Optimal Hiking Grade - A 50 Hike GPS Analysis

Do you care about optimal hiking grade? Maybe not, but it's interesting for us to think about.

Intuitively, some may think that steeper trails should get you up higher more quickly because less energy is being put into the "horizontal miles" that a less steep trail would need.

However, we probably also feel that at some point something becomes too steep to ascend without the looseness of the terrain affecting our pace.

So what's the "optimal" grade? Well, I'm sure the answer is unique to an individual, but let's look at one person.

We previously did a little exploration into how Vertical Ascent Rate (VAR) varied with the steepness of a trail, but only with one example. Now I've combined 50 hikes worth of data.

The hikes:

• Mostly in southern California (especially San Gabriels), some in Sierra and Bay Area
• Diverse in conditions, includes much on trail and off trail
• Some have brush
• Varied terrain (loose, bouldering, etc...)

But it's a set of "real" hikes that I've done. A little Matlab coding and analysis, and we can see how often a given grade of terrain was hiked:

Vertical Ascent Rate

While we just looked at an example of how walking speed changes with change in trail steepness, it is also interesting to look at how vertical ascent rate (VAR) changes with trail steepness.


Of course, I think most people would generally hypothesize that VAR increases as the grade increases, since a larger % of energy will be spent on vertical movement. I would also hypothesize that above some grade (perhaps 60-70%), VAR would begin to decrease - I am thinking about loss of friction, change in terrain, and change in biomechanical efficiency - but that is simply conjecture at this point.


We will look at only one exemplar hike (Big Iron again) which is suitable because of the breadth of gradients encountered and I was attempting to hike at a constant pace. Below is a plot of VAR vs grade % (this time I multiplied by 100% so it makes more sense, like 15% grade on a treadmill).