20 Safety Tips for Beginner Solo Hikers (No BS or Fluff)

Here are 20 solo hiking safety tips without any BS or fluff. You shouldn't be wary of just wild animals. Whenever you see horses, cows, goat or sheep alone in the mountains, you should always pay a bit more attention because there might be a guard dog somewhere nearby. In more popular hiking areas like the Alps or the Pyrenees, usually they're very well trained and they're friendly to hikers, but in more remote areas like for example here in central Italy, sometimes they're very aggressive towards humans. If you see one, always stop and judge the situation first before approaching and determine whether the shepherd dog is aggressive towards you or not. If he is, slowly back away, no sudden movement and go around the herd from a distance. That way he probably won't be aggressive towards you. When a lot of people start solo hiking, they usually want to have something to protect themselves with and in that case I usually recommend bringing trekking poles. In my opinion, they're one of the best tools to protect yourself with aside from bear spray of course. Trekking poles are also a multi-use item which is really good for hiking because you can set up some tents with them and they also greatly reduce the chances of you getting ankle or leg injuries. To avoid ankle injuries which could develop a potentially dangerous situation if you're hiking solo, you need to increase the mobility range of your ankles and you can do that by doing these four exercises. Do 20 of these smaller bounces to improve your dorsiflexion, 10 of these stretches to improve your plantar flexion, 10 outward stretches to improve your suspination and another 10 inward stretches to improve your pronation. If you'll be hiking solo, you should definitely find someone who can alert the authorities in case you go missing. The main idea here is that you'd update them every day and if they wouldn't receive any messages from you for a day or two then they would get in touch with a rescue team and let them know that you're probably lost or that your phone is dead and that you just aren't answering. Even if you don't live in bear country, you should never leave your food, empty food packaging, your deodorant and other things that have a strong smell inside of your tent. Here in Europe, you'd mostly do it to avoid wild boar encounters during the night but depending on where you live, it could be other animals as well. I usually put everything that has smell in a dry sack and hang it up pretty high in a tree at least 50 meters away from my tent. That said, you could probably skip this step if you're camping very high up in altitude, way above the treeline because there you'll usually only encounter mountain goats, foxes and they're usually pretty shy and they won't try to get inside of your tent. A lot of long distance trails that you can hike solo are located at the other end of the world which means that you'll need to travel to get there. And when traveling, you should always protect yourself when connected to a public Wi-Fi and that's where today's sponsor comes in, NordVPN. So as an example, when I was flying to Spain to do the GR11 trail, I had to use public Wi-Fi in the airport, in cafes, in the hotel and so on. In this case, by using NordVPN, all the activity on your phone or laptop will be encrypted which means that other people using the same Wi-Fi network won't be able to steal your passwords and other sensitive information. Also if you're from the US or Canada and you're planning to do one of the through hikes here in Europe, once coming here you'll notice that a lot of websites from the US or Canada are blocked in Europe because of EU privacy laws. If you turn on NordVPN and select USA or Canada as the country, you'll be able to access these websites. And not only that but it also works with other apps that are blocked in certain countries and also streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and so on. If you sign up to NordVPN using the link in the video description and choose their two-year plan, you'll get a big discount and additional four months for free. It's literally risk-free because of their 30-day money-back guarantee. Sign up to NordVPN by going to nordvpn.com slash oscar hikes. Thank you for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to the rest of the video. Although it's definitely tempting, do not watch videos like these on YouTube because you'll go down a rabbit hole and end up thinking that hiking is more dangerous than it actually is. To prove my point, here are some hard facts. In 2019, from 327 million visitors to all US national parks, only 56 people died from hiking-related deaths. That amounts to 0.017 fatalities out of every 100,000 people. Now let's compare that to driving where the fatality rate is 11 per 100,000 people. In simple words, hiking is 647 times safer than driving a car. So do yourself a favor and do not watch videos like that because in reality hiking solo is pretty safe. If you're a daring person and you're not afraid of heights, then I would advise you to kind of limit yourself and not going too close to the edges of cliffs. In reality, I'm pretty much talking about me because I used to like to go near the edges and look down. But while I was hiking in Norway, I approached a cliff that was maybe 50 meters high and then I suddenly lost balance. I don't know, maybe I stepped on a rock or something, but the point is that I lost my balance right next to the cliff. And after that, I started thinking it really takes so little to have an accident like that. So while the experience is still fresh in my mind, now I try to not approach cliffs like that, or at least I try to take off my backpack and then do it much more carefully. If you see on your phone that you could take a shortcut, but the map shows that there isn't a trail there, it probably isn't there for a reason, especially here in the mountains. 