Typically, it doesn’t mean we go “off the trail“. It means there is trail. These are two very different things.
Offtrail hiking, or no trail hiking, is hard at times, easy at others, and very hard at others. It’s almost always changing, and not something you should dismiss as irrelevant. In fact, it’s probably the single most important thing to understand about our backpacking trips.
I’ll say that again. Louder.
When we say offtrail backpacking we’re talking about traversing boulder fields, hiking through dense brush, over steep scree and talus slopes and walking for hours on steep grassy mountainsides. All of which are harder than you think they are.
Trust me.
I’ll keep this post brief, but you can read a lot more about this subject (and I recommend that you do) on this blog post.
It’s important.
