Sports and Exercise study from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

[Makwa]

I came across this study from 2017 that is pretty interesting. It's low on text and high on graphs and charts. You can go through it in under five minutes.

https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/s...rcise/home.htm

Within the study is some data on hiking:

* From 2009 to 2015, of the 18.1% of people in the United States aged 15 and older who engaged in sports and exercise activities on a given day just 0.9% hiked.

* Breakdown of hikers by gender: 56% men, 44% women

* Age distribution of hikers:
15-24 15.7%
25-54 54.9%
55+ 29.4%

* Median age of hikers: 42.4

* Time spent hiking by day of week:
Weekend days - 2.7 hours
Weekdays - 2.0 hours

[Eddie Fournier]

Interesting that the median age increased from about 36 to 42.4, although that might just be an impact of the overall aging of the population.

[FlyFishingandBeer]

Its surprising that weekend hikers only account for ~26% more activity than weekday hikers. I wonder how much of this has to do with long distance thru hikers who spend virtually all day on most days hiking during their respective season.

From what I could find, there were 1816 total finishers between the AT, CDT, and PCT in 2019. This number does not reflect all the starters who didn't finish (~75% of all attempts across the triple crown spectrum), or how many days those non-finishers were on trail. There could easily be tens of thousands of people who do some variant of "hiking" on weekends across the US, but it could easily take each one of those people an entire season to rack up as many hours as a thru hiker on a single day. There's a ton of variables that could be affecting that sample set, but its neat to see that its not just a weekend warrior sport.

[Makwa]

People 15+ in U.S. represent ~80% of the population or ~264 million people. If you dig into the numbers in the study you find 19.5% of people over 15 exercise in any given day or ~51.5 million people. Hikers are 0.9% of the total or 463,500 people. According to the Adirondack Council all them are parked on Rte 73 and hiking in the High Peaks Wilderness. Jokes aside, based on your findings the number of thru hikers comes to less than 10,000 or ~2.15% of the total. Probably not enough to move the needle significantly. I think what the numbers show is that the average hiker is just somebody going out to walk under 5 miles. If the average is 2-2.7 hours depending on the day of the week it can't be much more than that. Or look at it by saying they hike 1-1.35 hours in one direction, turn around, and walk out. We're not talking about big hikes by any stretch of the imagination. We are so used to seeing hikers out on 8, 10, or 12 hour hikes of 10-20 miles that we miss the fact that the vast majority of folks are just out for a short hike. We call climbing Cascade and Porter "easy" but that effort is double what the average hiker sets out to do on any given hike.

[FlyFishingandBeer]

Makwa I guess that's what I was doing a piss-poor job getting at The average "hiker" is probably the person who takes a stroll through the unpaved section of their local county park on a couple of Saturdays each summer. Big destination hiking locations, with a few exceptions tend to be pretty slow on weekdays compared to weekends. I was just searching for some explanation as to how the two numbers could be so close. I guess the obvious one that I missed is that there's 5 week days. Whoops.

[Makwa]

I'm not too confident that people even categorized themselves correctly for the purposes of this study. If you're on a bike you know you are cycling. If you're in a pool doing laps you know you're swimming. You know if you're golfing, playing tennis, or bowling but do people know when they're hiking? Where is the line between walking and hiking? I had an old buddy tell me recently that he's been doing a lot of hiking. Stunned, I asked where. He says, "There's a lot of bike paths near me that I've been walking on." I said, "So you're walking not hiking." I wonder how many people think the same way as my buddy. I walk several times a week over in Albany Rural Cemetery which is just a few miles from me. I do 3-5 miles depending on the day. All off road. I call it walking because of the location and the time invested and because I carry no pack even though I'm on grass or dirt the whole time and do use the hiking trails there and bushwhack in the forests that ring the property. Maybe it's hiking? Perhaps some people would call it that? It's a pretty good flatland hiking workout but I'd never call it that for a study on sports & exercise. I'd love to hear how the average person defines hiking.

[FlyFishingandBeer]

Makwa Excellent point and it probably deserves its own thread. I once read that hiking is defined as a strenuous walk in rural/forested terrain that involves significant elevation change. I don't necessarily agree with that description and I'm sure that folks who hike the Florida trail at a slow pace don't either.