8 times out of 10, whenever I take a shortcut in the mountains, I end up regretting it because it's either too overgrown, it's too steep, or it's not usable in some other way. Only take it if you can clearly see the whole path and it's easily doable. Most people that do hiking are actually good people, so you don't realistically need to worry about them. But when you're camping on public campgrounds, you're sharing it with other people, which sometimes can be a bit weird or make you feel uncomfortable or even have some bad intentions. If you're concerned about that and you're hiking solo, especially if you're a girl, it might be a better idea to set up your camp outside of campgrounds, out of sight, not near roads, not near houses and so on, because nobody will see you there and it will be safer. If you're hiking on overgrown trails and you can't really see what's hiding behind the next bush 10-20 meters away, make sure to every once in a while clap your hands and do other loud noises to scare off any wild animals and potentially startling them. Not only bears, but wild boars, deer and other large animals, because they might act aggressively when you startle them, especially if they're with their babies. To avoid animal encounters, do not set up your tent near water sources or on animal tracks, which essentially look like a regular trail but less maintained and in the middle of nowhere. Also don't set it up underneath trees with a lot of dead branches that could fall on the tent or with some dead standing trees nearby. And lastly, avoid setting up your tent in areas that look like they might flood if a heavy rainstorm kicks in, which could be a wash or near a stream or something similar. Make it a habit to always stop hiking when you start feeling too tired, because other than getting a heat stroke or something similar, that's when you start to have poor judgement. So even if you haven't reached your desired campsite, it's always a better idea to have a small pause, think about where you can set up your tent and possibly even hiking a bit back to set up the tent. If you're navigating on your phone, make it a habit to stop and only then look at your phone. That's because you could accidentally step on a rock and sprain your ankle, maybe poke your eye with a tree branch, step on a snake or something similar. If you haven't hiked solo before, something that really helps in the beginning is to start hiking in a group first. But the problem that a lot of people have is that their friends usually don't want to go hiking with them. So what you can do instead is to go on Facebook and look for any hiking groups in your area or you can apply for trail maintenance volunteer jobs in your area, because you can find a lot of like-minded people there. When hiking solo, you need to pay much more attention to the weather forecast and the upcoming trail conditions, because if something happens, you're out on your own. Avoid hiking in high altitudes late in spring and even sometimes early in the summer if there's still a lot of snow left. Stay below the tree line in thunderstorms and remember that after heavy rains, a lot of rivers, streams might not be crossable due to a higher water level. In the dry season, watch out for any wildfire notices and remember that some water sources might be dried up. In case something happens, I usually carry at least one extra day of food with me at all times, but if you're a beginner or if you're hiking in a very remote area, then you should probably carry at least two extra days. Also, do not rely only on food that needs to be cooked on camping stoves, because you can run out of gas, the camping stove might become damaged, or if the temperature drops below freezing, regular gas-powered camping stoves usually stop working then. Nowadays, most people navigate using GPS apps on their phone, so here's what you need to do if you want to do it safely. You should always carry a power bank in case your phone runs out of charge and you should also make sure that your preferred navigation app also works offline. I personally use the free version of Gaia GPS by zooming to all the areas where I know that I'll be hiking while I'm connected to the internet, because this automatically downloads all the areas in my phone's cache for offline use. Here are some other free apps that work similarly, recommended to me by my viewers. In areas that aren't that remote, that have well-marked trails, or that you know of personally, navigating with just your phone usually is safe enough. That's like how I navigate 99% of the times. But ideally, you should also carry a backup as well, in case something happens to your phone. And the best one definitely is a dedicated GPS device from Garmin, Zolio, Spot, or something similar. That's because they're more robust, they have a longer battery life, all of them come with an SOS emergency function, and a lot of them also come with satellite messaging, which means that you can communicate with other people even if there's no reception. Of course, another alternative is to carry paper maps and a compass as your backup. However, you have to learn how to use them, you have to print a new map before each hike, and sometimes they're also hard to navigate by precisely, especially if you're hiking in a forest, or if there aren't any key landmarks to navigate by. And the last tip, which might actually seem like fluff or BS to some people, but in my opinion is quite important, is to trust your instincts. We're all animals, and if dogs can sense that something dangerous is about to happen and they become nervous, I think that you, subconsciously, can do that as well. So if your gut is telling you to not camp here, to not hike on that specific trail, or to turn back, I would advise you to follow it. Of course, I don't have any actual proof to back this up, but there are a lot of stories from other people who have trusted their gut while hiking and avoided a potentially dangerous situation. So guys, what did you think of this video? Was there something that you liked? Something that you maybe didn't like? Any feedback is appreciated, because I always want to improve my channel. Anyway, thank you for watching, and I'll see you in one of my next videos. Bye!