Night hiking and camping solo

[Kernel]

As a wannabe thru-hiker who is not ready to hit the trail just yet, I always wondered what it would feel like to hike solo, but I mean REALLY solo, whether it be in the 100-mile wilderness, etc. I did an experiment near home, where I had the opportunity to do a bit of night hiking and camping solo, where there is no one around for miles and miles.

What I realised in my experiment is that solitude and the halo of a headlamp limiting your vision really accelerates your brains, like if it were trying to fill the information gap by anything: intrusive thoughts, (I hope all is ok back home, etc). Same thing with laying down in your tent by yourself overnight, with nothing else happening for hours.

My question is: how do other people experiment hiking solo, do you get used to it after a while ? I have the feeling the human being is probably made to interact with others and is not necessarily comfortable with total remote solitude, but that is probably just me...

If you don't mind sharing on the subject, many thanks !

[1azarus]

i guess i've gotten used to it and now generally prefer to be alone, at least most nights... but i didn't start out that way. And night hiking was scary at first -- i would get up early and hike before dawn so that i wasn't as scared about getting lost... now i welcome night hiking as part of the adventure -- a necessary part on short fall and winter days. I do get bored if i have too much "camp" time, so i prefer to hike long days no matter the amount of daylight.

for the "sharing" part, i was only really uncomfortable one night when camping alone -- i was in the smokies, alone at a shelter, and the night was so dark that i couldn't see my hand held an inch from my nose... and there had been some "trouble" bear sightings. nothing happened, but it was a pretty sleepless night.

you may well get used to being alone and may grow to like it. i have rarely hiked with crowds -- my guess is that if you actually thru hike the loneliness thing is way harder to find.

[snifur]

Night hiking is a different world. the other senses pick up wear your eye sight drops off. during my thru i did alot of miles (close to 200) at night. for lots of different reasons but mainly to escape the heat and people. the first few nights are awkward and then it becomes norm. time, speed and distance seem warped while night hiking. it is just one of those things you have to just do it. i enjoyed every mile i did at night. except through the rock maze in PA. that part had me turned around and upside down by the time i got though it. i burned alot of time there. not recommended at night... funny thing, i was laughing and cussing at myself through the entire maze as i am backtracking and looking for the blaze, whilst tripping. yeah, good times...

[Deerleg]

Love hiking most of the time with family or friends but have hiked more than 1000 miles solo over a number of years and usually just enjoy the surroundings or get lost in my own thoughts. Lots of time to work things out, once planed every detail of a surprise party for my wife. Most of all just enjoy solitude in the natural world. LOVE hiking at night…try turning off the lamp you’ll be so busy honing your abilities to navigate without the light there won’t be much need to “fill in”… and you may be surprised at your ability to master the skill...same way with camping, busy with preparations, usually pretty tired and not long before you welcome night sounds that use to make you nervous.

[johnnybgood]

As the temperature begins to cool in October so does my penchant for hiking again. With the cooler weather also comes the shortened days so hiking into darkness to the next campsite is sometimes a necessity.

For me I enjoy weekend solo overnighters either in SNP or the Blue Ridge Pkwy. I like to occasionally getting outside of my comfort zone a bit and hike well past dusk ,seeing the trail and surroundings like not seen during the day. I experimented first on a trail that I knew well and felt comfortable hiking at night. The hiking is truely surreal after dark and sometimes scary too. The red eyes of a rabbit sitting on the trail at 2am is a little unnerving for the first time but with more experience at night hiking you feel less fearful the next time.

[Hikerhead]

Well said.

[CrumbSnatcher]

