This is the first post of the hiking portion of the ourotherplans.com blog. I have always enjoyed hiking, but my ability to get out and hike has been on and off over the years. I hope to get out a lot more in the future. The purpose of the hiking posts here is to document these hikes – both for my own enjoyment, and with the hope that others may get ideas for places to go and things to see. If you are reading this and any of the other posts, thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoy them and find them useful or entertaining in some way.
In this post I will set out the format that I hope to use in future posts to document hikes.
Introduction:
This will be the location of the trail and a general description of the hike. Hopefully I will be able to note a little background information about the hike, destination, or points of interest.
Locations:
I will document locations such as trailheads and various waypoints using latitude and longitude in decimal degree format. This format gives the latitude and longitude separated by a comma. Each of these are a single number representing degrees, and are carried out as a real number to a number of decimal places – usually 6, instead of showing minutes and seconds. For latitude a positive number is north and negative number is south. For longitude a positive number is east and negative number is west. Example: 38.840728,-105.042945. This is 38.840728 degrees north latitude (38 Deg, 50′, 26.62” north), 105.040945 degrees west longitude (105 Deg, 2′, 34.60” west). For those keeping score, this location is the summit of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. One of the nice things about this format is that you can cut and paste it into the search box in Google Maps and it will take you directly to the location with a point marker. If you really want degrees / minutes / seconds you can take the fraction part of the number and multiply by 60 to get minutes, and then the fraction portion of that and multiply by 60 to get seconds.
Hike date:
Because things change over time, I will always document the date I made the hike. If you make the same journey at some point in the future, things may have changed since I was there. Also knowing the time of year is helpful as seasonal conditions may vary greatly.
Weather:
I will also note the weather on the day I made the hike. This, along with the date could be useful in preparing for conditions that you may come across.
Trailhead:
In general I will try to give directions to the trailhead from the nearest major road / city / etc.
The Hike:
A description of the hike itself.
Times:
Please note that when times are given, such as the time it takes to travel a certain distance along the trail from one waypoint to another, these are the time it took me on that particular day. Travel times can vary greatly depending on conditions, weather, altitude, your individual conditioning, and whether you want to hike for speed and distance, or if you want to stop, take pictures, and “smell the roses” along the way. Be forewarned – your mileage may vary.
Difficulty:
I will refer to difficulty only in very general terms. This is because difficulty is relative. Something that I find difficult, you may find fairly easy – and vice-versa. I have found that hikes that I have done multiple times have been quite a bit easier / harder depending on the day. As you hike more or are in better shape, the same hikes will tend to be easier.
Summary:
A general summary of the hike and my impressions.
Photography:
I will always try to include pictures. In many of the hiking blogs that I have read, the photos are the best part. They give a great feel for what you will see along the way. They are also very useful for documenting major waypoints to help you on your way such as trail intersections, major landmarks, and so on.
At least initially, I will be documenting hikes that I have taken quite a bit time prior to when they are posted. Hopefully as I get out more, they will be more recent relative to when they are posted here.
Another type of post that I will occasionally publish will be reviews of gear / equipment that may be useful. At this writing, I have no affiliations with anyone. I will only post about equipment that I personally use and will always give my own honest opinion. This is just for information – you can take it or leave it. If I do decide to do something such become an Amazon affiliate in the future, I will be transparent about that and the same rules (things that I personally use and my honest opinion) will apply.
See you out on the trail!