Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

It’s close to an established medical fact that a vigorous walk in the countryside makes people feel better. I’ve even noticed a local guy in the life-coaching business has a little outfit called Head Lands in which he takes people on hikes in the Bay Area hills to help get their lives in order. Good work if you can get it, I suppose.

A few thoughts on why hiking is nature’s Zoloft.

• Absence of synthetic noise. You can close your eyes to blot out the world’s ugliness, but you can’t close your ears. On a hike, all you hear is wind, birds, maybe some running water. In civilization, it’s all TVs, car horns, talk radio, can’t-shut-up cubicle cousins. Civilization seems designed to amplify all suspicions that the world’s got it in for you.
• Something bigger than your problems. While civilization seems intent on making you feel insignificant, nature has bigger cases on its docket. Life-and-death stuff. There’s no petty bullshit in nature (though there can be cow patties, especially in the East Bay parks).
• You’re part of that bigger something. When you walk into a forest, you’re immediately aware of the scrum to survive happening all around you. You lift a discarded water bottle and see bugs crawling around where it used to be. You see month-old saplings next to their centuries-old grandparents. You climb a hill and feel the air temperature change as you pass through the atmosphere’s marine layer. The meaning of life is tangible on a trail in ways it will never be while walking down Main Street.
• There are no stupid things to fear. Every fear on a hike is a rational response to a plausible threat. In civilization, we can do everything right and still get screwed, which poisons our brains with a thousand “what-ifs.” In the wilderness, you prepare for threats and address them when they arise, and you never have to take on more risk than you can handle. You can always turn back on a hike.
• Nature is not cruel. Nature will never betray a confidence or run off with your best friend. Nature won’t cut in line, talk too loud on a cellphone, or fail to control its screaming brats. Nature’s only mandate is to keep living things living.
• Nature always wins in the end. In a million years, humans will be extinct and life will go on as it has since the first strands of DNA began to replicate untold billions of years ago. When you’re out in nature, you’re joining the winning team. It just feels better to be part of a winner.

OK, so those are the pluses. But there are some things to keep in mind before you ditch the Cymbalta and lace up your hiking boots:

• Consult with your therapist first. Chances are a professional will have read the literature on nature as therapy and will know if you’re a good candidate. Hiking will not untangle all the soul snarls that got you to this point. Forests and canyons can feel claustrophobic, and even the gentle sounds of nature can be overwhelming if you’re not ready for them.
• You’re on your own out there. You may not be able to get any help of any kind when you’re out on a hike. If you get lost, you have to get yourself unlost. If you get hurt, you’ll need to have a way to get unhurt. You could catch a rash from poison oak or get bitten by a rattlesnake (though snakebite is exceedingly rare). You’ll have to deal with it.
• Hiking requires a certain level of fitness. If you’re out of shape, start slow and work your way onto longer hikes.
• Have a plan for your phobias. If you’re afraid of, say, snakes or mice, you will experience a momentary flash of terror if you see one on the trail. So, have a mental game plan for what to do when the terror strikes.
• Be a Boy Scout: Their motto is “be prepared.” My list of “10 essentials for happy hiking” provides a solid introduction to what you need to hike safely.

If you decide to go, the main issue unresolved is whether you should go solo. If you like being around people and fear being alone, you might be better off in a group hike. If you like being left alone, you might be better off hiking that way. I’ve hiked solo every weekend for the past five years, but I’m cautious by nature — I stay on trails, tell my wife where I’m going, and avoid risks that might require a rescue if things go bad.

My brain always feels better after the walking’s done.

It’s common sense that walking up and down hills makes your body work more efficiently. It’s less well-known how good it can be for your mental state, says John McKinney, former Los Angeles Times hiking columnist, in this article at Miller-McCune.com.

A study commissioned by Mind, a leading British mental health charity, suggests hiking contributes to improved mental and emotional health. Focusing on people affected by depression, researchers from the University of Essex compared the benefits of hiking a trail through the woods and around a lake in a nature park to walking in an indoor shopping center. The researchers found that the hikers realized far greater benefits than the mall walkers.