over the years i found myself hiking alot at night mostly with my dog, who was a gentle soul and pretty much harmless, but i always felt safer with her by my side. Not so much for protection but as a great alarm system i suppose, with her along i wasn't caught off gaurd by anything, she would let me know if something was too close or alarmed her. we hiked at night mostly to take advantage of the cooler weather for her(she was a black lab/chow mix) she could over heat pretty easy if we didn't pay attention to the heat. cowboy camped right on the trail alot of times. totally different hiking though at night if she wasn't with me! i mean like day & night :-)
our last thruhike she was 10 yrs old, so she had alot of days off with friends in every state and i hiked very big days on her zero days that usually ended up hiking til around midnight or so. missed her on her days off, she didn't hike all the miles that year but was with me on the journey,and that was important to both of us, we picked her sections carefully that year. I enjoyed hiking with friends at night, like the time we were sitting around walnut mtn. shelter in the evening and a few of the hikers at the shelter were talking about the cocky hikers who bragged they were going on too the next shelter(deer park mtn. shelter) right outside of Hot Springs so they could be first to town. so i mentioned we could night hike if they wanted too and that excited all of them :-) so we went ahead and crashed til around midnight or so, then we slowly headed out and made it to the Deer park mtn. shelter turnoff right at dawn. i was standing there taking a break looking down the side trail to the shelter and someone ask me what the shelter down there was like? i said i don't know? never been down there, too close to town to ever check it out :-) the funny part was when those hikers that stayed at the last shelter right before town, rolled into the smoky mtn. diner and seen all of us already sitting at a table, you should of seen the look on thier faces :-) i had my camcorder sitting on the table rolling. they thought all 6 or 7 of us yellow blazed.

[Zipper]

I camped at night completely alone about 14 nights on the AT. Each one was different. Usually I wasn't worried and able to sleep ok. I used earplugs to cut out the high frequency rustling sounds or they keep me awake wondering what they are. I decided I'd rather not know, and usually they're teeny creatures like toads hopping through the leaves.

One of the things I learned to do, whether sleeping alone or near others, is to not look at my watch in the middle of the night. I found that if I thought it was 3 a.m. and looked at my watch and it was only 11:00 that I would wonder, "When is this night ever going to end?" and if I thought it was 2 a.m. and looked at my watch and it was 5:30, inevitably I was wishing it was earlier and I had longer to sleep. Either way looking at my watch caused me to have all these thoughts which woke me up and disturbed my rest. So I began to make it a habit to not worry about what time it was and just roll over and go back to sleep.

I'm fine camping alone in the woods - and I like the freedom that gives me to go take a trip whenever I want without having to coordinate with anyone.

I've done a little bit of night hiking - the most memorable up to Clingman's Dome in November by the light of a full moon. We left at 4 a.m. to be up on top by sunrise. We were early, and it was soooo cold! But the misty sun rising was pretty cool.

[Odd Man Out]

I had one of those weird nights camping when it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Odd thoughts start running through you head keeping you from falling asleep. I was trying to come up with some way of proving that I hadn't gone blind and that it really was that dark. The obvious solution was to turn on my light which was hanging from the clip on the peak of the tent. But it was my first night out and I was so incredibly sore from hiking the day before, the act of sitting up to reach the light was going to cause excruciating pain. So I probably laid there for 30 minutes trying to decide which was worse - the pain of sitting up or not knowing if I was blind. I eventually sat up, turned on the light and found I could still see. Yes it was that dark and yes the pain was as bad as I had feared.

[kayak karl]

i usually hike and camp alone. the longest i went without seeing or talking to (saw some cars moving on highways) another human was 5 days-4 nights (mon-fri). wasn't that bad. kind of fun always being first prints in the snow, but weeks later i realized that was the longest i went without seeing or talking to another in my LIFE.

[Theosus]

I really prefer to be with others, especially someone who wants to push on. I find I take more breaks on my own, and maybe go slower. At night I really like to be with others. It's hard to sneak up on a bunch of people.

[Old Hiker]

I pretty much hiked alone and camped alone the 500 miles of my attempt. I slept near a few shelters and had to shelter stay through the Smokies, but I preferred to be alone. There's too much talking and carrying on for me to sleep well and I PREFER to hear what's "sneaking up" on me.

That being said: I did have one bad night: I heard a bear sniffing outside my tent and I couldn't decide which side of the tent it was on. Turned out to be my beard scratching against my sleeping bag as I frantically whipped my head back and forth!!

One great night at least: seeing the shadows of the mountain laurel leaves change against my tent wall from a full moon each time I woke up during the night. My camera wouldn't get the picture. Everytime the moon came out from behind a cloud, I'd wake up as if someone was shining a light on my tent and I'd have new pictures.

Haven't night-hiked, though. I was too tired at the end of the day to keep going and I worried enough about the blazes in the daytime, let alone at night!

[OzJacko]

I don't mind night hiking except for the issue of stumbling over wildlife. In warmer weather our snakes are active at night and I'm not keen on treading on one in the dark. Have done it in daylight which was scary enough. Initially thought being alone would be unnerving but when you actually do it it's cool. Camping alone is fine where you know you're alone. i.e. at the end of the day the only truly dangerous things out there walk on two legs... Man is a social animal and company gives a feeling of protection from other people more than anything else.

