Talk:Hiking

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hanna wietsma (article contribs).

UK definition of "hiking" inaccurate

I don't know where the writer got the supposed meaning of "hiking" in the UK as "a slightly old-fashioned word, with a flavor more of heartiness and exercise than of enjoying the outdoors" (which I am not even sure makes much sense), but it is used precisely the same sense that is given here for the USA. It is also in thoroughly modern usage and in no sense "old-fashioned". "Hiking" is used more commonly than "hillwalking" which is more the quaint old-fashioned term. 82.43.194.184 (talk) 23:57, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. I'm a Brit who's been heavily involved in the Scouts as well as going hiking with other groups, and I see no difference in meaning from what is described here as an "American" term. Hiking is in fact also the most accurate way to describe the activity in British English. Perhaps a section giving other terms for the activity would be appropriate, but I think the reference to hiking being "a slightly old fashioned word" is unfounded. Madeinsane (talk) 19:38, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Some non-UK person had to revert the edit without explanation. Rather petty-minded in my opinion given the lack of justification. Why would someone who doesn't even live in the UK know better on this matter than two people who do live in the UK? I've lived here for nearly 40 years, and even back in the early 80s at school I was part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme where most young Brits get introduced to the concept of hiking in schools around the country and they were always called "hikes", never "hillwalking". I have never even heard that term used before except on this page and later only on some obscure hillwalking society web page. No-one uses it in daily general speech. I request an explanation from Rmhermen or else I will re-edit the reversion made on 26 July 2009.

(People give up on editing Wikipedia because of admins and obsessive editors who don't feel the need to engage with other members of the community or justify their activities. Don't be that person, please. 82.44.93.55 (talk) 16:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I invite anyone to look up the words hike and hillwalking at the Oxford English Dictionary and also the same at the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You'll note no entry at all for the word "hillwalking". I repeat my argument: "hillwalking" is not in common usage in the UK and "hike" is the word in the UK commonly used to describe what this article is referring to. If anything hillwalking is the more quaint and old-fashioned of the two, and if you told anyone in the UK you were going hillwalking they would just assume you were just going for a walk on a hill, which could mean for 5 minutes or 5 days—nothing to do with what this article describes.

Two British editors with experience of hiking in the UK, who are both prepared to make justification for their case, in my opinion, outweigh one admin who has (presumably) no experience of hiking in the UK, and who has not made any justification for his/her case. I am re-adding the edits I made previously. Please don't abuse the admin role by reverting edits without providing justification especially when others clearly provided theirs—it does not become the admin role. If anyone has an issue with this edit please state your case why here before overruling the edit. Thank you. 82.44.93.55 (talk) 21:27, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Isn't an encyclopedia more supposed to describe concepts rather than words ? If you look at the french version, you'll see none of these terminological debates Bohan (talk) 18:00, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Chile

I was temped to revert the recent edit. It looks very odd to have this and no sub-section on major more areas. And Is the section on Chile really on the topic? As the topic is "hiking" shouldn't the discussion focus on the history of hiking in different parts of the world? The addition of sections on the history of hiking in Japan, and other non-Western cultures would help improve the article. And what about Africa, India and China? The Israeli novelist David Grossman's novel, To the End of the Land, deals with a hike along the Israel National Trail. Hiking is a tourist business in Jordan. A few thoughts. I hope to work on this sometime. Rwood128 (talk) 23:41, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I think you're right that having a subsection on hiking in one country, that only consists of one paragraph, is strange. I just deleted the section header entirely. —hike395 (talk) 09:26, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, hike395. I now realise that I was the one who created the "South America" sub-heading! I'll try to give some attention to improving this article, there is certainly room for sections on the history of hiking in the Alps, Himalayas, South America, Scandinavia, Australasia, and Japan. And I curious about other countries. I remember reading that Greeks don't hike, but have met Greek hikers, including a man who on E.4 stopped in his car and said "I like that too", presumably not knowing the English word for walking or hiking.Rwood128 (talk) 10:10, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Boots or runners?