In fact, they found that taking a hike in the countryside reduces depression, whereas walking in a shopping center increases depression. Results from the 2007 study showed that 71 percent reported decreased levels of depression after hiking, while 22 percent of the participants felt their depression increased after walking through an indoor shopping center. Ninety percent reported their self-esteem increased after the nature hike, while 44 percent reported decreased self-esteem after walking around the shopping center. Eighty-eight percent of people reported improved mood after hiking, while 44.5 percent reported feeling in a worse mood after the shopping-center walk.

The article also outlines the value of going downhill.

Unexpectedly, researchers from the Vorarlberg Institute for Vascular Investigation and Treatment discovered that hiking downhill also has unique benefits.

Both uphill and downhill hiking reduced LDL (”bad”) cholesterol. Only hiking uphill reduced triglyceride levels. The study’s surprise finding was that hiking downhill was nearly twice as effective as uphill hiking at removing blood sugars and improving glucose tolerance

Incidentally, McKinney has a Web site called Trailmaster.com, where he has declared 2009 to be the Year of the Hiker and has an addendum about an Irish play of the same name.

First thing you shouldn’t do: take two months off and think you can just charge up and down the Bay Area hills for five hours with no consequences. Come Tuesday you may equate climbing stairs with the fond thoughts normally reserved for getting a tooth pulled.

Say you’re crunched for time and can’t spare more than about 20 minutes. Here’s what I’d do: find a set of stairs somewhere and just climb up and down for whatever time you can spare. Clock yourself and work on improving your time, getting more laps in the same time expanse.

Fifteen minutes on stairs is less than a mile of walking, but it’s all resistance training that uses most of the same muscles, tendons and ligaments you’ll use on the trail. It won’t give the aerobic training you’d get in a healthy hourlong walk and it won’t provide any of the upper-body workout you should be getting if you care about that stuff.

But I suspect it will preserve enough leg muscle tissue to minimize your post-hike punishment.

One scene I cannot forget: I was five miles into a hike to Berry Creek Falls at Big Basin Redwoods when I noticed a toddler, maybe 14 months old at best, wandering around in his diaper with his admiring mom and dad nearby, doing their best to keep him from wandering into the poison oak.

Taking the tot on a 12-mile hike, how’s that for getting him started early?

Jane Huber’s latest blog post describes the necessities of taking your 3-year-old along. For instance:

Choose the right kind of trail. While the whole family adores singletrack trails through woods and coastal scrub, these aren’t best for us. Very narrow trails aren’t wide enough to accommodate 2 hikers walking hand in hand, which is essential when we are hiking on trails with a drop-off on one side or that are very steep. It’s also essential to be able to see a good distance in front and behind us, because quite often Jack will plop down on the trail to play with leaves or rocks or heffalump traps, and when he does this I need to make sure a bicycle (or mountain lion) doesn’t come barreling down the trail and run into us. Hiking-only trails eliminate the possibility of bikes and horses, but wide fire roads through open grassy landscapes work best.

What usually happens when grown-ups drag their kids out on the trail: everybody goes where Dad wants to go and puts up with it because, well, he’s Dad and his crazy habits are just part of the package. Jane’s not proposing caving to a toddler’s whims; she’s trying to see the trail through a child’s eyes. Shorter hikes, fatter trails — which too many hiker types reject out of hand (or foot).

Camping Blogger makes a similar point about his kids:

While they might dismiss some great natural wonder as “ho-hum,” they will spend hours playing with salamanders in a mountain stream. It is important for us, as parents, to remember that our children’s interests are not always aligned with our own. If we are to promote and develop our children’s interest in nature, it’s important to let them explore nature on their terms – wherever that may lead.

While I sympathize with the notion that getting youngsters interested in nature will foster a new generation of environmentalists, I doubt many kids will consider it an especially compelling argument for dumping their Xbox. And if you know of any kids who buy “you’ll thank me for this when you’re a grown-up,” call a research scientist to look into this peculiarity.

Perhaps the secret is to match your outdoor forays to whatever your kid is into indoors. One hiker told me his vid-crazed kid was nuts about geocaching. If they like solving puzzles, orienteering might be worth a look. Scouting is an obvious choice, but some kids will be turned off by the absurdly out-of-date outfits.

