Adventure | My Hiking NOs

OK, yeah I admit that I definitely tend to lean towards the risky side when it comes to hiking. But even I have my limits before I set out on my hiking adventures. No way do I call myself a professional hiker, I do it for pure enjoyment and I just love venturing out there. At first I was going to talk about my hiking fails, but figured sharing my hiking NOs/maybes would be more suitable. 

At last, the weekend is here and there’s a hike or two that needs to be done. Depending on who my hiking buddy is at the time, we figure out what hike we want to do and that’s when a series of questions pop up. There’s plenty that we ask ourselves before we set out on a hike. I know many fellow hikers just go and brave it all. I know we’re young and free, the stupid ‘yolo’ saying keeps popping up in my head, but I’d love to add several more years onto my life.

Here are a few things I ask myself and things that are just absolute NOs/maybes?

x | how long is the drive ? Yep, I’m that person. Living on the windward side, I prefer to stick to any hike that doesn’t involve going over the mountain. I can be a pretty lazy driver. Because of this, I rarely make it out to the west side to explore all the hikes there is to offer out there.

x | rainy day = no go . OK, this can be a tricky one because I have hiked in the rain, but it happened mid-hike. Yes the trail got a little muddy, but we were careful and made it out safely. My hike preferences are the ridges, they award you the best views and it’s always an accomplishment after a major climb. With that being said, these hikes aren’t the best to do in the rain. I don’t mess with mother nature one bit, so I am completely okay with delaying a hike.

x | is it legal ? I tend to tip-toe the line on this one, I’d say about more than half the hikes I have done were on private property or closed/illegal. Most of the time, if it’s just a couple of people, I usually say no. But if I’m in a group, 90% of the time I’ll say yes after some serious mulling over. Nowadays, it’s getting tougher to do because trails are becoming more known, which alerts the police and citing away they go. I don’t encourage breaking the law, but I fear the day where so many more trails will be closed indefinitely. Will it stop people from going, I doubt it, but that’s just how the hiking scene goes.

x | popular hikes . I usually say no to these unless I’m with a group of people. I hate doing trails littered with people, which are all the tourist hot spots. I’ve done most of the touristy hike spots at least once and that’s good enough for me. I’ve been on hikes where we were the only ones or we passed a few people along the way. Those tend to be my favorite ones. Hiking is a bit of a solace for me and I want to enjoy every moment of it. You can call me a hike snob, don’t even get me started on trails that I don’t consider to be a “hike”. Like I said, I’m a hike snob 🙂

x | trash ! My biggest pet peeve on hikes is seeing it littered with trash. It’s not hard to pick up your own garbage. I usually have a trash bag handy in my hiking backpack and will pick up stuff along the way. Makes no sense to ugly such a beautiful land with your garbage, do the world a favor and pick it up.

x | hiking trail directions ? I don’t give out trail locations to everyone, I guess you can call me stingy and just want some places to be less traveled for as long as possible. This is a huge controversy among hikers nowadays, but I’m pretty firm on rarely sharing. Believe it or not, you can discover a lot if you Google it. That’s where I found information about 90% of the hikes I have done. Thankfully, I have several friends in the hiking community, so I ask them a few questions here and there. But for the most part, I do my own research.

I just realized that I didn’t exactly stick with my direction with this post, but I’m sure you get what I was trying to say. I love hiking and encourage everyone to leave their homes to explore. Now that I’m back on the islands, I’m so eager to get back out there again.

What are your hikings NOs/maybes or whatever you want to call them?!