6 ms·

Is there a good resource or tutorial on how one would prepare and execute one of these hikes? I would love to try a multi-day hike, but I have zero experience c

Is there a good resource or tutorial on how one would prepare and execute one of these hikes? I would love to try a multi-day hike, but I have zero experience camping / backpacking. Where to get started? Are there hikes for complete novices that e.g. go from town to town with places to stay overnight?

wikibob 6y ago
Check OutdoorGearLab.com And various subreddits
Beefin 6y ago
Here's my backpacking list: https://www.notion.so/backpacking-aaf9b1959c57448ca86b9b481a247ca1 https://www.notion.so/backpacking-aaf9b1959c57448ca86b9b481a... Note: backpacking is ALL about preparation. Make a good list and you'll be good.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > cup coozie What? Why? > matches ... lighter Why both? I just bring two lighters > Selfie stick ... hiking poles I find the more stuff I bring, the more frustrated I get unpacking and packing each night and day. Of course there’s the weight thing, too, but anyway try to pack your things in cloth or plastic baggies for separation. I use the zippered pouches that are sold for this purpose in luggage when traveling. Also don’t forget a trash bag! > bells This is great if you are hiking where bears are active. We call them bear bells for this reason.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >Why both? I just bring two lighters I dunno. A handful of strike anywhere matches in a small plastic bag is very lightweight insurance as part of a small repair kit. I do bring a (one) hiking pole because I find it really useful under certain conditions. But a selfie stick seems pretty unnecessary (as does the cup cozie so long as you have a plastic coffee cup--but who knows maybe metal plus cozie is lighter).
  - Beefin 6y ago
    > matches ... lighter just like distributed systems, redundancy is key in wilderness survival. For anything super critical (like staying warm in the cold), always bring a backup option. lighters are more likely to fail than a match IMO. > cup coozie Keep tin cup warm after boiling water/removing it from stove. > Selfie stick ... hiking poles Yes ! packing cubes are helpful. I have 3 backpacks for different use: 22L - day hike or summer overnight 50L - 2-3 day hike summer 70L - ∞ day hike Winter > bells yeppppp learned this the hard way, stumbled on a momma and her cubs in the north cascades, WA while alone and i pissed myself. never surprise them.
  - LorenPechtel 6y ago
    Hiking poles are a matter of the trail and the state of your body. These days I always bring mine but in general they spend far more time in a hand than actually being used. Flat terrain or gentle climbs, I find no value in poles. Steep climbs (basically anything that has or should have switchbacks, or anything with steps) my knees are happier with them but it's not that big a deal. Descending--this is why I carry them. Even a pretty gentle descent is going to hurt my knees if I don't have my poles. As for lighters--disposable lighters run on butane. Butane has a boiling point of 32F. Good luck using your lighter if it gets too cold! Also, the matches in my pack can be lit and dropped into tinder sheltered under other wood, a lighter can't be. My emergency gear contains a cylinder of matches, each match held in it's own hole so there's no possibility of them rubbing against each other. (No lighter, though--where I hike an emergency fire would be difficult, campfires are almost always prohibited.)
- lostsoul8282 6y ago
  This is really helpful. Wish I had it when I started camping.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Using notion for this is a cool idea, I built a tool[0] last year to scratch my own itch but I haven't had so much time to put into it lately. [0] https://www.packrat.app https://www.packrat.app
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 6y ago
You start by starting. Hike a little bit of a trail, then, next time, walk a little bit longer. I’d recommend staying away from gear websites or whatever because it’s easy to become fatigued from indecision.
senkora 6y ago
When I was preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail this year (cancelled due to covid), this was by far the best single resource that I found: https://youtu.be/VC0MIV8OTtM https://youtu.be/VC0MIV8OTtM
- Tostino 6y ago
  Hah I put that video on earlier this year so my girlfriend could get a feel for backpacking before we did some overnights on the AT. Was joking about how long it was at the start, but we ended up watching the whole thing. She did a great job with that video making things approachable for beginners.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  Thanks, added to watch list!
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
If you have not camped overnight yet, do that first a bunch of times ... without the hiking and backpacking. Some people call it car camping because you are not far from your car. This will teach you what you need and what you’ve forgotten to bring without much risk. You will also learn what kind of meals you want to prepare and carry, which is really important.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Along with car camping is walk in camping where you have to go a few hundred yards from the car. Enough to make it inconvient to haul a keg or large cooler. Can get some nice spots that way. And you can practice w the backpack and have backup of the car if needed
