Poll: Hiking or Climbing Solo - Do you do it? Ever?

bikehikeskifish said:

There are definitely seasonal variations. There is definitely an uptick in winter - probably for trail conditions.

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Can you get the number of distinct users by month, that's what would be most useful in this discussion?

bikehikeskifish said:

I have learned that VFTT does not automatically glean all of the uber hikers out there, FWIW. Many gridiots, NH200/300 finishers, SSW48ers, soloists, etc., just don't care for the "online hiking experience". So, while there is probably more experience than average in those 406/256 (just a guess), by no means can one infer that there are not others out there doing more exotic things than soloing in winter.

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Raven said:

This poll seems pretty representative of VFTT it appears (presidential elections are called on lower percentages for example)

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Unlikely. The poll members are a self-selected group. Such groups tend to be biased toward those with strong feelings about the topic in quesiton.

In this particular case, solo hikers appear to feel threatened by emerging F&G policies and may be more likely to speak up than those who do not solo (IMO).

Interestingly enough, a paper was somehow published with n=199 in a Brown study done recently trying to determine who carries gear recommended by HikeSafe. From the article: "To compile the data, Mason surveyed 199 hikers in the summer of 2011 at the heads of three trails of varying difficulty in the national forest." I made my opinion clear in the thread that I thought that n value seemed very low for publishable work. For comparison, this poll is up to n=120 and is increasing daily. If one could show that VFTT represents a somewhat random sampling of hikers (at least equal to picking three trailheads), we are getting close to that number. The author of that work made conclusions from that sample and had his work reviewed by a board and published.

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The authors of that paper at least made an attempt to poll a representative sample of hikers. But I expect it was still biased: for instance if they sampled on weekends, they missed weekday hikers. If they only sampled during part of the day, they missed those who passed the trailheads at other times.

A high count is necessary, but not sufficient for a meaningful survey. A high-count biased sample is still a biased sample.

A poll of random hikers would certainly be interesting to see in order to find out if the numbers we are seeing here on VFTT are reflected throughout the mountain community in general. There seems to be a sense that VFTT is somehow a group of "experts." Maybe so, but as Tim has pointed out, there are plenty of "experts" in the hills, likely hiking solo on occasion, who are not part of VFTT.

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The VFTT community contains hikers with very little experience as well as hikers with a lot of experience. It also includes some with experience in other facets of outdoor recreation. I have no idea how representative it might be of the general mountaineering community. It is another self-selected group and is therefore likely to be biased...

Doug

Steve Smith, to name one person, does a couple of hikes a week and reports on them on his own website, but he isn’t represented on this site. And he has mentioned to me some of his acquaintances (was one The Peakmaster?) who also do a lot of hiking and aren’t online.

DougPaul said:

Unlikely. The poll members are a self-selected group. Such groups tend to be biased toward those with strong feelings about the topic in quesiton.

In this particular case, solo hikers appear to feel threatened by emerging F&G policies and may be more likely to speak up than those who do not solo (IMO).
Doug

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First statment: I would agree except for the fact that the numbers in this poll are getting large. This is not a poll of 3% of the VFTT community; we now have a response from 43% of people who have posted this year (there are of course those who have not posted this year). However, even if we assume every member who has posted this year but is not represented in this poll were to choose "I never hike solo" (which is highly unlikely)...even if that were true, it's still 48% of the active VFTT community that hikes solo in winter sometimes (active defined as having posted this year for now). And considering less than 2% of those 122 who have responded have chosen "I never hike solo," I find it likely that even if all active members were to respond, the number of occasional or more solo winter hikers (first two responses combined) would be over 75% (it's over 86% now, and would only drop to about 48% if every active member left chose the least popular response).

I agree with your second statement. IMO Those who hike solo are more likely to respond to this poll.

Open call to members: please take this poll if you have not yet done so and we may be able to truly see where the VFTT community lies.

Edit: I'm not suprised this site is more active in winter - I don't post as often in summer and rarely post or read trail conditions reports unless the ground is white.

