 hours and I’ll drink just about all of my 6 quarts of water.
So, yes, YMMV. Much different when you do it for fun than when you do it for work.

Also, if you go the foot powder route:
DO NOT glob it on. Make sure it’s only a thin coat. Excess powder turns to goop in your sock and promotes blisters. Here’s a trick.

Put all your Gold Bond in a large zip lock baggy. To put on your feet, open the bag and actually stick your foot in the bag. Stick your foot in the powder and then pull it out. With your foot out of the power but still in the bag, shake your foot to remove the extra powder. Then take your foot out and rub in the powder to make a nice even coat. Then put your sock on and repeat for the other foot. This works great and doesn’t waste any powder.

11

Even going slow, you shouldn’t leave without 4 quarts of water. Maybe you won’t need it. But I just can’t imagine going anywhere without at least that much water. What if something happens and you can’t make it to town till the next day. What if a rock falls on you and you’re stuck waiting for rescue or something. Hey, you never know. Water is one of those things you’ll really miss when you dont have it.

12

WHOOPS. Before you think that I’m either a super-athlete or a compulsive liar, I meant to say 3 and a half hours, not two and a half.

13

We’re talking about Europe, here. Ever done any hiking there? Unless the OP is planning to cross some rarely-visited high mountain passes, those scenarios are almost inconceivable. I’ve never gone more than about 20 minutes hiking in Europe without seeing other hikers. And I don’t think I’ve ever hiked more than about 5 miles without encountering a cafe!

Six quarts of water in less than 4 hours? You must be doing a lot of trail-marking! That’s a recipe for hyponatremia. I’ve hiked long distances with groups of younger hikers, older hikers, experienced hikers, and inexperienced hikers. I’ve never seen any of them ever put away more than 3 quarts in the course of a modest day of hiking, including a lunchtime refill, except in very hot weather. And again, this is Europe we’re talking about. Different climate.

14

I keep forgetting how small that continent is :wink:

No I haven’t done any hiking in Europe. I haven’t done any hiking at all, actually. But I have a huge amount of experience putting on a heavy ruck sack and moving out solo across various terrain. I’ve put many, many miles on my feet with an average of about 70 pounds of equipment, food and water. When I need to determine how long it takes to get somewhere, I use a ten minute per kilometer base line. Then, if I notice there will be a draw or harsh terrain, I adjust my time accordingly. That’s without running. I’ll sweat a lot. And I will drink a lot.
I guess I am over-preparing the OP. Oops, sorry about that. I’ll stick to just answering questions on feet and gear and stuff then. If anyone needs help preparing for an Adventure Race or something, let me know :wink:
I hear those are pretty fun. I think I might do one when I have time in the next year or two.

15

It really is quite a shock when you’re used to places like Utah or Montana!

Now that’s hard core! I’m impressed. I think a load like that would kill me! I hadn’t hauled a backpack in a few years before I hit England - all my other hikes recently were day hikes, and/or were van-supported. Thirty pounds gave me sore hips for about 2-3 days until I adjusted to it. It’s hell to get old. Don’t do it. :wink:

16

My New Year’s Resolution every year is to “Not get Older”. I always fudge it up.

17

The hardest and heaviest I have ever hiked is supporting a survey team in the Rockies. What do you do for work that puts on so many miles?

18

What I’ve found that’s good for my feet on long marches is two pairs of socks. I wear a thin cotton sock for my first layer, then a thicker wool one for the outer. It’s worked for me and I haven’t gotten any big blisters. It seems that with me the cotton sock sticks to my foot and rubs against the wool one, preventing direct friction on my feet.

If you do try that, then just make sure that the seam at the toe of the cotton sock is tucked under your toes. I found that if it gets on top of my toes, then it’ll slowly blister the tops of my toes. But that could just be my boots.

19

That’s why a lot of folks wear sock liners. They’re very thin, and usually made out of something like polypropylene. The heavy wool or wool-blend hiking socks slide over the sock liners, instead of sliding over your skin. Since they’re all-synthetic, it’s also easy to rinse them out in a hotel sink - within a few hours, they’re dry, and ready for the next day of hiking.

You’re right about the seams - paying attention to them really pays off.

20

Lots of good technical info, I shan’t bother with more.

For a route suggestion, a pair of hiking buddies whose recommendations I’d go with any day of the week recently did part of the “Camino de Santiago” in Northern Spain and loved it. It’s an old pilgrim’s route from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to St. James’ tomb in Santiago de Compostela, some 480 miles in all, but most people obviously do only parts of it. (And some go absolutely wild and follow the old trails from Tours or Lyon or even Paris…) The route has been hiked since the 12th century, so the infrastructure is pretty well in place :smiley: - there’s more or less primitive refugios along the way, as well as inns and/or BBs. Well described route and almost universally recommended.

In France, there’s a pretty good system of “Grande Randonees” (GRs), most of which are pretty well marked (you will need a map anyway) and, with careful planning, has refuges along the way. I’ve hiked bits of GR in the Alps, spectacular. Do bring an emergency overnight kit - if the weather suddenly turns bad (fog and/or rain), a fuel tablet stove, some freeze-dried rations, a sleeping mat and a light tarp make the difference between a Really Bad situation and a Really Cool story.