ctrager 6y ago
Consider the Camino de Santiago. I've done the last 300 km. The distance between places to stay is manageable, lots of infrastructure, lots of friendly people who could help you if you get stuck. You don't need to carry much because you sleep indoors and there is food available along the way. The next step would be doing a hut/refuge to hut/refuge hike in the Alps. A hut/refuge is a hotel with a restaurant, private rooms, dorm rooms. They are hundreds (thousands) of them throughout the Alps. You can arrange them yourself for multiday hikes. There are an infinite number of routes, but a good starting place would be this publisher of guidebooks: https://www.cicerone.co.uk/ https://www.cicerone.co.uk/. Likewise, you only need to carry your lunch, but you do need more clothes because mountain weather can be unpredictable and dangerous. I've personally done the "Tour de Vanoise" which I think is easy enough for novices and the "Stubai Hohenweg" which was definitely harder and scarier. Actual backpacking (tent/sleeping bag, etc) is harder because you need more equipment but a good way to start in the United States might be by doing a group trip with The Sierra Club or a local club (meeetup.com) or commercial trip (REI?). I've done many Sierra Club trips.
- ctrager 6y ago
  I just want to add, for actual American-style backpacking, I think the best place for somebody who wants a managable challenge is the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, maybe a trip that would have you enter the mountains via Bishop or Kearsarge passes. Here are things that can make a backpacking trip easier or harder: * Grizzly Bears - Some great backpacking places - the Winds, Alaska - have grizzly bears which require more discipline about food. In the Sierra, there are bears but no history of them eating people. * Lightening - Not as likely to make you shit in your pants as the Rockies in Colorado or Wyoming. * Water - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon - you MUST get from point A to point B that day because you need that water at point B, there's no water along the route. Water sources are plentiful in the Sierra * Where to camp - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon, the Tetons - are tightly regulated by permit as to where you can camp each night, so you have to know your pace beforehand and then stick to the plan. The permit system in the Sierra is easier - you pretty much just say where you are entering and exiting * People - if you are a novice, it's good to have other people around, not too many and not too few. There will be more or less the right number of people around in the Sierra * Logistics - Getting to the trailheads from Bishop, CA, not so hard. * Reward - So beautiful. You have long distance views. You aren't just in the trees. * Lyme Disease, etc - Not so bad.
sthu11182 6y ago
for the west highland way, you don't necessarily have to camp. it runs along various cities and restaurants, so you can hike it each day using a day pack, and stay at hotels and hostels overnight. there are companies that will move your luggage to place to place while you hike. I tried the west highland way, got about half way before I slipped and hurt my knee, but i would like to finish it at some point.
kyteland 6y ago
For not having any experience this is a lot like a non-runner asking how to run a marathon. You should probably start smaller with a couch-to-5k approach and work your way up to it. Going too hard too fast is an easy way to have a terrible experience. I've watched far too many people abandon the hobby because their first attempt was too ambitious and they got in over their heads. If you're really starting from zero my recommendation would be to get yourself a decent pair of trail shoes and a small day pack. Find some short local day hikes and hit the trail for a couple of hours on the weekends. Mix in a little car camping and see how it goes. If you have friends who have gear, start by borrowing what you can and if the camping/hiking bug bites you slowly start building out your own set of gear. If you don't have friends that backpack find some and go on an overnight trip away from the cars. Ask them about the gear they brought and why. They'll have lots of opinions. After you get a bit more comfortable with the basic stuff and have a better sense for what you need then start planning a longer trip like this.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I am comfortable hiking long distances, it is just the multi-day aspect that I find daunting.
  - kyteland 6y ago
    I guess at that point you just need to start doing it. I have a lot of outdoorsy types in my family and we've been doing long, multi-day backpacking trips most summers since 1998. On my first trip I bought a cheap sleeping bag, pad, and backpack and relied on the more experienced people in the group for everything else. The shoes I wore were terrible and by the time we got back to the car on the end of the 4th day I could barely walk my feet were so blistered. For the next summer I saved up and bought a really nice pair of boots which I still have. They're the most expensive footwear I've purchased in my life and worth every penny. I can't recommend enough finding a group of experienced people to start with. You'll make plenty of mistakes and they'll help keep it from turning into a catastrophe. You'll pick up a lot from them while also figuring out what does/doesn't work for you. Probably five years after starting backpacking with my family I was the 'experienced one' leading a group of friends on a hike through the Smokey Mountains on the Appalachian Trail.