[Not Sunshine]

I just completed a 108-mile 7day/6night section solo. I saw and met a few cool people - 1 night I stayed at a shelter with a two-some of hiking buddies who were cool; another of those 6 nights, I camped with a couple of "lolligagger" hikers (they called themselves that!)...but other than those 2 nights, the other 4 nights I was completely alone.

It's nice not having to coordinate waking up/packing up/etc with another person - when I was awake, I either took my time making coffee or just packed up and hit the trail - and I didn't have to accommodate anyone else's preferences. I also didn't have to adjust my hiking speed for anyone else. That's always nice.

That said - I'm instinctively more of an extroverted person - so being alone in the woods without cellphone reception and/or anyone else to talk to but myself can get to be reaaaaally lonely. I do, at least. Sure all that solitude is refreshing to the soul, but it got to be a bit much for me.

The good news with thru hiking is there's always other people hiking in your vicinity. If you're ahead of them, you write them a note in the shelter log - of they're ahead of you, they're writing "where are you??" in the log. So while you could be alone all day, your chances of seeing someone in the evenings is decent. You shouldn't be 4 days all alone unless you're ahead of everyone or behind everyone.

Personally, 7 days was enough for me, for this trip. I honestly just missed home - I started daydreaming about my bed, fried eggs from the cast iron skillet, hot showers....luxuries that I take for granted daily.

If you're serious about thru-hiking, my advice would be to plan a 1-2 week trip/vacation. Plan out your resupply/town/hostel time - so you get that weekly shower...have your family/support meet you there to even help you shuttle your car to the end point so you can just walk to it. Seeing someone briefly in town who you love and then having to get back on the trail - that's HARD to do. It's hard to get back into the mindset of being alone. Another thing I recently experienced is how when you've resupplied you have CLEAN clothes and OH they feel so good!!! But you also have another heavy stock of food and that food is bloody heavy! Climbing up 2000' with a clean shirt didn't outweigh the emotions of carrying a newly weighted pack! In fact, I thought re-supply kind of sucked! I saw my boyfriend for a few hours and then I had to leave again! :-/

This was the first time I'd ever gone so far, so long and I was only gone 7 days! I had planned 8 or 9 but pushed myself just to get off the trail! I had always thought I could do a thru hike, but after this experience (which was a good one!), I don't think I'll ever attempt one. I missed home too much.

[Karma13]

I live alone and work alone (home office), so most days of the week, I don't see or talk to another soul. I'm actually afraid that my head's going to explode from too much social contact next March! I'm trying to build up to it.

[Not Sunshine]

I live alone and work alone (home office), so most days of the week, I don't see or talk to another soul. I'm actually afraid that my head's going to explode from too much social contact next March! I'm trying to build up to it.

If you're going NOBO that is definitely something of a real possibility! I hiked for a day with a guy named Weenail back in 2010 (he gave me my trail name) and when he was going NOBO that year, he said he got so tired of the crowds/drama that when he got to Damascus, he had his family take him to Harpers Ferry to get ahead of the crowds. He then hiked to ME, took a few weeks off before returning to Damascus and hiking VA NOBO in the fall.

I'm not a diehard purist when it comes to what a "true NOBO AT thru hike" is - I think his flip flopping definitely makes the cut for a "thru hike".

VA is beautiful in the fall, too! I think if I ever attempted a thru, I might do exactly what Weenail did.

[OzJacko]

I live alone and work alone (home office), so most days of the week, I don't see or talk to another soul. I'm actually afraid that my head's going to explode from too much social contact next March! I'm trying to build up to it.

No worries Karma.... we'll just duct tape it back together again.....maybe the trailname Humpty Dumpty might fit...

[Karma13]

LOL! Do you think 5 feet of duct tape will be enough? I'm counting grams.

[OzJacko]

LOL! Do you think 5 feet of duct tape will be enough? I'm counting grams.

We can pool our duct tape for such a serious need....

[HikerMom58]

You can be a gram weenie Karma13 ... you do know that the duct tape goes on your hiking poles, if you have one (or them). I just thought that was the coolest idea for "carrying" duct tape... right around the hiking poles... Now ,why didn't I think of that