How to Navigate Steep Terrain & Slopes When Hiking

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kate I’m with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com and we’re going to be talking about hiking today. When you’re hiking you’re going to be coming around to some steep terrain that can be difficult to navigate or in some people’s case it’s easy. Generally speaking, you’re going to want to make sure you’re doing it slow and you have good placements of your feet. My terrains a little bit rocky and a little bit muddy, so it makes it slippery, a little bit dangerous, you want to be careful of your ankles. When I go up steep slopes with a heavy backpack I like to do zigzag. Sometimes the trails are done in switch backs, so it just does z’s all the way up the steep slope. Sometimes they’re not, so you can do your own on the trail but you want to stay on the trail, don’t make a cut through with the zigzags. So when I hike and it’s pretty steep, I just watch my footing and I kind of just go back and forth making it easier on my legs and I’ll eventually make it up. If I have a 50 lb. pack, this feels much better than trying to muscling it up through difficult terrain. It’s also very important when you’re coming down a steep terrain, you don’t want to go too slow, you want to make sure your placement or your feet are very good, you have trekking poles to go up and down. When I’m going up, I put my trekking poles at a lower setting to help me cause they’re going to be higher most of the time. When I come down, I like to have them at a normal setting so that if my arms are at 90 degree angle, these things are touching the ground. Coming down is a little bit more tricky sometimes because you do have weight in your pack and you’re going to want to just make sure your placement of your feet are very good and very secure. Take your time, watch out for loose rocks cause you don’t want to step on them and just be very aware of your footing, you don’t want to get hurt when you’re coming down off your hike. So take it slow, watch your footing, use your trekking poles and you should have a pretty easy time."