Posts Tagged ‘Hiking’
Hiking Is Fun But Dangerous
This weekend, my wife and I visited some friends who live in the Poughkeepsie, NY area and, among other things, hiking a little trail Saturday afternoon. It was labeled a “moderately difficult” trail that had an estimated three hours round-trip completion time so we headed up there around 2 pm. My wife and I, and our friends, were pretty ill prepared for the trail as we just thought it was some little path through the woods that would be fairly easy to complete. What we discovered was a trail that required us to get one some hands and knees, climbing over rocks, and looking for hand hand holds; not really difficult but hardly a walk around our local lake. We had no maps, a bottle of water, and our trust of the trail marking system of one white dash or two (and some park service tags). It wasn’t a big deal but when we did get mildly lost, it did give us a little warning that hiking is fun but can be dangerous if you’re ill prepared.
There are three things we should’ve brought that we didn’t:
- A Map: Before you slap yourself and say “Duh!” I have to warn that we thought the trail was just a little walk that could be finished in short order. The trail itself was clearly marked but we weren’t 100% where each trail went. The trail also ended up being far easier to go up than it was to go down, because of the rocks, so our original plan of just back-tracking was adjusted. Regardless, it was a mistake not to have a map (the trail head didn’t have maps either, something we assumed).
- Food: We only ate breakfast at noon and I was starving by the time we made it halfway through. That’s bad… we needed some trail mix!
- Water: We had enough water for our needs but you never know. If we really got lost, we wouldn’t have had enough water.
Even if you think it’s a short hike, be armed with a map and water and food. Don’t be a fool like me.
Subscribe to the comments for this postDon’t Snack on Trail Mix
On my desk is a bag of PLanter’s Trail Mix – Fruit and Nut. It’s a pretty good medley of nuts and fruit actually, some peanuts, raisins, banana chips, cashews, pineapple, cranberries and even some papaya. It’s absolutely delicious. It’s also jam packed with a lot of fat (good and bad fats), calories, and sugar. Fortunately it doesn’t have much salt otherwise I’d give myself a heart attack considering all the caffeine I drink in the morning (just kidding!).
Trail mix is delicious but it’s also heavy on calories. Three tablespoons (28g) has 140 calories, 9 grams of fat (2.5g saturated), and 13g of carbs of which 10g is sugar. The dangerous part about trail mix is that you could end up eating the whole bag, all 6 oz., and not even realize it. There are six servings in the bag so you’d be talking about half of your caloric intake (assuming 2000 calorie day) in one sitting. Just snacking.
This is the same concerns some have about dried fruits. Since the fruit is dried, it takes up less space in your stomach so you end up snacking on way more than you should be. The fruit is also packed with sugars and calories so you unknowingly consume a tremendous amount of calories just snacking. While it’s better than snacking on potato chips or chocolate bars, it’s not something you want to make a habit of.
Those calories do come in handy when you’re actually hiking on a trail though!