jamil7 6y ago
I would start with simpler day hikes and find good shoes and clothes that work for you, practise carrying a little food and water for the day. Best to get used to it gradually and build up your gear, the sleeping and shelter stuff can get really overwhelming really quickly and it's a bit of a money pit of a hobby if you're starting from scratch. There are some good deals to be had second hand and trading gear too. Edit: typo
vailripper 6y ago
Suggest checking out Homemade Wanderlust on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/c/HomemadeWanderlust https://www.youtube.com/c/HomemadeWanderlust) She's done the triple crown (PCT, AT, CDT), Camino De Santiago and about a million other hikes. She provides great reviews / advice on tons of experience.
adam 6y ago
You're thinking in the right direction in terms of having infrastructure support during your first multi-day hike. My first was the Laugavegur trail in Iceland a few years ago, and it helped tremendously that I was staying in huts each night and not camping, both because of the weight, and also because the screwups my first-time self made in what I packed were lessened by the fact I had a roof over my head each night, a place to cook my food, and other strangers in my "cohort" I got to know over the course of the 4 nights who had started at the same time to share advice. So, hut supported, you could try the Iceland trail, the Kungsleden in Sweden is moderate difficulty and the huts are wonderful, the huts in the U.S. on segments of the Appalachian trail are quite nice (and they even cook you dinner at some!) and there are a few others you can search for. Then once you've picked a specific hike, quite a few people write about their experiences on that particular trail and you can hone in on the specific equipment you'll need to bring. My biggest piece of advice: be absolutely ruthless about the stuff you decide to bring so you can keep your pack as light as possible for that first multi-day hike. A bunch of extra clothes? No. The very low probability emergency situation that your hut won't have working gas so you have to bring your own stove? No. etc. etc.
ghaff 6y ago
Backpacking is very different from town to town (or even hut to hut). There are a few places in the US you can go hut to hut (normally). Your options to go town to town are very limited (as in, I don't actually know of any). In the UK (other places too but the UK is really known for it), there are a ton of town to town walks and you can have your luggage transported. As for backpacking, as others have said, you really probably want to get started with an out-and-back backpack, possibly with day hike(s) from a base camp rather than setting yourself on a probably overly ambitious point to point week-long backpack. ADDED: People do just strike out to do the AT or the PCT (see Wild) but it's not really recommended.
dalys 6y ago
I would really recommend doing an organized hike like Fjällräven Classic. You have to do everything yourself and carry all your stuff, but there are checkpoints with volunteers, marshals that you can join to get a good pace, loads of friendly people and so on. You also get to refill your food at checkpoints, and they make sure people know where to find water. I have done Fjällräven Classic in Sweden two times and Hong Kong once and love it.
LorenPechtel 6y ago
Start small and go with people who are more experienced--inexperienced people should not be in the backcountry alone! For complete novices I would suggest looking on Meetup for hiking groups, start out with the shortest stuff they offer. The short stuff also has the advantage that your costs are minimal. You likely have most everything you would need except possibly a pack and pretty much anything will do for a short hike. The people doing the trails on that list will generally have basically everything they're carrying (other than consumables) being high-end stuff specifically for hikers/backpackers. Consider the highest mountain locally--at the trailheads you see plenty of people in anything, even a decent number simply carrying a water bottle and that's it. On the summit (a long hike, no mountaineering) I would say 90% of the gear I see is the good stuff. Or consider an experience from last year--we got a last-minute message from the leader, she had car trouble and couldn't get there. We were supposed to be six, but one new person failed to find us at the trailhead so four of us set off. It was dusk when we left, soon turning to night, and without our leader we definitely had some pathfinding problems. We were all glad the new woman didn't find us--we were all experienced, the fact that we were out at night in the desert and didn't know where the trail was was of no concern to us (we could see civilization and there wasn't any substantial obstacle to simply heading for it) we were thinking about how she would have reacted to the situation.