My neighborhood (bougie HOA, backs up to a state park) contains about 20 miles of mostly paved, forested trails on rolling terrain. I walk my dogs or jog on them daily but would never consider that hiking. However, once I cross over into state park lands (about 4k acres) and the trails become dirt and more densely forested, it feels more like hiking. The elevation change back there is practically non-existent but many of the trails are very ADK-like. Rocky, muddy, mostly unmarked and require a sense of direction to safely navigate. I'm still not convinced that this is necessarily hiking either.

There's an interesting thread over on the ADK Fun Police Reddit that gets into this to some extent, but nobody can seem to put their finger on a static definition.

[WNY Wanderer]

I wonder what a study for 2016-present would reveal vs. studies from 2009-15 and 2003-08. It's almost certain the % of hikers would be significantly higher, as 2015 was around the time when hiking experienced a surge in popularity, largely driven by social media and smartphones. The percentage of golfers, on the other hand, probably declined. Golf experienced its popularity peak in the 2000s decade when Tiger Woods was in the prime of his career and has been in decline since -- with a slight uptick during the pandemic that has leveled off with the lifting of restrictions.

[WNY Wanderer]

This is the first time I've ever heard of FootGolf. As someone who's into both golf and soccer, this is something I could get into. I've only seen disc golf courses around here.

[Makwa]

If you like disc golf check out this story from a few weeks back. Perhaps the most clutch/ impossible shot I've seen in any sporting event ever. The crowd goes berserk. Clip is in a tweet halfway down the story.

https://news.yahoo.com/pro-disc-golfer-made-miraculous-170040501.html

[WNY Wanderer]

Incredible! Maybe the most impressive shot I've seen in any form of golf since this unbelievable hole-in-one from Jon Rahm:

https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/watch-as-jon-rahm-incredibly-skips-ball-over-the-water-for-stunning-hole-in-one-at-masters-2020/

[Bunchberry]

Hiking is hard to define. You can say it needs to be in a forest but I am pretty sure I could take you to Scotland and you would call it hiking.

You could say it needs a "natural environment" but there are really very few of those around. Going back to Scotland there is a movement of people trying to bring back forests to Scotland. The current landscape is not natural.

I used to go hiking in Fire Island in the winter time. Some days it was 20 degrees with constant 30 mph winds on the beach side. At the end of the hike you would be wind burnt with aching legs from the sand. That was hiking. I don't think all the trees along the Long Island shore line are native so you could say that environment is not natural.

I went hiking in the winter at Caumsett State park which is an old Gold Coast estate on Long Island. It was a walk for miles along gravel roads, paved roads and shore line. That hike along the shore line is a killer. Some of the sand has these little ball bearing sized pebbles. You sink in with each step. You come back pretty tired.

You could say a bike path is not hiking but is a well built and maintained hiking trail that different? There is essentially a board walk through parts of Avalanche Pass.

I remember hiking up one of the Twins in New Hampshire and the trail was a giant stone staircase.

I hiked in Yosemite and it was mostly on paths graded for horses. Glacier is the same thing.

People complain about the trails in the ADK but I think for some people that is one of the points of pride the comes from hiking the ADK. If the trails were not so messed up people would miss it. If we could make the current awful trails sustainable people would be happier than having graded perfect sustainable trails.

[Makwa]

A quick count has me taking hikes of varying lengths in 10 different National Parks. All were perfectly manicured trails with barely a stone out of place. But I'd call all of them hikes even though not a single one was even 1/10th as rugged as a trail in the Adirondacks. I guess it all depends on what you're used to. ADK hikers are used to steep, rugged, and difficult trails. Everything else looks easy in comparison but it's all still hiking.

[Makwa]

Definitions of hiking from various sources:

Merriam-Webster
a long walk especially for pleasure or exercise

TheFreeDictionary.com
To go on an extended walk for pleasure or exercise, especially in a natural setting.

Dictionary.com
to walk or march a great distance, especially through rural areas, for pleasure, exercise, military training, or the like.

Britannica.com
walking in nature as a recreational activity

Wikipedia
Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside.



So... I've concluded that we apply the term hiking incorrectly if we use it to describe short outings. We are mountain climbing but not quite mountaineering. And we're definitely not walking though we are walking. And this makes my head hurt.

[Hear the Footsteps]

Take into consideration the 2020 ROOST survey perhaps as a rough gauge..
And bear in mind it is a survey of people inquiring to ROOST.
For instance, the ROOST survey of Essex county has just 2% of respondents from either Ontario and Quebec. And locals in press accounts suggest a number up to 20x that.

