How Hikes are Ranked
The goal of this website is to allow you to be able to prioritize which hikes in British Columbia you want to tackle, and when to tackle them, by providing a variety of facts, as well as my own personal opinion after completing these hikes. For anything that is my opinion you are obviously welcome to disagree. What one person likes another might hate and vice versa.
Below I am going to explain some of the stats and opinions so when you review a hiking guide you can refer to this if you need more information as to what it might mean.
Star Rating
One of the Best – This is one of the best hikes around with unbelievable views that at least match the effort put in but typically surpass it. Save this hike for a sunny day and have it high on your to-do list.
Great Hike – The is a great hike with excellent views. It’s well worth putting in the effort to do this hike as the payoff is at least as high if not higher than the effort put in. You likely want to save this for a clear day.
It’s Worth it – This is an okay hike with relatively good views. It’s not high on the list of hikes to complete. I wouldn’t dedicate a blue-bird summer day to it.
Save it for Shoulder Season – This is not a great hike, usually because there aren’t a lot of views or the payoff simply isn’t worth the effort put in. Definitely save this for an off-season hike.
Don’t Waste Your Time – There are so many better hikes than this you may as well never do it.
Effort / Reward Ratio
Ranking
Effort
Reward
Very High
Significant elevation gain / distance traveled
Breathtaking views either at the end or throughout
High
High elevation gain / distance traveled
Excellent views either at the end or throughout
Moderate
Moderate elevation gain / distance traveled
Good views either at the end or throughout
Low
Not a lot of elevation gain / distance traveled
Okay views either at the end or throughout
Very Low
Minimal elevation gain / distance traveled
Little or no views either at the end or throughout
In an ideal world you want the amount of effort put in to at least match the reward in order for the hike to be considered worthwhile. If you put in Very High effort and get a Moderate reward there are likely better options out there. The best hikes will have a lower effort than the amount of reward offered. Most of the time I find the effort/reward ratio to be fairly balanced, with the best views requiring the most effort and the worst views requiring the least. Again, this is all my opinion and some people might love a hike that I don’t. That’s the beauty of hiking!
Difficulty
Difficulty for a hike is an entirely subjective opinion, and while I will try to give my overall opinion on the difficulty of a hike like all other sites, I’m a relatively fit person, so what I find moderate could be difficult for somebody else. I haven’t found a website that has cracked the code on how to determine the difficulty of a hike in a clear and concise way.
With that in mind, as well as my opinion on how difficult the hike is, I have decided to provide a stat that I’ve never seen on any hiking website that might provide an ability to rank hikes based on difficulty. That stat is simply average gradient. Basically the amount of elevation gained divided by the distance traveled x 100% x 2
Difficulty for most people comes down to how steep the hikes is more so than how far it is. Most people can walk long distances on a low gradient surface, it’s when the gradient is high that people start to struggle.
This stat breaks down the elevation gain based on the distance traveled and provides a clean, comparable number to compare a variety of hikes. I haven’t calculated this stat for enough hikes to fully understand what would be considered easy vs. difficult, so this might need tweaking, but from what I’ve done so far they seem to fall into the following:
- Very Easy – 0% – 4% Average Gradient
- Easy – 4% – 8% Average Gradient
- Moderate – 8% – 13% Average Gradient
- Difficult – 13% – 18% Average Gradient
- Very Difficult – 18%+ Average Gradient
In my experience, most hikes fall into moderate or difficult, but this could explain the types of hikes I generally do. In reality this stat doesn’t explain the whole story, so don’t use it blindly! The distance of the hike is a big factor in determining the figure, and a short hike can receive a high figure and a long hike a low figure. There are also some hikes, like Hanes Valley and Mount Callaghan, that are flat for large parts then incredibly steep for shorter stretches. The long, flat section throws off the average % but the hike can still be very difficult due to a very steep part.
To surmise, this stat is simply a marker as to how steep the hike is overall and a solid, comparable indicator for difficulty. It is not meant to be a clear-cut way of determining how difficult it is. Only your own, personal experience can tell you how difficult a hike is for you, so if you’re not sure, get out there and do some of the easier hikes and work your way up to the hard ones!
Time Needed
As a relatively fast hiker one of my pet peeves is the “Time Needed” figure that most hiking websites provide. They are pretty much always based on a slow hiker. I understand the reasoning, you don’t want a slower hiker thinking they can complete a long hike in 8 hours when really it will take them 13 hours, leaving them stranded, but for somebody who is not slow I basically always have to calculate how fast it will take me. This isn’t an issue now that I’ve hiked so much that I know how long I’ll take based on stats, but it’s still frustrating.
I don’t really get why websites can’t offer a variety of times based on the speed of the hiker, so I’ve decided to offer my opinion on how long a hike will take based on my experience of the hike and knowing how fast I am compared to others.
With that in mind I’m offering 3 estimate times for each hike based on a slow, moderate and fast hiker. Very generally speaking, hiking speeds, including breaks, in my experience, are as follows:
- Slow – 2 to 2.5 Km/h
- Moderate – 2.5 to 3.5 Km/h
- Fast – 3.5+ Km/h
Before I have a bunch of people telling me I’m wrong, calm down! Of course there is no absolute right answer to this. Your speed is totally dependent on the elevation gain, the conditions, the technicality, how hard you’re trying, how much you’re carrying, how many breaks you take, how long you like to stay at the summit, how much route finding there is, if it’s summer or winter etc. You may be a fast hiker and go slower than 3.5 km/h as the hike is so steep. You may be a slow hiker and go 3 km/h as the hike is not steep at all. If I’m pushing it as hard as I can I can probably go over 5km/h, or if I’m strolling I’ll probably go closer to 3 km/h.
This is just my attempt at providing a ballpark estimate as to how fast you might hike, including breaks, to do a hike. If you know how fast you are and disagree, great, at least you therefore know what your hiking speed is.