wikibob 6y ago

Check OutdoorGearLab.com And various subreddits

Beefin 6y ago

Here's my backpacking list: https://www.notion.so/backpacking-aaf9b1959c57448ca86b9b481a247ca1 https://www.notion.so/backpacking-aaf9b1959c57448ca86b9b481a... Note: backpacking is ALL about preparation. Make a good list and you'll be good.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> cup coozie What? Why? > matches ... lighter Why both? I just bring two lighters > Selfie stick ... hiking poles I find the more stuff I bring, the more frustrated I get unpacking and packing each night and day. Of course there’s the weight thing, too, but anyway try to pack your things in cloth or plastic baggies for separation. I use the zippered pouches that are sold for this purpose in luggage when traveling. Also don’t forget a trash bag! > bells This is great if you are hiking where bears are active. We call them bear bells for this reason.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >Why both? I just bring two lighters I dunno. A handful of strike anywhere matches in a small plastic bag is very lightweight insurance as part of a small repair kit. I do bring a (one) hiking pole because I find it really useful under certain conditions. But a selfie stick seems pretty unnecessary (as does the cup cozie so long as you have a plastic coffee cup--but who knows maybe metal plus cozie is lighter).
- Beefin 6y ago
  > matches ... lighter just like distributed systems, redundancy is key in wilderness survival. For anything super critical (like staying warm in the cold), always bring a backup option. lighters are more likely to fail than a match IMO. > cup coozie Keep tin cup warm after boiling water/removing it from stove. > Selfie stick ... hiking poles Yes ! packing cubes are helpful. I have 3 backpacks for different use: 22L - day hike or summer overnight 50L - 2-3 day hike summer 70L - ∞ day hike Winter > bells yeppppp learned this the hard way, stumbled on a momma and her cubs in the north cascades, WA while alone and i pissed myself. never surprise them.
- LorenPechtel 6y ago
  Hiking poles are a matter of the trail and the state of your body. These days I always bring mine but in general they spend far more time in a hand than actually being used. Flat terrain or gentle climbs, I find no value in poles. Steep climbs (basically anything that has or should have switchbacks, or anything with steps) my knees are happier with them but it's not that big a deal. Descending--this is why I carry them. Even a pretty gentle descent is going to hurt my knees if I don't have my poles. As for lighters--disposable lighters run on butane. Butane has a boiling point of 32F. Good luck using your lighter if it gets too cold! Also, the matches in my pack can be lit and dropped into tinder sheltered under other wood, a lighter can't be. My emergency gear contains a cylinder of matches, each match held in it's own hole so there's no possibility of them rubbing against each other. (No lighter, though--where I hike an emergency fire would be difficult, campfires are almost always prohibited.)
lostsoul8282 6y ago
This is really helpful. Wish I had it when I started camping.
jamil7 6y ago
Using notion for this is a cool idea, I built a tool[0] last year to scratch my own itch but I haven't had so much time to put into it lately. [0] https://www.packrat.app https://www.packrat.app

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 6y ago

You start by starting. Hike a little bit of a trail, then, next time, walk a little bit longer. I’d recommend staying away from gear websites or whatever because it’s easy to become fatigued from indecision.

senkora 6y ago

When I was preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail this year (cancelled due to covid), this was by far the best single resource that I found: https://youtu.be/VC0MIV8OTtM https://youtu.be/VC0MIV8OTtM

Tostino 6y ago
Hah I put that video on earlier this year so my girlfriend could get a feel for backpacking before we did some overnights on the AT. Was joking about how long it was at the start, but we ended up watching the whole thing. She did a great job with that video making things approachable for beginners.
gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
Thanks, added to watch list!