I was interested in the latest edit 28/7/20 re the use of trail runners. I still use light weight boots for backpacking holidays (I'm very old!). I also find poles of great value in the Alps. However, I retired my Salomon hiking shoes after I lost faith in their grip on steep rock – but also because of the smell. I use walking shoes made of leather when not backpacking, which breathe (cooler than synthetic material), and have exceptionally good traction and are also more stable than the Salomon hikers. They are actually not specialized walking gear but rugged "city" walking shoes. I waterproof them with mink oil – I found that my Salomon hikers took forever to dry and were porous (no Goretex, which I see as of little potential value). I checked what my local long distance trail has to say: "Trail-rated hiking boots or shoes are a must on the rugged East Coast Trail. Sneakers, running shoes, sandals or flip-flops are not adequate protection for your ankles and soles of your feet". Trail runners appear not to be recommended for this trail.

Walking across Wales, I once tested hiking sandals (my evening wear) on a canal path but gave up after 20 minutes! A leading writer on mountain walking had recommended using them in the Alps, but presumably he had superior muscles to mine. Rwood128 (talk) 12:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

See Jonathan Williams and Lesley Williams "Top tips for European trek packing" Cicerone Press, 4 June 2015

Hazards section edit

Suggested Edits:

Remove: "The crossing of glaciers is potentially hazardous because of the potential for crevasses. These giant cracks in the ice are not always visible as snow can be blown and freeze over the top to make a snowbridge. To cross a glacier the use of a rope, crampons and ice axes are usually required".

• Reason: The activity described above is called "glacier travel", and is within the realm of "mountaineering" or "mountain climbing", NOT "hiking". Hiking and mountaineering are two very different activities. Mountaineering requires highly specialized tools, knowledge, and training which are well beyond the scope of hiking. It also requires a team of individuals with specialized roles within the team, whereas hiking does not. See Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills

Remove: photo with the description "Hikers in Norway's Galdhøpigg are roped together for protection against falls into crevasses".

• Reason: The photo does not depict hiking; it depicts glacier travel.

Move: "Deep, fast-flowing rivers pose another danger" to the end of the previous paragraph and delete "that can be mitigated with ropes".

• Reason: Navigating rivers is a hazard of hiking; however, hikers do not use ropes to aid in river crossings unless ropes were placed as a permanent installation, similar to a bridge.