Raven said:

First statment: I would agree except for the fact that the numbers in this poll are getting large. This is not a poll of 3% of the VFTT community; we now have a response from 43% of people who have posted this year (there are of course those who have not posted this year). However, even if we assume every member who has posted this year but is not represented in this poll were to choose "I never hike solo" (which is highly unlikely)...even if that were true, it's still 48% of the active VFTT community that hikes solo in winter sometimes (active defined as having posted this year for now). And considering less than 2% of those 122 who have responded have chosen "I never hike solo," I find it likely that even if all active members were to respond, the number of occasional or more solo winter hikers (first two responses combined) would be over 75% (it's over 86% now, and would only drop to about 48% if every active member left chose the least popular response).

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First of all, the number in each category is more meaningful than the total number of participants. (Splitting the results into more categories weakens the statistical significance of each result.) And 43% of by a biased method is still a biased result.

Breaking the population into those who have posted this year vs those who have not is pretty arbitrary particularly when the poll asks about all four seasons. And perhaps the most active winter hikers/mountaineers/skiers are spending their time outdoors rather than posting...

Strictly speaking, polls such as this should be reviewed by competent statisticians before anyone draws any conclusions from it.

Basically polls such as this are are fine entertainment, but are statistically very weak (ie mostly meaningless). Pretty much the only safe conclusion is that a non-trivial number of people solo at least part of the time. (This may or may not be a sizable proportion of VFTT members, but doesn't say much about the proportion of soloists among NE outdoors recreationalists.)

Doug

RoySwkr said:

Can you get the number of distinct users by month, that's what would be most useful in this discussion?

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It's not on the standard reports, and it can be difficult to generate. Lots of users from one ISP all come from the same IP address (proxy) for example.

Tim

DougPaul said:

First of all, the number in each category is more meaningful than the total number of participants. (Splitting the results into more categories weakens the statistical significance of each result.) And 43% of by a biased method is still a biased result.

Breaking the population into those who have posted this year vs those who have not is pretty arbitrary particularly when the poll asks about all four seasons. And perhaps the most active winter hikers/mountaineers/skiers are spending their time outdoors rather than posting...

Strictly speaking, polls such as this should be reviewed by competent statisticians before anyone draws any conclusions from it.

Basically polls such as this are are fine entertainment, but are statistically very weak (ie mostly meaningless). Pretty much the only safe conclusion is that a non-trivial number of people solo at least part of the time. (This may or may not be a sizable proportion of VFTT members, but doesn't say much about the proportion of soloists among NE outdoors recreationalists.)

Doug

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Doug, it does not take a statistician nor an electrical engineer to poke holes in my online, non-scientific poll. I made it very clear from the get-go that this is a non-scientific poll. That does not mean that carfefully crafted conclusions cannot be drawn. For instance, the conclusion you have made, which I have emboldened, is one possibility. I would add the phrase, "in winter." My unspoken hypothesis and reason for writing the poll in the first place is because your conclusion is my belief.

My comparison to the Brown study was to point out that I don't think the methods used in that study were substantially more random than a sampling here and that the n value is getting similar. That was published in a peer-reviewed journal. This may be just for fun, but I see some comparisons - these two polls are not all that different. To be clear, I think the Brown paper is weak, the n is too small, and the conclusions are of little use. Therefore, I also do not put a lot of weight behind this poll. The more people respond, the more weight I will give it. Perhaps I will consider running a similar poll of hikers in a few different locales to get a sense for soloists.

Another hole in this one that I can point out (and Tim may be able to clarify) - just because someone took this poll, it does not necessarily mean they are an "active member." My assumption is a member could have taken the poll without posting anywhere else this year.

Does taking a poll in and of itself count as a post?

Raven said:

I'd be interested to see what the numbers would look like if we could get nearly all VFTTers to take it - I was suprised the numbers seem so high myself Chip, but now I'm curious about the percentages for the larger group and non-VFTTers as well.

Keep in mind that all someone has to do is hike solo once in a while in the winter to be part of the 85%. Many of those 85% could still hike in groups very often as well.

As far as not running into solo hikers more often, If I am hiking solo and want solitide, I tend to avoid popular trails at popular times. In winter, that is not so easy, but in summer, I avoid the popular trails and I sometimes start very early or very late any time of year. I plan trips with crowd-avoidance in mind. It's not cuncommon for me to hike all day and only see 1-2 others or no one for that matter. I hiked Garfield 3 weeks ago on a Saturday without seeing a single other person on trail and no prints showing anyone had been on trail or across the ridge. Those days in winter are rarer than they were 10 years ago, but there is something very special about being the only one on the mountain.

