The honest answer to why I hike alone is simple: I don’t have hiking friends where I live, and hiking matters too much to me to give it up just because nobody’s available.
That’s more the reason I started than the reason I still do it nowadays.
The thing is, I’ve become addicted to what hiking alone gives you. I don’t know of any other way to get these feelings, so I mean to keep going and not let anything stop me.
Table of Contents
What it does to your body
Hiking alone teaches you about your body in a specific way. There’s no one to distract you from what’s happening inside, no conversation to pull your attention outward. The signals come in clearly, and you are forced to read them.
I discovered which muscles fail first (for me it’s the calves, especially on long ascents and descents). I learned how it feels to run out of breath on a steep gradient in heat (and also in the shade, I won’t act like I have a super endurance). I found out what it actually feels like to push into real effort, to sweat and swear under the fatigue, and where my limits are. I’ve felt all of this on my real legs, the ones that have become stronger because of it.
You are also forced to learn how to be cautious. Remember, when you’re alone and something goes wrong, there’s no one to help you. Keep that in mind when decide how to move: stay on the planned route, don’t take unnecessary risks, don’t treat your own safety as a joke, because there will be consequences.
What might sound like a constraint is actually education. Learning to manage yourself as a whole, both physically and mentally, is a skill that transfers well beyond the trail. Respect your limits and be considered, because, if you don’t, the mountains will show you that they’re mountains and you’re human.
What it does to your mind
Let’s start from, well, the beginning. What happens when in your mind when you start a hike?
You are immediately relieved. For me, personally, the moment I’m on the trail, I’m away from the things in my life that drain me — the commute, the obligations, the background noise of everyday responsibilities. There’s no traffic, no groceries to shop for, no duties in general. The only cognitive task that is required to me is not putting my foot somewhere that will make me fall, and that, it turns out, is something the body handles mostly on its own (we’re monkeys, after all, we know how to move).
What remains, once the mental noise quiets, is the simplest form of clarity you can imagine. Decisions that seemed complicated become straightforward. Things I’ve been avoiding thinking about surface and resolve. Problems that felt stuck show new angles.
This doesn’t happen instantly and they’re not always as straightforward. On a hot day with a steep exposed climb, the heat and the effort can push everything else out for a while. But when I summit and the view opens up, what I feel is a sense of being exactly where I should be, the place where my soul fits precisely, like the right puzzle piece.
Hiking with company is a different experience entirely. Good, but different. The social dimension takes over. You’re sharing the experience rather than having it. Both have value. But the particular interior work that happens alone in nature — that requires the solitude.
Why the solitude in nature is different
Being alone on the top of a mountain isn’t like being alone at home with extra steps. That’s a completely different business.
Human bodies and minds were shaped by millions of years of evolution in natural environments, not in concrete buildings in front of screens. When you’re in nature and not in danger, you are literally in the environment your body has been designed for. The nervous system recognizes the context and it rewards you.
Also, the solitude of an afternoon on a mountain is temporary and chosen. You know that when you come back down, life will be there — other people, other obligations, the ordinary texture of your days. Loneliness in cities, instead, can feel like a verdict, like that is a state that can never be solved. This difference is staggering, and your mind knows it.
What it changes over time
The most unexpected benefit of years of solo hiking, for me, has been patience.
On a mountain, you cannot rush the summit. It doesn’t matter how much you want to be there, how frustrated you are with the pace, how much dumb corporate management mentality (that’s what I call the idea that you can simply push harder and override the practical constraints of the problem) you try to apply. The mountain doesn’t negotiate, the distance is what it is, and so is your body. The only path to the summit is to walk, one step at a time, for several hours.
Believe it or not, this translates in other areas of your life, as well. There are some ideas that are spreading nowadays that are just plain wrong – throw more people at a problem and it will solve faster; work long nights and the work will simply be completed; destroy yourself now and you’ll recover later (spoiler: “later” never comes). These concepts have managed to get out of corporate culture (where they are still wrong) and permeate everyday life, and they brought nothing but troubles. Real problems require patience and understanding, they cannot be hacked.
Ok, but should I hike alone or not?
If I could give you a simple, direct answer, where would be the fun in that? I can’t do it, that’s impossible. Instead, I’ll tell you the same thing I’d tell anyone: it depends on whether you’re willing to be alone with your thoughts for several hours.
That’s all there is to it. Hiking alone is an extended period of being in your own company with no distraction, no social networks, no background noise of everyday life. For some people, like me, that sounds peaceful. For others, it’s like hell spawned on Earth and started tormenting them.
If you’re someone who has spent a lot of time trying to avoid their thoughts, hiking alone can be uncomfortable at first. The thoughts you’ve been avoiding are there on the trail with you.
But the mountains don’t care about your avoidance strategies. They just require you to keep moving. And somewhere in that requirement is something useful.