SparkleTaco (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Numerous established trails cross mountain features including glaciers. You seem to be applying personal analysis to the article content in violation of WP:SYNTH. The image in question shows people hiking in the snow; being connected by ropes does not preclude their being engaged in hiking. The "The crossing of glaciers" paragraph, though is currently unsourced though, and for that reason I don't take any exception to removing that paragraph. VQuakr (talk) 20:42, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Alpine trails in the Alps (and elsewhere) may cross glaciers. Also some winter hiking involve, ice axes, crampons, and even ropes. Re river crossings: Isn't the carrying of a rope recommended when a potentially dangerous river crossing is on a hiking route? I've also witnessed children being roped-up on a Swiss pass hiking route where ladders were involved. Ropes, ladders, and other aids are found on more difficult (grade 3) trails. Also some hikes may involve scrambling which is, I suppose, easy mountainering. A source for the hiking across a glacier will be easy to find. Rwood128 (talk) 21:39, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, VQuakr and Rwood128. I do not believe my edits are in violation of WP:SYNTH since I originally cited a reliable, published source that is directly related to the topic of the article, and directly supports my position. See Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills as cited above. I apply personal analysis only insomuch as I was a mountaineering guide and instructor for over 15 years and am currently a glaciologist. I also worked for the National Parks Service as a climbing ranger on Mt. Rainier, have summited high mountains on each continent, including Antarctica, have led expeditions all over the world, including Denali, Everest, and trekked to the North Pole from mainland Canada on skis. I am also a life-long hiker and backpacker.
There are serious safety concerns associated with glacier travel, and referring to it as hiking, is misleading and dangerous for any hiker who does not understand the difference.
My issue isn't necessarily about crossing glaciers, it's about crossing crevassed glaciers. Doing so requires special protection, including ropes, and in-depth knowledge well in advance of walking along an established trail (aka hiking). You state "numerous established trails cross mountain features including glaciers". I agree; however, these are mountaineering routes not hiking trails. The rare hiking trail that actually does cross a glacier, are heavily traveled and do not cross anywhere near crevasses, for instance those on Mount St. Hellens and Mt. Adams. And since glaciers are constantly moving and shifting, routes must be reestablished numerous times each year, making hiking across a crevassed glacier, not just deadly, but also impractical. Could you please reference any hiking trails you believe cross crevassed glaciers?
The image does not show hiking; the people in the photo are roped up and traveling on a glacier, which is firmly within the realm of mountaineering, not hiking (see references). It's not just a question of semantics; as stated above, mountaineering requires specialized tools, training, skills, and knowledge beyond the scope of hiking, and includes a team of people who each have different roles within the team--your life literally depends on your teammates and that can't be said of hiking. Roping up is required to safely cross a crevassed glacier and roping up is a defining feature of mountaineering. Can you please provide supporting citations for your comment "being connected by ropes does not preclude their being engaged in hiking"?
Please take the time to review the citations above before commenting further, and at minimum, please cite reliable source material in support of you position, otherwise you are guilty of WP:SYNTH yourself. Thank you. SparkleTaco (talk) 01:34, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Glacier hiking contains multiple sources that use the term "glacier hike" or "glacier hiking", so this isn't a term invented by Wikipedia. VQuakr (talk) 02:13, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes; which is why Glacier hiking was proposed for deletion until you blocked it. The sources cited therein do not refer to or define "glacier hiking" specifically, so the term "glacier hiking" was invented by Wikipedia. There is, in fact, not one citation in that article validating or supporting the term "glacier hiking". If you follow the citations on that page to their source, you will find no support for the term "glacier hiking". And again, you're missing the point; walking across a glacier isn't by definition mountaineering; traveling across crevasses or roping up in a climbing team is. There is no mention on Glacier hiking of crossing crevasses or roped-travel, so I believe your reference to the page is irrelevant. Can you provide any original source that equates crossing crevasses or roped-travel with hiking? SparkleTaco (talk) 02:55, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

"A sourced article refutes my opinion so it should be deleted" is a strange take. Straw man. WP:SATISFY. VQuakr (talk) 02:57, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

SparkleTaco I have attempted to address the issues raised by you.

With regard to Glacier hiking, perhaps, this can be best addressed by clarifying that it is a highly technical form of hiking with affinities to mountaineering – the term itself is an established one, as a Google search revealed to me. Rwood128 (talk) 15:22, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Another example of a more extreme type of hiking is via ferrata, where easy and moderate routes can be described as hiking but many routes are a easy type of mountaineering. Perhaps the article needs to have a section on more hazardous forms of hiking? Rwood128 (talk) 14:06, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Books on walking

Would it be useful to add a section on walking books? The following are some suggestions:

• William Wordsworth, A Guide through the District of the Lakes
• .Bill Bryson: A Walk in the Woods – describing his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail
• John Hillaby, Journey to the Jade Sea (1964); Journey through Britain; Journey through Europe; Journey to the Gods (1991). Accounts of various long distance walks.
• Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (1977); Between the Woods and the Water (1986); The Broken Road (2013). A trilogy describing a walk across Europe.
• John Muir: A thousand-mile walk to the Gulf.
• Dervla Murphy: walking across the Andes, Ethiopia, etc.
• Robert Louis Stephenson: Travels with a Donkey – 12-day, 200-kilometre (120 mi) solo hiking journey through the Cévennes mountains.