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You make a good point as far as winter use. I sometimes favor certain peaks, for awhile it was Liberty. I'm talking early 90's here. I cant count how many times I had to break out that trail. Try breaking it out now, if you show up 3 days after snow your going to be to late. Which brings me to my next point, these list that alot of people are doing now, are way easier then back in the day, just saying.

Raven said:

Doug, it does not take a statistician nor an electrical engineer to poke holes in my online, non-scientific poll. I made it very clear from the get-go that this is a non-scientific poll. That does not mean that carfefully crafted conclusions cannot be drawn. For instance, the conclusion you have made, which I have emboldened, is one possibility. I would add the phrase, "in winter." My unspoken hypothesis and reason for writing the poll in the first place is because your conclusion is my belief.

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I have no problem with people taking polls such as this--just people drawing unsupported conclusions from them.

My comparison to the Brown study was to point out that I don't think the methods used in that study were substantially more random than a sampling here and that the n value is getting similar. That was published in a peer-reviewed journal. This may be just for fun, but I see some comparisons - these two polls are not all that different. To be clear, I think the Brown paper is weak, the n is too small, and the conclusions are of little use. Therefore, I also do not put a lot of weight behind this poll. The more people respond, the more weight I will give it. Perhaps I will consider running a similar poll of hikers in a few different locales to get a sense for soloists.

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Self-selected polls are notoriously biased--the Brown crew at least used trailhead sampling which is probably less biased. But a large count alone does not make a poll reliable--as I stated earlier, a large count is necessary but not sufficient.

Constructing and analyzing a good poll can be very difficult (even for the pros).

Sometimes a flawed poll is the only thing one has to work from and can still be useful if used carefully.

Doug

The fewest users per day this year is 120.
The most users per day this year is 176.

Nothing further that I can find...

Tim

sierra said:

You make a good point as far as winter use. I sometimes favor certain peaks, for awhile it was Liberty. I'm talking early 90's here. I cant count how many times I had to break out that trail. Try breaking it out now, if you show up 3 days after snow your going to be to late. Which brings me to my next point, these list that alot of people are doing now, are way easier then back in the day, just saying.

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I'm impressed you have broken out the Liberty Spring Trail. That's a popular one. I hear what you're saying about the increase in winter activity on the trails. I broke out a few more trails 10 years ago or so than I do now. I imagine every decade has seen that increase. The only time I ever broke out the LST was when I camped out at Liberty Spring Tentsite and beat the crowd out in the morning (3-4 other tents). There was an overnight storm that dropped close to a foot of fresh powder on the mountains and knocked out power in Lincoln. Beautiful in the morning.

For reference, that was 2001

DougPaul said:

I But a large count alone does not make a poll reliable--as I stated earlier, a large count is necessary but not sufficient.
Doug

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I completely agree about not over-extending the conclusions of this poll. I'm not unfamiliar with statistics. But I think we are in (or are nearing) the realm of being able to make conclusions about VFTT members.

Raven said:

I'm impressed you have broken out the Liberty Spring Trail. That's a popular one. I hear what you're saying about the increase in winter activity on the trails. I broke out a few more trails 10 years ago or so than I do now. I imagine every decade has seen that increase. The only time I ever broke out the LST was when I camped out at Liberty Spring Tentsite and beat the crowd out in the morning (3-4 other tents). There was an overnight storm that dropped close to a foot of fresh powder on the mountains and knocked out power in Lincoln. Beautiful in the morning.

For reference, that was 2001

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I completed the 4k's in 1984. Ive seen as Im sure others have on this site, the gradual increase of trail usage over the years, the last ten being the peak increase for sure. I sometimes long for those quiet days, but I must confess as a soloist I do enjoy meeting and chatting with people on the trails as well. In regards to polls and stats, Im no expert in that field but I will add this. There is alot of people I have met and still meet now and then who hike off the grid so to speak, they are just out there.

Raven said:

I'm impressed you have broken out the Liberty Spring Trail. That's a popular one. I hear what you're saying about the increase in winter activity on the trails. I broke out a few more trails 10 years ago or so than I do now. I imagine every decade has seen that increase. The only time I ever broke out the LST was when I camped out at Liberty Spring Tentsite and beat the crowd out in the morning (3-4 other tents). There was an overnight storm that dropped close to a foot of fresh powder on the mountains and knocked out power in Lincoln. Beautiful in the morning.

