Hiking with friends can give you a lot of fun, especially if all of you have at least some hiking experience, but sometimes even your slow pace is way too fast for others to catch up, so what can we do about it? If you ask yourself “Is it ok to walk ahead of someone on a hike” Then you are in the right place because we will give you the answer about what is the general opinion on this topic, and also you will learn a few things about hiking to make your hikes with friends a better experience for everyone!
When one person has a lot better stamina than others then it will be hard to maintain the same pace for everyone to hike close to each other, due to the difference in stamina level and experience. Walking ahead of someone on a hike is considered to be rude by most of the hikers. It’s way harder for a slower hiker to catch up to a faster one than it is for a faster one to slow down a bit, but there is a lot more to this issue and we will try to explain it to you, and also we will give you some tips.
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Why is walking ahead of someone on a hike considered rude?
Hiking with friends is not a competition unless you all agreed to that, so I bet that you just want to spend time together talking about something and having a nice trip. Often one of the hikers struggles to adapt to the group and rushes ahead of everyone slowly increasing the distance, and slowers hikers are not able to catch up that easily.
Being a faster and more athletic hiker is something we should be proud of but not to this point to leave others behind. Showing off a bit is good, but we have to remember to not cross that line to make others feel bad due to our actions.
Slower hikers will try to catch up to us which will be sometimes painful for them physically and mentally, and those things can make our trip a bad experience for some people in our group.
Every one of us hikers start at some point in our lives without much stamina and experience, so we should not laugh at other people because they are right now in the same situation where were we a few years ago.
How can we keep the same pace at hiking?
All of your problems can be easily solved by your words. It was proved many times that those issues like “walking ahead of someone on a hike” are mentioned only when it already has happened in the middle of your trip when everyone is tired and angry due to differences in your experience.
So to prevent that we would like to recommend you to talk about “the pace” before you will start your hike.
Inexperienced hikers are not talking much about pace right at the start of the hike, but it can prevent all quarrels. Hikers who are slower should tell that they are probably are going to fall behind quickly so all of the rest of the group should match their speed to the slowest hiker.
The slowest hiker won’t magically increase his or her speed but the fastest hiker is able to slow down. A simple chat is a solution to almost all of your hiking problems. I bet that your friendly hikes are not some sort of competition so make sure that you will have a lot of nice experiences with your friends along the way, focus on positive things!
In Summary – Is it ok to walk ahead of someone on a hike?
Most people consider walking ahead of other people as a rude thing because slower people will fall behind without the possibility to catch up, which will make them feel bad. If you don’t want to make other people sad or feel bad, then just try to not show off too much, and propose help if they look like they need it.
If you want to know more if you are already an experienced hiker then check out our new article about “Is Hiking 10 Miles A Lot? – (5 Hiking Tips)“.
