fitbit stats from a long-ish hike

[BrianLe]

I brought my fitbit on my PNT hike this year, and spent a little time getting summary data. My hiking partner Lucky and I hiked 804 miles in 53 days, of which 5 days we did no hiking (so 48 hiking days), for a per-day average of 16.8 miles.


In those 48 days I walked just a bit over two million steps, and we climbed the equivalent of a little over 25 vertical miles along the way.


What I found interesting is how much fitbit's daily mileage estimate was high. I expected it to be high; I used a level track at a local school to establish my average stride length, and unless you're road walking on pretty level roads, real trail involves on average shorter steps. But for the PNT this came out to be 30% high, and if I did some more work to remove Nero's, and even more to remove known road walking miles, for actual trail it would be higher than that. Perhaps 30% would be more reasonable for better quality and better graded trail like the PCT.

FWIW, I have the fitbit "one", which I kept in a key pocket at my hip; I personally can't stand to wear a fitness tracker on my wrist all the time (I guess I'm in the minority on that one, at least based on what's being sold today).



If you're into geeky hiking stats, a little more information on this is here:

http://www.postholer.com/journal/Pacific-Northwest-Trail/2016/brianle/2016-10-24/Some-Stats/57530

[dervari]

It's all in the stride length. Shorter steps on a trail with a backpack, and even shorter on ups and downs.

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[Maineiac64]

I had fitbit one, it was extremely accurate for me on regular walks but never used it hiking since I use Gaia GPS

[Greenlight]

I always have my Fitbit on, and when I'm hiking I also use Gaia. Neither of them is spot-on accurate, but Gaia is closer.

I don't expect my Fitbit to be super accurate. The whole thing with fitness trackers is motivation. I try to hit 10,000 steps per day. Some days I'll hit it around five miles, other days around five and a half. I don't care. For me, the only thing I'm worried about is hitting 10k steps. I use the other tools, also. I track my calories. I track my water intake. I track my weight. I do challenges with friends and family to keep me motivated. I have it ping me every hour to spur me to go out and walk at least 250 steps so I don't get sedentary at my desk. That is what fitness trackers are for, not for super accurate mileage.

I had fitbit one, it was extremely accurate for me on regular walks but never used it hiking since I use Gaia GPS

[colorado_rob]

I had fitbit one, it was extremely accurate for me on regular walks but never used it hiking since I use Gaia GPS

Fitbits are a blast, my wife got me a Garmin version, a ton of fun. Perfectly accurate for flat ground, off on rough or sloped terrain in term of mileage, of course, but if you wear one enough, you learn to adjust based on your terrain and you can guess pretty close. We both have them, along with an app, and love tracking our overall steps and mileage. I think we're going to wear them for our PCT attempt next year.

Our last Grand Canyon rim-rim-rim, my wife got to 108,000 steps in 18 hours.... I was at 97,000. Fun!