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It's a lot easier to winter solo hike than it used to be...

Back when I started winter hiking in the mid-1970's one pretty much had to hike with a group (or be very strong) to break out the trails. I can recall breaking out one of the waterfalls (uphill, on snowshoes) on the Walling Waters trail--I was facing chest deep snow and basically throwing it down on the person behind me. By the time the last person (of 6--8) passed, everything was packed down into a nice firm tredway.

Snowshoes have also gotten smaller because fewer people have to deal with untracked snow.

Doug

DougPaul said:

It's a lot easier to winter solo hike than it used to be...

Back when I started winter hiking in the mid-1970's one pretty much had to hike with a group (or be very strong) to break out the trails. I can recall breaking out one of the waterfalls (uphill, on snowshoes) on the Walling Waters trail--I was facing chest deep snow and basically throwing it down on the person behind me. By the time the last person (of 6--8) passed, everything was packed down into a nice firm tredway.

Snowshoes have also gotten smaller because fewer people have to deal with untracked snow.

Doug

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It had to be practically impossible in the 70's to solo winter hike to any substantial summits. I'm 4 away from having soloed the W48 and even since 2000 I see a big difference in broken trails. I've broken out my share over the past 15 years but most of those consisted of breaking out a foot, or in some cases two feet of snow over a formerly broken track. On Zealand, the Carters, Carter Dome, plenty of above treeline hikes I was breaking alone. Some long days and a lot of energy burned...hard enough yes, but not the same as truly unbroken trail. I've only wallowed in the waist deep stuff you describe solo one time out of the 44 I've done (other than short above treeline spots) and that was Wildcat from the hut. Less than a mile, but I earned that one.

To be fair, there have been lots of easy days too with broken trail on distant summits or when descending was just a smooth slide out, or just really good weather days.

It doesn't compare in challenge to the 70's for sure.

Raven said:

.....

Open call to members: please take this poll if you have not yet done so and we may be able to truly see where the VFTT community lies.........

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OK I'll bite...very occasional poster but constant lurker. I don't hike nearly as much as I'd like due to where I live, but I make it up to the mountains a few times a year. I've been finding more and more that many of my best days out are hiking (and b/c skiing) solo, regardless of the season.

DougPaul said:

... Basically polls such as this are are fine entertainment, but are statistically very weak (ie mostly meaningless). Pretty much the only safe conclusion is that a non-trivial number of people solo at least part of the time. (This may or may not be a sizable proportion of VFTT members, but doesn't say much about the proportion of soloists among NE outdoors recreationalists.) Doug

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I agree with this wholeheartedly but that does not detract from the enjoyment of the poll and its usefulness in learning about the hiking habits of one another who responded but it certainly can't be extrapolated for any statistically meaningful purpose that I can imagine.

The wording is abiguous for another thing ... I checked occasionally/rarely year round rather arbitrarily because I don't do it frequently but what is the meaning of occasionally/rarely.

bikehikeskifish said:

3097 registered users
256 have posted this year
406 have visited this year

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RoySwkr said:

Can you get the number of distinct users by month, that's what would be most useful in this discussion?

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bikehikeskifish said:

It's not on the standard reports, and it can be difficult to generate. Lots of users from one ISP all come from the same IP address (proxy) for example.

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How about the number of distinct posters for 2013, by login name not IP address, as you did for 2014?

That wouldn't prove the excess were all summer hikers not just dropouts, but would give a flavor for what % were active within a year.

Raven said:

I've only wallowed in the waist deep stuff you describe solo one time out of the 44 I've done (other than short above treeline spots) and that was Wildcat from the hut. Less than a mile, but I earned that one.

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To clarify, the chest deep snow that I was facing was due to a combination of the slope, the snow, and maybe drifting. On the level, it was probably more like 18 inches of powder. As it was, even with a strong party of 6-8 people taking turns at breaking, we didn't make it to the ridge (Franconia Ridge above Falling Waters Tr).

Breaking can be hard work...

Doug

Another consideration is that trail breaking back then, at least in my case. Was done on wooden snowshoes, yes youngsters, WOODEN. Its like when I told my nephews, "when I grew up we didn't have internet", they didn't believe me.