Examples in other languages than English? Rwood128 (talk) 21:02, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Hiking

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Hiking's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "h1":

• From Lycian Way: "'Az gittik, uz gittik' sözünün doğruluğunu bu yollarda anladık" [In these ways we understood the truth of the word 'we went little, we went long']. Hürriyet (in Turkish). 1 May 2006. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
• From Fethiye: "Fethiye-Ölüdeniz-Kızılada-Fethiye". Hürriyet (in Turkish). Retrieved 16 January 2016.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 22:26, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Images

Hi Nick Moyes, I have restored the two images that you deleted, presumably because you thought that they were off topic. I understand, but I'm preparing now to start using trail crampons for safety, even though I actually walk within a city's boundaries, and then, when deep snow comes, I will sometimes use snowshoes. But I will still be hiking/walking. I will also see signs of skis on the trails that I use. The two winter images emphasises their similarity with hiking in other seasons. The snowshoe article begins: "A snowshoe is footwear for walking over snow". Rwood128 (talk) 15:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

See: "Winter Hikes in Nova Scotia" Rwood128 (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Rwood128. Thank you for giving your rationale for reverting my removal of two irrelevant images from the 'See also' section of this article. Rather than stomping in and simply reverting you (which only causes upset) I thought it best to explain that I believe you were wrong to reinstate them, and to explain my rationale for their removal (which was mentioned in my edit summary):

• 'See also' sections do not contain images.
• Neither snow shoes nor ski touring are mentioned in the article. They are, of course related activities and so a wikilink within the 'See also' section is quite acceptable.
• If you feel they are relevant to the article, you should include a section of text about them before including an image, though I respectfully suggest you would be better doing so at Backpacking (hiking), where both more specialised techniques are already briefly mentioned, then in this more general article about hiking.
• Images used in articles need to add encyclopaedic content about the subject. Neither this image nor this image add value to the article, and serve only to confuse and misdirect, as they are not referred to anywhere on the page. Indeed, they are wikilinked in 'See also' at 'Related activities' and not even as 'Types of hiking' So this is WP:UNDUE, just as including an image of a llama would be inappropriate on the grounds of it being relevant to Llama hiking.
• And most whacky of all: the image of a girl feeding a bird on her arm whilst happening to be wearing snow shows (that you can't properly see) is, well, plain daft.

So please reinstate my edit and appreciate that we all have experiences when hiking that might be related to the broad subject, but not directly it, but this is an encyclopaedia which should serve to inform and not confuse the reader. Neither your own personal experiences, or mine as an active hiker and alpinist are relevant. I often carry an ice axe and crampons when I'm hiking in winter, or on approach walks in the Alps. None of those images would be directly relevant here, nor are the two that I removed. Please revert your edit which reinstated them. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:19, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Nick Moyes. I will await any further comment, and will also think further about this. There is mention of winter hiking, under hazards, but this is peripheral. A section on winter hiking is needed that can includes, for example, reference to the use of crampons and an ice ax. Your choice of words such as "wacky" and "daft" is puzzling, but maybe there is a cultural difference as you don't have a real winter in England.

The disputed images in fact illustrate the "see also" section, especially "related topics". Your comment about the snowshoe image being "plain daft" is over the top. There is a caption and my ancient eyes can see the snow shoes. Rwood128 (talk) 18:43, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

As I said above, it is quite inappropriate to add any images to the 'See also' section, and I have to respond to you over the image of a girl feeding a bird whilst standing, wearing snow shows to illustrate 'hiking'. It is, indeed, quite daft to include such a wacky image. Can you not see how irrelevant that is to the article? (Maybe it's a cultural thing.) But I am pleased you have now seen sense and removed it. I have moved the images out from the 'See also' section into the section you've sensibly created on 'winter hiking' - I'm very happy to see that section included, and would very much welcome seeing it being expanded, as well as appropriate images added to support the text content. Please just ensure you follow WP:MOS when expanding content. You are quite right about English winters; that's why hikers in England who want to become competent alpine mountaineers often head a few hundred miles north to improve their winter skills by ice climbing in Scotland - a place where many of the world's toughest climbers have come from. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 02:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Rwood128 and have restored the photograph of the snowshoer in the See also section. Snowshoeing is a form of hiking, and the picture illustrates snowshoeing, per MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. Further, there is nothing is MOS:SEEALSO that forbids images in the section. If you'd like to come up with a better snowshoeing image, I'm open for substitution, but I think it illustrates a form of winter hiking, and I support keeping the photograph in. If you'd like to discuss further, let's stick to using Wikipedia guidelines, and avoid perjorative terms such as "daft". — hike395 (talk) 06:16, 21 November 2020 (UTC)