The survey result are.
Over 90% of the all travelers said they'd be engaged in some hiking. Both summer and winter. The pareto charts adds to >>100% so that why I say it as some hiking.
And 25%-28% of the hikers said the hike would be a 46r hike. And about 2/3 said it would be a hike. Again, the pareto charts add up toe >>100%

2020 Leisure Travel Study - Regional (roostadk.com)

Don

[Makwa]

Was that study impacted by the border closure? Previous studies showed Canadian visitation in the 6-10% range.

[Hear the Footsteps]

Sure. What I’m talking about is the Keene town supervisor saying 40% of the hikers are from Canada. If you massage the numbers from ROOST I doubt you get near 40%.

[WNY Wanderer]

On hiking vs. walking:

For me, a walk becomes a hike when at least one of these two conditions are met:
1. If your path isn't paved or in a maintained grassy area (like in a city park). Walking on flat bike paths doesn't count as hiking no matter the distance. Even the 350+ mile Erie Canal bike path is a walk -- a really long one if you went from end-to-end! Conversely, a flat, < 1 mile dirt trail in the woods can still be considered a short hike. Or you can call it a nature walk. Your choice. That's kind of a gray area to me.
2. If your outing has a fair amount of elevation change -- at least a couple hundred feet. This is the one exception that I will give to paved paths. An uphill hike on such a trail can still be considered a hike in my opinion. Here's an example in Nebraska of a paved trail that ascends more than 500 feet and therefore can be counted as a hike in my book: https://peakery.com/scotts-bluff-neb...ummits/213592/

The boardwalk section of Avalanche Pass mentioned above is a good counterexample. I guess you could say it's possible to have a hike with walking sections. I would still call it a "hike" though, similar to how a Class 1 trail with a short Class 4 section would be considered a "Class 4 route" in the climbing community.

[WNY Wanderer]

Makwa - Your cemetery walks sound like something that would fall into that "gray area" mentioned above. In Buffalo's eastern suburbs, there's a popular nature preserve called Reinstein Woods that features an old-growth forest and ponds. The trails are short and flat, and you certainly don't need to carry anything larger than a daypack, but it does feel like a short hike when you're walking through the hundreds of acres of woods in the park. That's the first example that sprung to mind when I talked about that gray area where one could use "short hike" or "nature walk" to describe their experience.

Speaking of packs, what about the distinction between hiking vs. backpacking? This has a clearer distinction to me, with the latter necessitating an overnight stay. Even a long, all-day hike like the Dix Range or Grand Canyon R2R wouldn't be considered backpacking even if you carried a large pack with you on your journey.

Bunchberry - Embarrassingly, the only time I've been around Fort Ticonderoga was on an Amtrak train. Same with West Point in the Hudson Valley. Those are two of the biggest "gaps" in my NYS travels. Mt. Defiance sounds -- and looks -- like an awesome place to explore.

If you guys are ever out this way, I highly recommend Fort Niagara on the shores of Lake Ontario, especially when they have reenactments during the summer. Here are some pics from a French & Indian War reenactment in 2018: https://imgur.com/a/j48UppN - this I am certain was 100% walking and 0% hiking

[FlyFishingandBeer]

IMO elevation change shouldn't necessarily be a determining factor at all. People who complete the ~1200 mile Florida trail would certainly argue that they'd been on a hike, but the entire state's highpoint is only 345 feet. There's 100-mile stretches where hikers only cross a few contour lines. Similarly, I've personally hiked routes in SoCal, AZ, Mexico, Western Asia, Alaska, and Iceland where there was virtually no distinguishable elevation change.

On the other hand, ascending K2 or Everest is never referred to as hiking. Its considered climbing, even though the majority of each ascent is spent walking while roped in.

Elevation change is just too fluid of a variable to define the whole activity.

[WNY Wanderer]

FlyFishingandBeer - Those hikes with minimal elevation change that you did in different parts of the world would satisfy condition #1 (and therefore count as hikes in my book) so long as they weren't on paved paths. Only one of the two conditions need to be met for it to be considered a hike. In hindsight, I probably should have had condition #2 be an exception to condition #1 instead of a separate condition. I added #2 to cover paved trails that ascend/descend hundreds or thousands of feet since those can feel more like hiking than regular walking despite the smooth surface.

