hiking

Tips for Healthy Hiking

Hiking is one of my favorite pastimes. And it feels so much better when your body is ready to trek up a mountain. So how do you train for a hike? Here are some tips:

Pack Your Weight

Wear your pack when you train and put some weight in it. If you know how much weight you’ll be carrying on hike day, build up to that quantity. Getting a pack filled with weight can take time and extra effort. If that’s getting in your way of prepping, start moving without the pack.

Trekking Poles

Trekking poles are a lifesaver. If you want to hike into your 70’s and 80’s you want to get trekking poles today. Not only do they save your knees, but they turn the hike into a more full-body workout. On a typical hike, the arms aren’t that involved. Add trekking poles and now your arms and shoulders get a workout too.

Cardio

Any hike will feel better if you are ready for the cardio it will require. You can build up by hiking, biking, running, or picking up the pace when you go for a walk.

Core

It’s easy to forge

Tips for Healthy HikingMaggie Downie2023-08-01T14:00:29-04:00

How Many Steps A Day?

Many of us believe we are supposed to walk 10k steps per day. The truth is that there has never been research to back that up. The number comes from a 1960’s, Japanese ad campaign for the first pedometer. Clearly the campaign worked because we’ve all been believing it ever since.

But now we have three research studies that indicate, perhaps to some people’s delight, that we may not need 10k steps for a substantial benefit. It looks like the magic sweet spot is between 7,000 and 8,000 steps. Upon crossing that threshold people decrease their chances of mortality by all causes by 50-70%.

These studies showed correlation not causation, so it is not evidence that walking makes you live longer, but people who walk certainly live longer. If you’d like to be in the “live longer” group, I’d encourage you to build up to 7k steps per day.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting if you already walk more than that (perhaps you have gotten in the habit of 10k steps) that you should reduce your goal. Increased steps was correlated with even more gains, but the most profound leap in longevity came […]

How Many Steps A Day?Maggie Downie2021-11-14T16:40:11-05:00

Hiking Mt Adams

Five years ago I was hiking Mt. Adams in the White Mountains, but I turned back about 60 feet from the summit because high winds made me struggle to stay upright. Those 60 feet mattered so I never checked it off the list in my attempt to climb all the 4,000-footers in New Hampshire.

Second Attempt Hiking Mt Adams

Recently I decided to try again. To make things interesting I opted to take King’s Ravine trail, known for being one of the more challenging trails in the White Mountains. It is on the Terrifying 25 list. That means it has slides, rock scrambles, and boulder caves. It sounded fun. Plus it had an option to detour onto a trail called the Subway which provided the opportunity to climb over rocks, squeeze through some tight tunnels, throw your pack up on a rock and spin around underneath it and pull yourself though and then grab your pack and continue on. We were all scrapped up after the Subway but smiling and pleased with ourselves.

Unusual Circumstances

That morning before we knew the fun of the rock tunnels, we were greeted at the trailhead by a legitimate-looking […]

Hiking Mt AdamsMaggie Downie2019-11-08T10:17:12-05:00

Finding happiness

Being in motion on a long hike makes me happy. Here I am at a camp on Mt. Kili.

Figuring out and finding happiness has consumed me lately. I’ve been reading a lot about it. What makes us happy? As far as I can tell, what makes us happy is a series of contradictions. You need a stable government, unless you live in Mexico and then apparently you are happy without one. Earning more than $70,000 per year supposedly doesn’t lead to greater happiness according to statistics, except that in the very specific places where people are the most happy individual income is higher overall. You need freedom, but one of the happiest towns in the United States has a lot of restrictions.

In all my reading and research I can pinpoint four things that seem to truly make people happy—good relationships, volunteering or doing good for others, a sense of purpose, and your perspective.

Here are just a couple tips, using the four points above as a reference, to try and increase your happiness quota:

Get together with good friends at regular intervals. Have a monthly dinner club, or book club, or […]

Finding happinessMaggie Downie2018-02-14T15:58:45-05:00

Failure is the mother of success

Plank at sunset on Kili

While I can’t say I’m not bothered by failure, I can at least recognize that very often I get some of my best stories out of failures or at least times when things didn’t go as expected.

Still, failing is hard. It’s hard to accept. It’s hard to admit. It’s embarrassing. When I failed to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro those were a mixture of the emotions I experienced—embarrassment, frustration, sadness, disappointment, but also understanding and acceptance.

The moment I realized I wasn’t going to reach the top I started crying. I don’t cry that often so I’m not really used to it. And, normally if I need to cry in public I try not to. There was no holding back these tears. They just came. I’d exerted too much energy getting this far to utilize any effort holding back tears now. I’d lost control of my body, physically and emotionally. I basically cried myself down that mountain, doing the walk of shame as everyone heading up stepped aside to let me down.

They were letting me pass, but I had let myself down.

Failure is the mother of successMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:12:52-05:00