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

If you have not camped overnight yet, do that first a bunch of times ... without the hiking and backpacking. Some people call it car camping because you are not far from your car. This will teach you what you need and what you’ve forgotten to bring without much risk. You will also learn what kind of meals you want to prepare and carry, which is really important.

grogenaut 6y ago
Along with car camping is walk in camping where you have to go a few hundred yards from the car. Enough to make it inconvient to haul a keg or large cooler. Can get some nice spots that way. And you can practice w the backpack and have backup of the car if needed

ctrager 6y ago

Consider the Camino de Santiago. I've done the last 300 km. The distance between places to stay is manageable, lots of infrastructure, lots of friendly people who could help you if you get stuck. You don't need to carry much because you sleep indoors and there is food available along the way. The next step would be doing a hut/refuge to hut/refuge hike in the Alps. A hut/refuge is a hotel with a restaurant, private rooms, dorm rooms. They are hundreds (thousands) of them throughout the Alps. You can arrange them yourself for multiday hikes. There are an infinite number of routes, but a good starting place would be this publisher of guidebooks: https://www.cicerone.co.uk/ https://www.cicerone.co.uk/. Likewise, you only need to carry your lunch, but you do need more clothes because mountain weather can be unpredictable and dangerous. I've personally done the "Tour de Vanoise" which I think is easy enough for novices and the "Stubai Hohenweg" which was definitely harder and scarier. Actual backpacking (tent/sleeping bag, etc) is harder because you need more equipment but a good way to start in the United States might be by doing a group trip with The Sierra Club or a local club (meeetup.com) or commercial trip (REI?). I've done many Sierra Club trips.

ctrager 6y ago
I just want to add, for actual American-style backpacking, I think the best place for somebody who wants a managable challenge is the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, maybe a trip that would have you enter the mountains via Bishop or Kearsarge passes. Here are things that can make a backpacking trip easier or harder: * Grizzly Bears - Some great backpacking places - the Winds, Alaska - have grizzly bears which require more discipline about food. In the Sierra, there are bears but no history of them eating people. * Lightening - Not as likely to make you shit in your pants as the Rockies in Colorado or Wyoming. * Water - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon - you MUST get from point A to point B that day because you need that water at point B, there's no water along the route. Water sources are plentiful in the Sierra * Where to camp - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon, the Tetons - are tightly regulated by permit as to where you can camp each night, so you have to know your pace beforehand and then stick to the plan. The permit system in the Sierra is easier - you pretty much just say where you are entering and exiting * People - if you are a novice, it's good to have other people around, not too many and not too few. There will be more or less the right number of people around in the Sierra * Logistics - Getting to the trailheads from Bishop, CA, not so hard. * Reward - So beautiful. You have long distance views. You aren't just in the trees. * Lyme Disease, etc - Not so bad.

sthu11182 6y ago

for the west highland way, you don't necessarily have to camp. it runs along various cities and restaurants, so you can hike it each day using a day pack, and stay at hotels and hostels overnight. there are companies that will move your luggage to place to place while you hike. I tried the west highland way, got about half way before I slipped and hurt my knee, but i would like to finish it at some point.

kyteland 6y ago

For not having any experience this is a lot like a non-runner asking how to run a marathon. You should probably start smaller with a couch-to-5k approach and work your way up to it. Going too hard too fast is an easy way to have a terrible experience. I've watched far too many people abandon the hobby because their first attempt was too ambitious and they got in over their heads. If you're really starting from zero my recommendation would be to get yourself a decent pair of trail shoes and a small day pack. Find some short local day hikes and hit the trail for a couple of hours on the weekends. Mix in a little car camping and see how it goes. If you have friends who have gear, start by borrowing what you can and if the camping/hiking bug bites you slowly start building out your own set of gear. If you don't have friends that backpack find some and go on an overnight trip away from the cars. Ask them about the gear they brought and why. They'll have lots of opinions. After you get a bit more comfortable with the basic stuff and have a better sense for what you need then start planning a longer trip like this.

gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I am comfortable hiking long distances, it is just the multi-day aspect that I find daunting.
- kyteland 6y ago
  I guess at that point you just need to start doing it. I have a lot of outdoorsy types in my family and we've been doing long, multi-day backpacking trips most summers since 1998. On my first trip I bought a cheap sleeping bag, pad, and backpack and relied on the more experienced people in the group for everything else. The shoes I wore were terrible and by the time we got back to the car on the end of the 4th day I could barely walk my feet were so blistered. For the next summer I saved up and bought a really nice pair of boots which I still have. They're the most expensive footwear I've purchased in my life and worth every penny. I can't recommend enough finding a group of experienced people to start with. You'll make plenty of mistakes and they'll help keep it from turning into a catastrophe. You'll pick up a lot from them while also figuring out what does/doesn't work for you. Probably five years after starting backpacking with my family I was the 'experienced one' leading a group of friends on a hike through the Smokey Mountains on the Appalachian Trail.

