How Do You Define Hiking?

This is definitely a hike...

This might seem a completely ridiculous question, but what exactly is hiking? How do you determine the difference between a hike and a walk? It’s pretty obvious that an arduous slog up a mountain is a hike, but is a walk in your local urban park a hike? Is a long walk along the beach a hike?

The dictionary definition of a hike is simply “the activity of going for long walks, especially in the country or woods.” Again, that’s pretty vague and doesn’t exactly give a clear guidance as to what a hike actually is. How long is long for one thing?

For the purposes of Best Hikes BC I want to stick to what I consider to be just hikes, not walks. In my opinion nearly every website merges these two together, including long, gruelling hikes as well as simple strolls along the shoreline in their list of hikes. While I’m all for long walks in a park or beach, in my opinion they are not hikes and should not be categorized as such. I really want Best Hikes BC to be about hiking, so I’ve decided to come up with a list of conditions that need to be met in order for a hike to be included on this site. 

How I Define Hiking

  1. A hike is not within an urban setting. Now “urban” itself is somewhat subjective, but this rule is there specifically to weed out any trails within a densely populated area, for example Stanley Park in Vancouver and Deer Lake in Burnaby. As such, there will be very few, if any, hikes within a metropolitan area such as Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey etc. on this site.
  2. A stroller won’t be able to go on a hike. I was going to specify the types of terrain a hike usually occurs on, but there are a large variety of terrains a hike can cover. Simply put, if a stroller can be pushed along the entire trail, it’s not a hike. There are undoubtedly sections of hikes a stroller might be fine on, but if the whole trail is stroller friendly it’s probably not a hike.
  3. Hiking elevates your heart rate. Hiking is a physical exercise and as such should leave you at least somewhat out of breath at some stage along the trail.
  4. A hike includes at least 100m cumulative elevation gain. A hike goes up and down hills/mountains. If there is practically no elevation gain it’s not a hike. 100m cumulatively is a very low threshold, so this truly only rules out particularly flat walks.
  5. A hike covers a distance of at least 3km. I was thinking about trails that I would just about consider a hike based on distance, and Quarry Rock in Deep Cove springs to mind. That’s a very short hike at about 3.5km so I definitely would not consider anything under 3km as a hike. Arguably 3km is too short, but for sake of including some hikes in the “very easy” category, I have to include some short ones.

Examples of Walks

There are undoubtedly going to be grey areas where some people will consider a trail a hike, while others will consider it a walk. Here are some examples of some popular trails that will be included on most websites that I will not include on this site as I do not consider them a hike, as well as why:

  • Stanley Park, Deer Lake, Burnaby Lake, Pacific Spirit Park – These are all long trails in large parks of varying terrain, difficulty and length. For me though, all of these are urban parks and I wouldn’t consider any of them them a hike.
  • Cascade Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Steelhead Falls, Shannon Falls, Cypress Falls – While scenic and worth a visit, these are incredibly short and could be completed in 30 – 60 minutes. Way too short to ever be considered a hike on their own, these are more of a stopover on the way to a real hike. 
  • Othello Tunnels – Short, basically no elevation, could probably push a stroller along it. Another good stopover but not a hike. 
  • Gold Creek Falls – On its own it’s just a long(ish) trail that’s almost entirely flat. To consider it a hike I’d say you need to add more trails.
  • Sasamat Lake, Rice Lake, Port Moody Shoreline – Walks around lakes/shores often include little to no elevation gain and short distances. Not all are like that though, notably Buntzen Lake is long and includes a decent amount of elevation. Sometimes you can extend these trails into hikes by adding more trails in the area. 
  • Mundy Park, Kanaka Creek – Basically no elevation gain
Honestly this list could go on and on. If you go to AllTrails and search for “easy” trails, many of them (but not all!) will not be hikes by my definition. That being said, it’s not always impossible to turn these into hikes. Many times these areas have multiple trails going all over the place, you can often extend a trail to be much longer and potentially make it a strenuous hike. Gold Creek Falls, for example, can be combined with the East and West Canyon Loop and that’s a long hike. 
 

Overall I just wanted a guide for both myself and the readers of this site to understand what is being considered a hike and why some trails may not be included here but may be very popular.