Have you ever found your self looking through lists of hikes trying to find the best one but not known where to start. It is important to learn how to breakdown a list of hikes based on your criteria if you want to be able to makes sense of it. I’ll layout this process in to a few simple steps as well a provide some general tips on this process.
Step One: Resources
There are many place were you can find hikes but your best bet will either be a large website like alltrails.com or a guide book for your area. These two options are going to be the easiest/best for most people, I will be referring to alltrails and guide books in this article but most of the information can be applied to any source you find your hikes from. AllTrails is great because it has thousands of hikes world wide and reviews from the people who have hiked them. Guidebooks are good because they are a curated set of hikes, so you can be sure the hikes in there will all be fun and accurately reviewed. While both resources have their advantages you will need to combine them to get an accurate idea of the hike before you go. I recommend starting with the guide book because it will have all ready narrowed down to the best hikes in the area and then search for the trail on alltrails. Using this method you can get an accurate description and assertion that the hike is a good one from the guide book as well as photos and recent trip reports on alltrails.com.
Step Two: Ability Level
This is most important factor to consider as it is what determines the hikes that are even available to you. You can generally break hikes down in to 4 catagories: easy, medium, hard and very-hard difficulty.
| Length(mi) | Elevation Gain(ft/mi) | Notes | |
| Easy | 1-5 | 0-200 | These are hikes which will either be flat or have gentle inclines, Think of walking along a meandering river or climbing a small hill. This could even be in a large city park. |
| Medium | 3-6 | 200-500 | These hikes will almost always have some kind of elevation gain. Think of a small mountain or a long steadily climbing forest road. |
| Hard | 6-10 | 400-1000 | This is not something you should jump right in to your first time on the trail. These hikes ascend considerable mountains, traverse mountain passes to alpine lakes or are exceptionally steep for short distances. |
| Very-Hard* | 8+ | 500-1500+ | For these hikes it very important that you know what your are doing and whayt your capabilities are. Only people with the highest level fitness consider these to be straight forward. For most people these hikes include long days on the trail climbing over mountain passes, summiting peaks or traveling very long distances (12-25 miles) |
Length and elevation gain are the two main statistics to look at when determining the difficulty of a hike. I broke the 4 difficulties down in the table above to show what the average range of each hike could look like. Length is defiantly most important because it is what ultimately determines how many step you are going to have to take. When looking at elevation it is important to look at it from the perspective of elevation gain per mile. This is because you could have two hikes with the same total elevation gain but one is twice as long as the other, turning your hike in to more of an endurance exercise. This is why there is overlap between the categories. The final thing to consider is where the elevation gain takes place during the hike. This brings to mind a solo-backpacking trip I took a few years ago. The hike followed a river up valley along an old logging road, the road was nearly flat and I stayed on it for about 7 miles but then in the final 2 miles of the hikes I gained ~1500 ft during the final 2 miles. If this elevation gain had been spreak over the entire 9 mile trip to my campside it could have come out to a gentle ~160 ft/mile but since it was only spread over 2 miles it was ~750 ft/mile. On top of that the climb was made more difficult because I had been tired by the first 7 miles, so make sure not to neglect how the elevation gain is spread throughout the hike. When looking at the averages in this table consider that you can have, for example, a 2-3 mile extra-hard hike if you are gaining 2000ft per mile or you could have an easy hike that is ten miles long and flat (although your feet might be a bit sore afterwards).
For the complete beginners think about how easy it is for you to walk around in day to day life. If this is difficult, e.g. you get out of breath walking up the stairs to your apartment or office, then start with something simple, flat and under 1-2 miles. If you are not in that category then start with something from 2-4 miles either flat or a gental incline. Once you have done your first hike, pay attention to how you feel the next day. Do you feel like you could go out first thing the next morning an do it again? If the answer it yes make sure to try something a bit harder next time. If the answer is that you need a few days to recover be hiking again then I recommend repeating the same hike and ones similar to it until it becomes easier and then progress to something harder!.
If you have already done some hiking then compare the stats of that hike to this list and consider how hard it was for you. If you have done a 4 mile hike where you gained 200 ft/mile and it was very difficult and it took a long time to complete then stick to hikes in the easy section until you have built up your strength. However, if that 4 mile hike was piece of cake then move in to the medium category and find something a little bit longer or steeper.
Step Three: Narrowing Down Your Options
Now that you know that your hiking skill level is you can start to think about what the other criteria are for your hike. First of all, guidebooks will have ranked the hikes by difficulty, different books use different grading systems, it will either be a number scale 1-5/1-10 (5/10 being the most difficult) or a system like the one I described above. Go to the table of contents at the beginning of the book, commonly the book will have all the hikes briefly summarized by different criteria, this is the best place to start your search. Use your skill level and the tips I gave to help you rule out all the hikes that are too difficult. Next look at any other information they have the about the hike, firstly look at the location because driving distance is probably important, then look for info such as the kind of scenery on each hike.
Step Four: Further Research
Now take your narrowed down list of hikes and start searching them on alltrails.com. Take a close look at the recent trip reports, ideally there will be some from the last week so you will have an idea of conditions on the trail but keep in mind conditions could have changed drastically depending on weather, even if it just rained overnight. These reports will also commonly address road conditions, this is especially important because the trail might be great but it would not do you any good if your car can’t make it to the trailhead. Also checkout the interactive map and graph of the elevation change on the hike. Keep in mind if you are in the mountains during early summer and spring there could very well be snow at the top of the hike but not at the bottom.
Step Five: Make Your Decision
You should now have a good idea of where you will be heading on your next hike! If you are