Dumbing Down Hike Ratings

As a hiking guide book author, I see a disturbing trend in how hikes and trails are rated, especially by land managers. Essentially, everything harder than walking a few yards from a parking lot to a scenic view point is rated "difficult" or "strenuous", implying that ordinary people can't do them.

Where does that leave the real hikes- trails that are a few miles long, let alone backpack trips? Should we rate them "superhumanly difficult"?

I think the standard hike ratings used by one of my publishers, "easy", "moderate", and "strenuous", covers trail hiking very well. My other publishers use a similar system.

"Easy" basically means a hike that anyone in reasonable shape can do without any particular level of hiking experience. By "reasonable shape" they mean a person without disabilities. This rating is applied to hikes of a half mile to a few miles that people should be able to complete in a half day or less. The vast majority of people should be able to do an easy hike as long as they take it easy.

At the "moderate" level, the reader should have some hiking experience and a corresponding level of fitness, and should expect to spend most of the day doing the hike. There may be some elevation gain and loss.

In my books, I reserve "strenuous" for hikes that involve significant elevation change- more than a thousand feet- require a very long day or possibly several days to complete, and may involve off-trail, cross-country hiking. What I'm saying is that only fit, experienced hikers or backpackers should attempt these hikes.

When everything that involves a bit of walking is described as strenuous or difficult, we do a disservice to visitors to our public lands by discouraging them from exploring more than a few feet from their cars. Yet even in the most crowded national parks, you can usually escape the crowds by walking a short trail and in the process get to experience the natural landscape directly, without distractions.

Instead of rating everything as strenuous, why don't we just assume that most people are healthy and capable of taking a short walk? People with health problems or disabilities are usually all too aware of them. We can direct them to "handicap-accessible" trails, which most developed recreation areas now provide.