jamil7 6y ago

I would start with simpler day hikes and find good shoes and clothes that work for you, practise carrying a little food and water for the day. Best to get used to it gradually and build up your gear, the sleeping and shelter stuff can get really overwhelming really quickly and it's a bit of a money pit of a hobby if you're starting from scratch. There are some good deals to be had second hand and trading gear too. Edit: typo

vailripper 6y ago

Suggest checking out Homemade Wanderlust on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/c/HomemadeWanderlust https://www.youtube.com/c/HomemadeWanderlust) She's done the triple crown (PCT, AT, CDT), Camino De Santiago and about a million other hikes. She provides great reviews / advice on tons of experience.

adam 6y ago

You're thinking in the right direction in terms of having infrastructure support during your first multi-day hike. My first was the Laugavegur trail in Iceland a few years ago, and it helped tremendously that I was staying in huts each night and not camping, both because of the weight, and also because the screwups my first-time self made in what I packed were lessened by the fact I had a roof over my head each night, a place to cook my food, and other strangers in my "cohort" I got to know over the course of the 4 nights who had started at the same time to share advice. So, hut supported, you could try the Iceland trail, the Kungsleden in Sweden is moderate difficulty and the huts are wonderful, the huts in the U.S. on segments of the Appalachian trail are quite nice (and they even cook you dinner at some!) and there are a few others you can search for. Then once you've picked a specific hike, quite a few people write about their experiences on that particular trail and you can hone in on the specific equipment you'll need to bring. My biggest piece of advice: be absolutely ruthless about the stuff you decide to bring so you can keep your pack as light as possible for that first multi-day hike. A bunch of extra clothes? No. The very low probability emergency situation that your hut won't have working gas so you have to bring your own stove? No. etc. etc.

ghaff 6y ago

Backpacking is very different from town to town (or even hut to hut). There are a few places in the US you can go hut to hut (normally). Your options to go town to town are very limited (as in, I don't actually know of any). In the UK (other places too but the UK is really known for it), there are a ton of town to town walks and you can have your luggage transported. As for backpacking, as others have said, you really probably want to get started with an out-and-back backpack, possibly with day hike(s) from a base camp rather than setting yourself on a probably overly ambitious point to point week-long backpack. ADDED: People do just strike out to do the AT or the PCT (see Wild) but it's not really recommended.

dalys 6y ago

I would really recommend doing an organized hike like Fjällräven Classic. You have to do everything yourself and carry all your stuff, but there are checkpoints with volunteers, marshals that you can join to get a good pace, loads of friendly people and so on. You also get to refill your food at checkpoints, and they make sure people know where to find water. I have done Fjällräven Classic in Sweden two times and Hong Kong once and love it.

LorenPechtel 6y ago

Start small and go with people who are more experienced--inexperienced people should not be in the backcountry alone! For complete novices I would suggest looking on Meetup for hiking groups, start out with the shortest stuff they offer. The short stuff also has the advantage that your costs are minimal. You likely have most everything you would need except possibly a pack and pretty much anything will do for a short hike. The people doing the trails on that list will generally have basically everything they're carrying (other than consumables) being high-end stuff specifically for hikers/backpackers. Consider the highest mountain locally--at the trailheads you see plenty of people in anything, even a decent number simply carrying a water bottle and that's it. On the summit (a long hike, no mountaineering) I would say 90% of the gear I see is the good stuff. Or consider an experience from last year--we got a last-minute message from the leader, she had car trouble and couldn't get there. We were supposed to be six, but one new person failed to find us at the trailhead so four of us set off. It was dusk when we left, soon turning to night, and without our leader we definitely had some pathfinding problems. We were all glad the new woman didn't find us--we were all experienced, the fact that we were out at night in the desert and didn't know where the trail was was of no concern to us (we could see civilization and there wasn't any substantial obstacle to simply heading for it) we were thinking about how she would have reacted to the situation.