Your suggestions welcome as always.

Well, perhaps. The New York Times Health blog notes a study linking walks outside with improving kids’ ability to pay attention.

A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.

After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.

The study, published in the August issue of The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.

I’ll try this on my own self any day now.

The Wilderness Medical Society reports that snowboarders account for fully a quarter of all outdoor-related emergency room visits. Hikers come in at No. 3.

Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding followed by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking, personal watercraft, water skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3 percent) and swimming (2 percent).

From his experience on ski patrols, “it makes perfect sense to me that snowboard injuries rank high,” said Dr. Paul Auerbach, of Stanford School of Medicine.

Odd, why mountain biking but no road biking?

Dr. Auerbach has an outdoor-health blog. If you’re feeling energetic, check out his environmental treatise (his style is tad dry but I don’t really care much about prose tendencies when I need my compound fracture reduced). Or if you’re the practical sort: Laceration repair.

WEBMD also cites the above study and lists several dead-obvious ways to avoid injuries (such as, if you go fast, wear a helmet).

This thread at the BAHiker.com discussion board is getting more timely as summer approaches: how to cope with the sun and heat.

You could just spend all your time hiking under forest canopy, but there’s always something to be said for getting out in the sunburn zone, especially if you’re into taking nature pictures, which tend not to come out so well when taken in the depths of the redwoods. A thoughtful post from Fasthiker:

I try to cover up as much as possible when it’s especially hot. I have one of those goofy looking sun hats with an oversized brim by “Sunday Afternoons”. I bought my current one at REI. Under the hat I have a bandana to keep the sweat out of my eyes. The hike is so much easier when I don’t have the sun or sweat in my eyes.

I also try not to roll up the sleeves on my long sleeved shirt. I currently use the Mountain Hardwear Canyon Shirt. Sometimes I can’t help myself and uncover my forearms.

I hate sun block which is why I cover up as much as possible. I sweat a lot anyway. Sun block just makes we sweat a lot more until it gets washed off. On the other hand, I’d die in long pants so I always wear shorts unless it gets down toward freezing.

Then, of course, you have to keep drinking something on a regular basis. You’re more likely to drink if you have a water bladder.

Of course, the first time I used a bladder on a real hike I got dehydrated. I was drinking every 15-20 minutes but wasn’t drinking nearly as much as I thought. Those narrow tubes take a fair amount of effort to get a relatively small amount of water.

Once you get dehydrated all you can think about is drinking more water. You drink until you can’t hold any more. This prevents you from eating. When your stomach empties out a little, you drink some more rather than eat.

Many have noted before how you have to be careful with water bladders — if you wait till you feel really thirsty, it may be too late, but you also have to guard against over-hydration (See “Hyponatremia: Losing your water balance.”)

Hmm, maybe it would just be easier to hike in the shade.

I used to be a fan of PowerBars but have stopped eating them since my wife started baking me her trademark oatmeal-walnut-chocolate chip cookies. Most energy bars compare so closely to a sawdust sandwich that I’d just as soon avoid them altogether, though they are an alternative to having to actually cook something on a backpacking trip (many of us go to extravagant lengths to avoid mess duty, including sleeping on the ground in the middle of nowhere for days or weeks on end and eating stuff we can’t stand.)

I stopped by backpackgeartest.org to see what the reviews were saying. One guy was fond of the Clif bar shown here.

First and foremost, the Blueberry Crisps taste great. As noted in my Initial Report, it’s like a bar made of blueberry granola – pronounced flavors of blueberry, oats, and sugar, with a hint of apple. Thanks to their airtight packaging Clif Bars don’t dry out; they retain their chewy texture and their entire flavor. Once I ate half a Bar at lunch and returned the uneaten portion to the opened wrapper, rolled up the wrapper, and returned it to my pack. When I ate the remainder at the end of the day it was as tasty and chewy as ever. I ate half the frozen Bar for breakfast on a Monday and stored the other half in the refrigerator, without packaging, until Friday morning. Again the taste and texture remained the same. I waited about twenty minutes for the frozen bar to thaw, and when I ate half of it I detected no loss of flavor from a week’s freezing.

