How to Plan a Section on a Thru-Hike?
This blog post was suggested to me by my friend. To me, the topic seemed pretty obvious, but I enjoy planning, I’m kind of good at it, and now I have thru-hiking experience. Not everyone is all those things, he said, and he’s probably right. So, thanks, Tom. I’ll write it (and if you enjoy this post, you can thank Tom too).
Don’t plan too far ahead.
This is the most common advice newbies receive. It’s great advice, but for someone who has never done a big trail and is nervous (and perhaps has a slight over-planning tendency), it doesn’t help much. Many people tend to try and plan as far ahead as possible.
Why do I think it’s a terrible idea to plan the next month or three? Let’s say you’ve planned the next 100 days (boats, trains, planes, stays), and on day 4, you sprain an ankle. Suddenly, 96 days of plans go out the window. If they don’t, you’ll spend your time stressing about how to get back on track instead of just enjoying the trail. What if a wildfire closes a section down?
So, how much should you plan to avoid being stressed out?
And how should you plan to avoid getting into trouble?
Generally, sections are planned between resupply points. Resupply points are towns, shops, gas stations, or any place where you can buy food.
This is exactly how much I plan in advance. Unless there are special places where I need permits or tickets bought ahead of time, I only do one section at a time—between one town and another. You’ll have heaps of time to plan while you’re walking! Reading through FarOut icons sort of became my pastime entertainment. When you’re in town, you can go through the next section calmly while having a coffee, instead of trying to tackle the whole trail with an overwhelming amount of information.
Let’s plan a section of trail as an example. For this, I’ll use an actual TA (Te Araroa) section I did so I can include pictures. I’ll also use the FarOut app. You can do the same thing with a regular paper map.
I’m in a town called Havelock. I need to plan the next section via the Richmond Ranges to a town called St. Arnaud.
First of all – check the weather! Before I even go through the planning steps, check if there’s some monster storm coming that might leave you stranded or worse. See if it’s worth leaving town at all. If yes, read on, and I’ll get back to the weather later.
1. I open the map (or an app such as FarOut) and check how far it is to the next town by trail.
It’s 161 km (95 miles).
FarOut tip: You can draw a specific route for easier planning. Click on the settings icon – create a route – click and hold on your starting point, and a pin will appear. Click and hold on your endpoint, and another pin will appear. Now, if you go to the terrain icon (hills), the terrain will be shown only for this created route.
2. I then calculate how long it would normally take me.
I usually hike 20-25 km (~15 miles) per day, and 30-40 km (~25 miles) if I push myself. I take the lesser amount and calculate that the whole distance should take me 6.5 days (160 km ÷ 25 km = 6.5).
First-timer tip: This example is me two months into the hike, where I already have the stamina. If you’ve never done a thru-hike before, try starting with less distance. Don’t push yourself on your first days, because you’ll never notice how fast injuries can creep up on you. Do 10 km (6 miles) on your first day. It’s not a race. Who cares if someone walks five times more? You’ll see how quickly you’ll get your trail legs. If you overwork your muscles, you’ll lose your trail legs before you even get them.
3. Next, I check the terrain and plan campsites accordingly.
I make sure there isn’t more distance between campsites than I can walk. Are there any huge peaks ahead? If there are, I might want to consider walking less that day.
Red arrow: Notice how flat the terrain is (this means I’ll walk faster).
Red boxes: Click on huts or campsites. It shows how far they are from your starting point.
So, my first hut will be Captain’s Creek Hut, since I can do the 43 km on flat ground.
Then I decide to do almost 30 km to Starveal (not a great decision, by the way; that last uphill kicked my ass).
The next day, I see there’s going to be some up and down. I decide to only do the 18 km to Mt. Rintoul Hut, because look what you see when you create a route. Look at the ascent and descent elevation. Also, Rintouls are scree slopes.
After that, I went 22 km to Top Wairoa Hut and then 28 km to Red Hills Hut. Finally, another 20 km to town.
Now, I see that at the end of day 6, I should be in town.
Peaks aren’t the only thing to consider. If it’s a beach - is it accessible at high tide? Are there any buses at the end of my section that I have to make on time? When making your plan, consider all factors.
4. Then, I plan food. I’ll be walking for 6 days. Since I’m in town at the end of day 6, I probably only need 5 dinners. Since I started in town, I’d have breakfast there, so only 5 breakfasts too. BUT you have to consider this next step.
5. Take some extra food. It doesn’t have to be loads. I always had 1-2 extra dinners and maybe 1 extra chocolate. It wouldn’t be a feast if I got stranded, but it would keep me alive.
Here are just a couple of things that could change your plans, slow you down, or make you go longer:
- Nature: You have to know the weather. At least check it before you leave. Having said that, weather changes, especially in the mountains. You could be unable to cross a river that suddenly rose, lose your track in a snowstorm, or be stranded in a backcountry hut because it’s too windy on the ridges. If a wildfire breaks out, you might have to make a detour, potentially extending your distance.
- Tides: In New Zealand, 90-Mile Beach had tides rolling in and out. The water would completely submerge the beach, so whenever the walls of the dunes were too steep to climb quickly, escaping the wave, you had to leave the beach and sit in a dune until the water no longer splashed on its walls. There are timetables you can check, but sometimes the tide is at 10AM and you can do nothing about it.
- Water: In the California desert, I used to do my planning around water. It was still town-to-town, but I wanted my camps to be near water, and that sometimes meant going an extra mile or five.
- Injuries: With these, you never know. If you took a PLB (personal locator beacon), you can always call for help. If it’s not a huge injury and you can walk, it can significantly slow you down.
6. Finally, I am ready to adjust my plan. As I already mentioned, I like to read through FarOut icons, so if I feel like I’m being too slow or can’t be bothered to walk today, I find myself a campsite closer. Before committing, I check if I can either compensate by walking more the next day or adjust all my upcoming campsites and add a day or half-day without going hungry.
That’s about it.
I’d like to finish this long blog post with an example of less-than-desirable planning. On my first thru-hike, I forgot to add some extra food to my planning and forgot I planned to make a tiny detour to climb Mount Whitney, which would add an extra day. So, I had zero food for that added day. I remembered that right before Mount Whitney, but I wasn’t going to give up on the idea of climbing it, so I did it anyway. I then had to compensate for that added day by walking more of the remaining section to avoid completely running out of food.
Instead of walking one 4,000 m mountain pass a day, I had to walk two. I also had to do it on one breakfast peanut/date tortilla wrap, one Knorr sides pasta, and a couple of dates (not great even for one pass calorie-wise). To top it all off, I had my first bear encounter right after I finished eating that last pack of pasta.
You can find that short story here.
The sunrise on Mount Whitney made up for the bad planning. And now I have a bear story. Sometimes crappy plans have beautiful outcomes.