Adding "non-technical" as another condition would have been a good idea as well. You're right that just because there's significant elevation change doesn't necessarily mean it's a hike since you also have technical climbs with a good deal of gain/loss.

[Neil]

Bushwhacking doesn't seem to fit the criteria for hiking, which implies a trail. Percentage of millennials bushwhacking?

[Makwa]

Here's that web site I was referring to in post #9.1 above... https://www.ibpindex.com/index.php/en/

Two walks from the cemetery graded out at 27 (5.0 miles with +625 ele) and 29 (6.4 miles with +590 ele) which is considered very easy for hiking.

Compared to some short ADK hikes to lesser peaks:
32 - Baxter (2.6 miles with +790 ele)
34 - Big Crow (1.6 +575)
33 - Bartonville (1.8 +670)
30 - Coney (2.1 +610)

And compared to some short flatland hikes to ponds, lakes, and waterfalls:
18 - Copperas and Owen ponds (2.8 +440)
22 - Inman Pond (2.6 +365)
13 - Moss Lake loop (2.6 miles with +250 ele)
32 - OK Slip Falls (6.9 +1070)

For comparison to these easy walks Cascade & Porter is a 74 while Whiteface from Connery Pond is 102. The scale on this site is quite large going from 0-400. It grades running and bicycle routes as well. The difference between a 30 and a 70 or 100 is HUGE. Not 2 or 3x harder but multiples of that. I believe the analysis values ele gain and grade of the route over miles. The only big issue I have with it is there's just no way to grade the ruggedness of a trail. Miles and ele gain are the only inputs. For example, it wouldn't know if I'm walking on the manicured lawns of the cemetery or on the hiking trails, in the woods, or through the deep grass of the poorly maintained areas of the property. There's a noticeable difference in effort expended but no way to incorporate that into the track log that they are analyzing.

Anyway, a fun little tool to compare hikes and to see if their analysis lines up with your own perceived effort of a particular trail.

[WNY Wanderer]

Here's another hiking difficulty calculator that I've used in the past - http://www.nwhiker.com/HikeEval.html - that assigns a numerical rating after you plug in the mileage and elevation gain. As with the IBP Index, it doesn't take into account other variables like weather, conditions, altitude, trail ruggedness, stream crossings, etc. Both of your cemetery walks were rated a 10 ("Moderate") and Coney rated as a 14 (the low end of "Challenging") using your numbers. Above that are Difficult, Very Difficult, and Extreme. Out of curiosity, I entered the stats for Mount Elbert, Colorado and unsurprisingly NWHiker.com rated that as Extreme.

[Makwa]

Interesting. I ran Cascade and Porter. It came out as a 22 (difficult). BUT... if you just calculate the ascent of Cascade it comes out as a 40 (extreme).
You'd therefore have to conclude just about every ascent of a High Peak in the ADKs will come out as extreme on this calculator.

All of this is a reminder that we tend to classify every peak in the Adirondacks in relation to the High Peaks. We call C&P "easy" when other sources would call it "difficult" and dismiss most lesser peaks as bunny hills when the time required to hike many of them is more than the average hiker ever sets out to do according to the Sports & Exercise study referenced above. We probably should be setting the High Peaks aside into their own category with varying degrees of difficulty and categorizing everything else based on one of these numerical systems.

[WNY Wanderer]

I concur about Cascade being more difficult than its reputation suggests. Easy compared to most other peaks on the 46er list? Sure, you could make that argument. Easy in general? Not really. The gain per mile is too high to be classified as "easy" and there's some light scrambling as well. For the typical hiker on Cascade, who has never done any of the 46 before, it won't be a cakewalk despite the relatively low mileage. I think a lot of people simply make their assessments based on mileage alone, or give too much weight to it. I could hike all day on easy and moderate trails -- at a brisk pace with minimal breaks -- but immediately start to get worn down on steeper inclines. That's why my personal opinion differs from a lot of people's when it comes to Cascade being "easy," Marcy being more difficult than Algonquin because it's longer, and Mount Whitney (highest peak in the lower 48) being significantly more difficult than Mount Elbert (2nd highest peak in the lower 48) just because it's more than twice as long. I rate Cascade as "moderate" by mountain standards and "high-moderate" by regular hiking standards, rate Algonquin as being more difficult than Marcy, and rate Elbert as being at least as difficult as Whitney despite others suggesting otherwise. To me, steepness is a MUCH bigger factor than distance. Others may feel differently.