Wow, so these things might have some promise.

Men’s Vogue taste-tested — and assigned reprehensibility ratings — to a bunch of energy bars.

POWER BAR HARVEST
50% Reprehensible

Basically, this is one big granola cookie. So why not get a big granola cookie?

You could always make your own. Sarah at Freezerbag Cooking has a bunch of baked goodies, some of which could do energy-bar duty.

If you need more ideas, just google “homemade energy bars” — you’ll get gazillion hits.

And finally, here’s my wife’s recipe. Follow the instructions to the letter for best performance.

Melissa’s Magnificent Hiking Cookies

1-1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup Crisco Butter Flavor shortening (do not substitute butter or margarine)
1/3 cup milk (Must be whole milk or at least 2%. Do not use 1% or skim milk.)
1 large egg (Crack egg into 1/4 cup measuring cup. If egg does not equal a full 1/4 cup, add additional milk to to equal 1/4 cup.)
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups quick cooking oatmeal
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line cookies sheets with parchment paper.

Cream brown sugar and shortening together. Beat in milk, egg and vanilla until well blended.

Combine oatmeal, flour, baking soda and salt. Add to shortening mixture and mix just until blended. Do not over mix.
Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Drop dough by scant 1/4 cup (or extra large cookie scoop) onto prepared baking sheets, pressing dough down slightly.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until cookies are just set and lightly browned. Cook 2 minutes on baking sheet.
Remove cookies to a sheet of aluminum foil to cool completely.

Makes 18 large cookies.

*The secret to these cookies is is to mix the batter by hand. Also, the flour and oatmeal must be measured carefully by the scoop and level method.
Scoop the flour and/or oatmeal out of the bag or canister and level with a measuring cup level or table knife.

These are truly awesome cookies.

It’s been so long since I had a blister that I keep forgetting they’re the bane of hikers everywhere.

What I do to prevent them:

Wear the right socks: soft synthetic hiking socks like Wigwam’s Coolmax work great for me. Heat and friction are a like a blister factory — wearing socks that help regulate foot temperature goes a long way toward preventing blisters.

Wear the right shoes: If they rub you the wrong way at the store, don’t buy them. If your feet get hot, get shoes that have lots of ventilation. Don’t obsess over how waterproof your shoes are — the more waterproof they are, the more heat buildup you’ll get inside and your feet’ll get wet anyway. GoreTex and other so-called breathable waterproof fabrics are nice for short, damp hikes but if you’re putting in over five miles, they’re pretty much irrelevant because the act of walking will keep your feet warm and will dry out your shoes as you go.

Rest when your feet start screaming. Especially true if you have a long hike planned. Give yourself a foot massage (and if you’re out there with the one you love, offer to share.)

What I do if I’ve got one: I’ve noticed that on backpacking trips, the extra weight and pressure will produce blisters much sooner than if I were hiking unloaded. If fluid is gathering, I take a needle from my first aid kit and poke through the skin to let it drain. This does raise the chance of infection, so you’ll want to disinfect the area and cover it to keep it clean. (One PCT through-hiker almost died last year because her blisters got infected — so the risk is there).

After I’ve got one: Like most injuries, rest is the key to healing. Not always a choice when you’re out in the woods for several days, which makes prevention all that much more important.

As always, your tips are welcome. I’ve heard some long-distance hikers have had good luck with duct tape.

Here’s a nice overview of what to do about blisters once you’ve got ‘em.

The sectionhiker.com blog has a brief overview:

It is a repetition injury often caused by hiking or running and presents itself as chronic heel pain. This pain is caused by the inflammation of the ligament that connects your heel bone to the ball of your foot.

I’ve found that the best way to cure plantar fasciitis is to simply stop hiking for an extended period of time, like over the winter, AND to get a pair of boots with better arch and heel support.

I can’t recall having linking to this blog, which has a wealth of info for lightweight backpackers and thru-hikers. Definite bookmark/feed list potential.

(Hat tip: The Sock Site’s hiking blog page).