Make sure you you understand what your limits are before you go on a long hike. <\/strong>You don’t want to be dragging yourself down the last two miles, out of water and daylight, in stumbling daze just to say you completed the whole thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\nHave I done that? Nah. That’s advice from a “good friend” of mine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This “friend” one time, at the end of a very long day of hiking over 16 miles in one day, had to keep hiking even when the sun went down and we had to use headlamps to pick our way through a rocky trail. The blisters were really bad that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What about Long Distance Trails like the Appalachian trail?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Some people do what is known as “thru-hiking” on trails that may be hundreds or even thousands of miles long. A thru-hiker hikes every day and tries to cover 20-25 miles each day. For a beginner, that may seem close to impossible, but very fit hikers who are used to these kinds of challenges can “get into a groove” and knock out high mileage every day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some cases, they may have no choice. They may need to get to the next campground or even to the next town to re-supply food and water. I know hikers who have covered as much as 35-40 miles in a day on these trails and sometimes can even average<\/em> 30 miles per day for a week or so. I mention this because it represents what is possible, but not what is typical.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf you are interested in “thru-hiking”, make sure and start small and work your way up. These types of excursions are treacherous and you have to budget food very closely to make sure you don’t end up between a rock and a hard place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
How Long Does It Take To Hike 5 Miles?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you are hiking at an average hiking speed of around 2.5 miles an hour, if you don’t take any breaks it can take 2 hours to hike 5 miles<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIf you factor in breaks, it’s more likely it will take 2 and a half hours to hike miles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs always, if you have a deadline, you should give yourself 3 hours for breaks or if one of your group is taking longer than expected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If someone asks you to go on a day hike with them. How far is that? What is a typical length for this type of hike? On hikes that last<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":11,"label":"Backpacking"},{"value":3,"label":"Hiking"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/hiking-pic-1024x768.jpg",640,480,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Peter","author_link":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/author\/outsidedecider\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":11,"name":"Backpacking","slug":"backpacking","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":11,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":8,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":11,"category_count":8,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Backpacking","category_nicename":"backpacking","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"Hiking","slug":"hiking","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":55,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":3,"category_count":55,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Hiking","category_nicename":"hiking","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8766,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/8766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}