Understand the Importance of Leaving an Itinerary When Hiking Overnight

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Kate with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am going to talk to you about hiking and backpacking. When you are doing your multi day hike, you are going to want to be leaving an itinerary. We spoke about this earlier in our hiking demonstration. What is very important is to have your maps, itinerary, your route, your mileage, how many days you are going to be out, how many people and you should put that on one piece of paper. I like to put my itinerary on the dashboard of the car that I leave off where we leave off hiking. Depending on where you are, you might be leaving an itinerary on the trail. Up at Pinkem Notch there’s a nice place for you to put your itinerary in a box so that the Rangers know what is going on. You also want to let someone else know what you are doing. Someone at home who knows that they are expected to come home and knows if you are not home at that point, to do something about it. It is very important to leave an itinerary for everyone else to know what is going on because then people are going to be able to help you if something does happen. You should also know the reason you are going in and they might have specific rules and regulations for you to do whether it is checking with the Ranger Station before you go or check in when you get back. It is very important for the itinerary to be left so people know what is going on. "